With many cinemas around the world looking to improve their engagement and relationships with customers, Arts Alliance Media (AAM), the global leader in digital cinema software and services, today announces the launch of its Thunderstorm platform. A new and unique global online marketplace, Thunderstorm enables cinemas to drive enhanced customer engagement and boost revenues. It brings innovation directly to exhibitors, giving them a portfolio of applications and technologies that can help attract new customers, enhance the customer experience and improve theatre management. Ultimately, Thunderstorm provides exhibitors with a number of opportunities to substantially improve revenues and maximise cost efficiencies.

In the new technology-led, connected world, it is imperative that cinemas create engaging customer experiences that today’s consumers demand. Yet keeping up with the developments in technology and deciding what will work for each individual cinema is nearly impossible. AAM has launched its Thunderstorm platform to overcome this industry-wide challenge. Tailored specifically to the cinema industry, Thunderstorm is a one-stop-shop for cinema owners of all sizes to access best-in-class technologies from industry partners.

As a cloud-based service, Thunderstorm is a highly flexible, highly scalable offering that requires minimal implementation effort, substantially reducing exhibitors’ investment risk in alternative technologies. All applications and capabilities available within Thunderstorm meet strict technical, quality and commercial criteria that bring peace of mind to exhibitors. Thunderstorm gives exhibitors complete flexibility to choose which technology partners they wish to work with, how, and when. Exhibitors can also manage all commercial relationships centrally, and reporting from each partner technology, and other valuable usage and impact data analysis, is available through a single management function.

“Around the world cinemas are competing for the same outcome – higher levels of occupancy which maximise exhibitors’ primary asset – their theatres. Retaining and attracting regular customers, and appealing to an increasingly diverse audience with rapidly evolving expectations, remain ever-present challenges,” said John Aalbers, Chief Executive Officer, Arts Alliance Media. “Where exhibitors have relied in the past on relatively simple tactics to drive customer engagement and revenue, such as deals in the foyer or ticketing with partners, Thunderstorm promises to revolutionise how exhibitors engage and interact with their customers, and improve the cinematic experience.”

Each application or capability available through Thunderstorm provides a unique mechanism to engage audiences or improve revenues, and is available to Thunderstorm customers on a case-by-case basis. Example applications and capabilities available at launch include:

• CineCardz, which allows audiences to personalise their cinema experience with on-screen video greeting cards during the pre-show, ranging from birthday messages to marriage proposals.
• Cinema Conversations, which bolsters audience engagement with your social media strategy, through shared Twitter and Instagram experiences in your cinema lobby.
• Cinema Intelligence, a predictive analytics solution which empowers theatres with innovative tools to predict attendance and optimize schedules, maximizing profit.
• iPlateia, which brings second screen (mobile) promotional interactivity to the cinema via proprietary sound recognition – a reminder for coming movies, sending vouchers, linked advertising campaigns, quizzes and more directly using customers’ mobiles as a personal promotional platform.

“For nearly 20 years, we’ve played an active role in developing cinema technology. Our rich experience, combined with new technologies and software platforms, has allowed us to create a service that delivers new benefits to meet both customer experience demands as well as exhibitors’ requirements,” said Rich Phillips, Chief Technology Officer, Arts Alliance Media. “As our industry’s customers’ demands evolve, we will continue to add new and exciting technologies to the Thunderstorm platform that will ensure exhibitors remain at the forefront of customer engagement and business efficiency.”

Thunderstorm is available immediately to any exhibitor with an internet connection. Exhibitors can sign up for free at www.aamthunderstorm.com. Individual technologies and services within Thunderstorm are available under subscription models whose costs vary according to technology and application type, and depending on the partner involved.

Supporting quotes:

CineCardz:
Guillaume Thomine Desmazures, Chief Executive Officer of CineCardz said, “Engaging audience with interactivity and increasing exhibitors revenue are great challenges for cinema’s industry future. The innovative CineCardz service, allowing customers to display their own customized video in their local cinemas, is easy to implement thanks to AAM expertise.”

Cinema Conversations:
Dan Strang, CEO, EventsTag, creators of Cinema Conversations said, “Our Cinema Conversations package offers technology from the forefront of big-brand, live experience marketing to AAM’s exhibitors. It harnesses and fosters social media activity to provide huge increases of customer engagement and genuine social-powered fun for guests. We’re proud to be part of Thunderstorm and excited to turn AAM’s enthusiasm into some real results for their exhibitors.”

Cinema Intelligence:
“Share Dimension, maker of Cinema Intelligence, is thrilled to be a Thunderstorm Marketplace launching partner,” said Claudiu Tanasescu, CEO of Share Dimension. “Through our partnership with Arts Alliance Media, we are confident that more cinema chains will begin to use data driven intelligent scheduling to predict attendance and build optimized schedules for their cinemas.”

iPlateia:
Pei-Zhi Liou, Business Development Director, iPlateia said, “For some years, Arts Alliance Media has started to focus its attention on software development as a natural continuation for further development as digitalisation was finalizing. This vision for software and dream about a different future for this industry coincide with the vision of iPlateia, which comes from numerous years of experience as an exhibitor and previously in the advertising world of our CEO, Daniel Cho. Therefore today, we are proud to be a part of the Thunderstorm project and happy to be in a team with avant-guard solutions. We will together better serve our industry’s customers and contribute our technical knowledge to the future of this industry.”