Movio, the global leader in marketing data analytics for the film industry, has appointed Craig Jones as Chief Commercial Officer of the company. Jones, who joins Movio after a decade at Vodafone, will divide his time between the company’s Auckland headquarters and Los Angeles offices. He will be responsible for continuing the successful conception and execution of Movio’s global business strategy for Movio Media. Opening new avenues for Movio to generate incremental profit for Movio and Movio’s cinema exhibition partners from their moviegoer data, is among his highest priorities. The appointment, effective immediately, was announced today by Will Palmer, Co-Founder and Chief Executive, to whom Mr. Jones will report.

Movio is revolutionizing the way the film industry interacts with moviegoers. Building upon the success of Movio Cinema, the company’s flagship product for cinema exhibitors, Movio Media has been a game changer for US film studios and distributors, providing comprehensive market data on the demographics, ethnicity and behavior of domestic moviegoers, crucial audience insights and innovative campaign solutions. Movio Media has over 14 million US active moviegoers profiled from 33% of North American screens of the Large Cinema Circuit. The success of the solution in the US market has led to demand from Movio’s international clients. The global rollout of Movio Media will begin this year and will drive the company’s ambitious growth target over the next five years.

Jones spent 10 years at Vodafone, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, with operations in 26 countries and over 470m mobile customers. He held a series of senior national and global sales, and executive leadership roles in New Zealand and India. While based in India, he led global sales for one of Vodafone’s largest international clients, significantly increasing market share in India, UK and Europe, while opening up new market opportunities in Africa and Asia Pacific. Most recently, Jones led a multi-million dollar, multi-year business transformation program for Vodafone New Zealand – the country’s largest mobile telecommunications company with revenues in excess of USD 1.5 billion.

“Movio Media is now well established in the US and poised for global expansion,” said Will Palmer. “Craig’s experience leading commercial strategies for technology companies and large international corporations makes him perfectly suited to head the growth of our game-changing film industry media solution.”

“Movio is one of the most impressive companies in the global film sector today” said Jones. “Movio Media has the potential to transform not only the movie business, but also the wider marketing and advertising industry – and I’m excited about leading what is a significant global opportunity for Movio ”

A closer look at Movio Media:

Movio Research:

• The largest movie market research database of U.S. moviegoers, normalized to reflect industry standard benchmarks.
• Data provided via an intuitive web portal, updated in near real time.
• Presents detailed demographic, ethnic, behavioral, film viewership history and transactional profiles and insights for target groups.
• Reveals true audience profiles for all movies as soon as tickets go on sale, and shows how an audience evolves for films now showing or historical titles.
• Incorporates Movio’s proprietary Similarity Algorithm to identify best fit ‘comp’ audiences.

Movio Engage:

• Executes campaigns to a target audience to drive awareness and motivate actions with pinpoint precision and maximum cost effectiveness.
• Measures incremental revenue from actual transactional responses against control groups in addition to standard delivery metrics.
• Solicits opinions via pre and post release audience research surveys, combining feedback with demographic and transactional profiles.

About Movio
Movio is the global leader in marketing data analytics and campaign management software for cinema exhibitors, film distributors and studios around the world. A company of Vista Group International Ltd (NZX & ASX: VGL), Movio is revolutionizing the way the film industry interacts with moviegoers. The company maintains real-time, authoritative data on customer transactions for many of the world’s biggest cinema chains and captures the behavior of millions of active moviegoers worldwide. Movio operates in North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, and South East Asia. Movio was named winner of the “Innovative Software Product” award at the 2016 annual New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards.
Movio Cinema, Movio’s flagship product, holds comprehensive marketing data covering 53 percent of cinema screens of the Large Cinema Circuit in North America and 29 percent globally accounting for 37+ million active moviegoers.
Movio Media has been a game changer for every major American film studio and distributor, providing comprehensive market data on the demographics, ethnicity and behavior of moviegoers, crucial audience insights and innovative campaign solutions. The Movio Media technology offers the most powerful and most accurate near real-time film market research platform in the United States.