A study released last week from Omnicom (disclosure: the parent company of Porter Novelli, which owns Voce, which is where I actually work. It’s complicated) and National CineMedia has some interesting things to say about what it is that prompts young people (I won’t use *that* word) to head to the movie theater.

The full infographic is below but there are some interesting points to pull out:

First, the main reasons for going and seeing a movie in theaters are social. Either they don’t want to be left out of the conversation around a movie or they’re going as part of an outing with others.

Second, while traditional marketing tactics like trailers are working, 30% of respondents say they’ve seen a movie in the last six months based on social media recommendations. That translates to word-of-mouth, meaning it’s the people coming out of the theater and recommending it to others on Facebook and Twitter that are driving movie ticket sales.

Those and other points raised in the study point to peer-to-peer being the primary way people are deciding what movies to see. That means it’s not about reaching everyone with a marketing effort, it’s about reaching the right people who are influencing group decisions, talking online about the movies they see and more. Which isn’t to say that every movie needs an “influencer” campaign, at least that’s not what the study findings would suggest. It means that once you reach the group decision maker you can go a long way toward securing not just one but five or six or more ticket sales. Yes, it all starts with the marketing campaign, but it ripples out from there.

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