PaperAirplane Media has promoted Amanda Rufener to Senior Vice President, Exhibitor Marketing & Operations as the cinema marketing company continues expanding its relationships with studios and exhibitors. Rufener, who joined PaperAirplane in 2021 after 11 years in Lionsgate’s Exhibitor Marketing department, will lead the company’s account team and oversee partnerships with studios, exhibitors and marketplace partners, while continuing to oversee its creative asset team.

For exhibitors unfamiliar with PaperAirplane, Rufener’s promotion is a useful reason to get acquainted with the company’s growing role in theatrical marketing. Its THE HANGAR platform gives cinema marketers a centralized place to access studio-approved trailers, artwork and digital campaign materials rather than hunting through a thicket of distributor portals. PaperAirplane noted in a recent LinkedIn post that July marked the third consecutive billion-dollar month of the summer box office and that THE HANGAR surpassed 35,000 downloads during the month, with more than 765 exhibitors accessing marketing assets for more than 475 titles.

Rufener has helped build the machinery behind that growth. She was also the architect of The Tower, PaperAirplane’s group-sales platform designed to connect studios with exhibitors and streamline bulk-ticket campaigns, while her expanded role puts her increasingly close to the intersection where distributor marketing plans become exhibitor execution. That may sound like decidedly unglamorous plumbing, but anyone who has spent an afternoon searching for the correct trailer, key art or digital banner knows how quickly bad plumbing becomes everyone’s problem. As theatrical marketing becomes more fragmented across formats, platforms and territories, making that studio-to-exhibitor pipeline work more efficiently is becoming a larger part of the business than most moviegoers — and probably some people inside the industry — ever see.