When it comes to cult cin­e­ma, fan expec­ta­tions are incom­pa­ra­bly high. Secret Cin­e­ma uses a vari­ety of orig­i­nal ways to engage their high­ly devot­ed cus­tomer base. Above all, a com­mit­ment to cus­tomer-cen­tric think­ing gives the brand an edge when inter­act­ing with such fans. While immer­sive events clear­ly won’t be a fit for every­one, there are lessons here for all mar­keters look­ing to reach high­ly engaged fans and audi­ences.

Since it’s birth in 2007, Secret Cin­e­ma has become a cel­e­brat­ed spec­ta­cle amongst devot­ed groups of cin­e­ma afi­ciona­dos. The immer­sive expe­ri­ence which com­bines screen­ings of cult films in secret loca­tions, with live-action enter­tain­ment and the­atri­cals, has become a run­away suc­cess.

Last year’s reju­ve­na­tion of the 1985 sci-fi clas­sic “Back to the Future” saw the orga­niz­ers recre­at­ing an incred­i­ble set of the sto­ry’s Hill Val­ley loca­tion, and after a shaky start, putting on a show to match.

This year, the event has its sights set on a galaxy far, far away. That’s right, Secret Cin­e­ma 2015 will cap­ture the spec­tac­u­lar inter­galac­tic space opera that is “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back”.

Engaging Cult Film Fans

At the essence, Secret Cin­e­ma relies on a sim­ple, but huge­ly effec­tive for­mu­la: engage a core group of high­ly devot­ed fans of cult film, and host an incred­i­ble immer­sive expe­ri­ence which is both excit­ing and social, allow­ing them to enjoy the event and con­nect with sim­i­lar­ly devot­ed fans.

How­ev­er, this busi­ness is unique­ly chal­leng­ing for one key rea­son: when it comes to cult cin­e­ma, fan expec­ta­tions are incom­pa­ra­bly high. The onus is on the orga­niz­ers to flaw­less­ly deliv­er com­plex, intri­cate pro­duc­tions and events – or else suf­fer the wrath of the fans.

Case in point: Last year’s “Back to the Future” pro­duc­tion flirt­ed with dis­as­ter when the first day of the event was can­celed just 90 mins before it was due to begin, with many excitable atten­dees already in cos­tume and on their way to the venue.

URGENT: Tonight’s Secret Cin­e­ma presents Back to the Future per­for­mance is CANCELLED. All tick­ets hold­ers will receive an email with more…

— secretcin­e­ma (@secretcinema) July 24, 2014

Lessons Learned

Ensur­ing that this year’s event goes with­out a hitch is of para­mount impor­tance for the orga­niz­ers this year, and it seems they are will­ing to go to some lengths to ensure fans and tick­et hold­ers remain hap­py.

For exam­ple, while “May the 4th” is unof­fi­cial­ly rec­og­nized the world over as “Star Wars Day”, the scale and chal­lenges of stag­ing an inter­galac­ti­cal­ly themed pro­duc­tion have meant that this year’s immer­sive cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence will actu­al­ly begin a month lat­er, on June 4th.

Fans and tick­et hold­ers of the event look­ing to cel­e­brate Star Wars Day how­ev­er, were not to be dis­ap­point­ed. In a spir­it­ed move no doubt designed to ampli­fy fan engage­ment on a cru­cial day for “Star Wars” fans every­where, Secret Cin­e­ma host­ed a ‘RebelX Gath­er­ing’ (a.k.a., a par­ty) in a secret loca­tion in Lon­don. Tick­et hold­ers were informed of the mys­te­ri­ous gath­er­ing via a swift­ly word­ed email:

Cus­tomers were also teased with a guer­ril­la mar­ket­ing cam­paign which con­nect­ed real-life expe­ri­ences to social media to pro­vide clues of the events loca­tion. 

The ‘Secret’ to Success

If there’s a real “secret” to the suc­cess of Secret Cin­e­ma, this would be it. A com­mit­ment (even if it was learned the hard way after last year’s delays) to ensur­ing an active brand pres­ence in the build up to the event, and the fun­da­men­tal assur­ance that cus­tomers’ high expec­ta­tions are in no way com­pro­mised, espe­cial­ly when they are seek­ing a brand inter­ac­tion.

The nature of Secret Cin­e­ma’s audi­ences – many will be high­ly devot­ed fans – means that it’s impor­tant that their cult film expe­ri­ences remain unmarred through­out.

For Secret Cin­e­ma, sen­si­tiv­i­ty and aware­ness of the cus­tomer jour­ney – from the moment a cus­tomer signs up to the mail­ing list or pur­chas­es a tick­et, right through to their expe­ri­ence of the event – forms the back­bone of the over­all expe­ri­ences that they pro­vide.

As the exam­ples below show, the orga­niz­ers are mind­ful of the needs and desires of an audi­ence of high­ly engaged, pas­sion­ate film­go­ers and fanat­ics, and react to those touch­points accord­ing­ly. They do this by a vari­ety of means, but the one aspect that unites their activ­i­ties is their will­ing­ness to act on audi­ence desires, and deliv­er excep­tion­al cus­tomer-cen­tric moments.

Here are sev­en ways Secret Cin­e­ma uses super-expe­ri­en­tial expe­ri­ences to engage cult film fans.

1. Engage Loyal Fan Bases

Nat­u­ral­ly this is step one for Secret Cin­e­ma. Film has long inspired and stirred pas­sion amongst admir­ers of the medi­um.

Whether it’s pop­u­lar clas­sics such as “Back to the Future” or “Star Wars”, or more cult offer­ings such as “The War­riors”, the great thing about engag­ing groups of loy­al fans is that you can be fair­ly cer­tain of an enthu­si­as­tic and will­ing audi­ence. It’s fair to say that most fans will be will­ing to share con­tent about the films, sto­ries or char­ac­ters that they are pas­sion­ate about, and some, would bite your hand of at a chance to express their fanati­cism.

Here’s the kick­er: when you engage loy­al fan bases, the stakes are sim­ply high­er. Cer­tain­ly, there are big­ger, bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage, but loy­al fans have par­tic­u­lar­ly high expec­ta­tions and it means there is a greater risk of dis­ap­point­ing cus­tomers.

2. Put On A Show

If you look at Secret Cin­e­ma’s his­to­ry over the past few years, you’ll see that there is very lit­tle expense spared in the way of pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty.

Tak­ing over an aban­doned school in Hack­ney, 2013’s pro­duc­tion of The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion saw atten­dees hav­ing to par­tic­i­pate in prison drills before being sen­tenced to watch the film.

2014’s Back to the Future Pro­duc­tion allowed audi­ences to have a burg­er and a milk­shake in a repli­ca 50s din­er just like the one that fea­tured in the film.

The ben­e­fit of putting on an incred­i­ble show is that it moves peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly. That fil­ters through to peo­ple’s social media and image shar­ing net­works, and the dig­i­tal con­ver­sa­tions become part of the event.

Lim­its are pushed because that’s what it takes to amaze. When it comes to enter­tain­ing super-fans, a brand is expect­ed to deliv­er an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence.

While not every busi­ness will be based around events, espe­cial­ly where tar­get audi­ences are devot­ed fans, putting on a “show” that can amaze and delight (per­haps major tech keynotes are the best exam­ple) can dri­ve con­ver­sa­tions and pos­i­tive engage­ment around an event.

3. Capture A Moment

Right from the ear­ly days of Secret Cin­e­ma, there has been an innate under­stand­ing that immer­sive moments are the key to defin­ing incred­i­ble expe­ri­ences. The orga­niz­ers look to cre­ate envi­ron­ments that audi­ences can whole­heart­ed­ly embrace.

As Secret Cin­e­ma founder Fabi­an Rigall said in an inter­view with screendai­ly:

“When we cre­ate an expe­ri­ence, we give every­one a char­ac­ter, we want­ed to cre­ate an expe­ri­ence in which the audi­ence steps inside the moment… We cre­ate this world for the audi­ence to become a part of.”

Immer­sive­ness is becom­ing a bench­mark for stand­out brand expe­ri­ences. It’s some­thing that is increas­ing­ly being applied to dig­i­tal con­tent – check out recent exam­ples from HBO and Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Killing Jesus.

These days, when brand expe­ri­ences are look­ing to encour­age shares, immers­ing audi­ences, and let­ting them get lost for a moment can inspire real loy­al­ty.

4. Create An Experience That Elicits Social Interactions

Secret Cin­e­ma’s expe­ri­ences are always high­ly social, and the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the event amongst mil­len­ni­al audi­ences means that social media net­works are a key part of the even­t’s pro­mo­tions. Dur­ing the events them­selves, these net­works will light up with activ­i­ty. Accord­ing to Rigall:

“The oth­er thing that’s real­ly impor­tant to me is the sense of com­mu­ni­ty… Maybe with the rise of dig­i­tal cul­ture, we become more and more dis­con­nect­ed, that by cre­at­ing these expe­ri­ences, peo­ple are com­ing togeth­er.”

While Secret Cin­e­ma’s actu­al events are marked­ly expe­ri­en­tial, one that audi­ences can feel and touch, what it real­ly does is bridge the gap between real life and con­sumers’ dig­i­tal lives. The over­all jour­ney, includ­ing buildup and hype, have a strong online pres­ence, espe­cial­ly when it comes to the way fans are eager to share expe­ri­ences on social media.

Not sure what this is all about out­side shored­itch high St, any ideas? #REBELXpic.twitter.com/OvFZOURHxU — Farmer Jake (@Farmer_Jake) March 16, 2015

Secret Cin­e­ma used guer­ril­la mar­ket­ing tac­tics to drop clues about the this year’s secret loca­tion.

5. Use The Power To Change People’s Perceptions

This one goes right to the heart of the Secret Cin­e­ma con­cept. One of the rea­sons why the con­cept works so well is that it rede­fines some­thing that audi­ences already know and love, and changes their per­cep­tions of what to expect.

For founder Fabi­an Rig­gall, it was to make view­ing a film a jour­ney. Not only between the start and end of a film reel, but beyond that, cre­at­ing an expe­ri­ence that immers­es and has the capac­i­ty to won­der and amaze.

Secret Cin­e­ma has the pow­er to move peo­ple, and change their per­cep­tions of what see­ing a film entails. When you have to pow­er to move con­sumer, it means you can stand out from the crowd and win the loy­al­ty of your audi­ences..

6. Infuse A Sense Of Mystery

In the ear­ly days of Secret Cin­e­ma, the events were pro­mot­ed with the tag line “Tell No-One”. It gave the events an air of exclu­siv­i­ty, but above all it cre­at­ed a sense of mys­tery and thrill around the whole event.

As Rigall said, Secret Cin­e­ma seeks to “play with the idea of the mys­tery… I always come back to this quote (Roald Dahl), and that the world has lost a lit­tle bit of that mys­tery, that romance that adven­ture.”

Secret Cin­e­ma aims to cap­ture a sense of mys­tery that is fleet­ing and rare in every­day life, because often, that’s exact­ly what con­sumers want. The nat­ur­al reac­tion for a brand doing these kind of events may be to push a heavy pro­mo­tion sched­ule, but some­times less is more. Think­ing from the audi­ence’s per­spec­tive allowed the orga­niz­ers to con­sid­er how build­ing mys­tery served an impor­tant aspect of the expe­ri­ence.

7. Do A Bit Of Everything

The live nature of Secret Cin­e­ma means that it is always going to have it’s hic­cups. What audi­ences love about the events is that every­thing more-or-less comes togeth­er on the night, to cre­ate an unmiss­able over­all expe­ri­ence.

Infus­ing a sense of mys­tery means that peo­ple can be sur­prised by events, and their expec­ta­tions can read­i­ly be exceed­ed. That then fil­ters through into social media con­ver­sa­tions which also becomes part of the event.

What makes the con­cept so strong is that all the activ­i­ties that Secret Cin­e­ma engage in con­tribute to the final result.

Do you know any oth­er valu­able ways to engage super-fans? Let momen­tol­ogy know on Twit­ter or in the com­ments below.