Brief:

• Regal Entertainment partnered with Moviebill, a print publication similar to the classic Playbill that moviegoers could scan with the theater chain's mobile app to activate an augmented reality (AR) experience. One million copies of Moviebill were distributed at Regal theaters around the release of "The Avengers: Infinity War" in April, according to a company press release shared with Mobile Marketer.
• Moviebill racked up two million scans of its AR content in two days among the nine million smartphone users who have the Regal app installed on their smartphone. According to the press release, downloads of the Regal app tripled its average weekend benchmark and was a top trending app in Apple's App Store after the film's opening weekend.
• The campaign produced 56 million impressions among all marketing channels, including 16.5 million from social media, MediaPost reported. Readers spent spent an average of four minutes on a page with a 10% click-through rate across all activations.

Insight:

Regal's Moviebill campaign shows the power mobile technology has in reaching captive audiences at theaters while they fidget with their phones and wait for a film to begin. Moviegoers are valuable consumers because they demonstrate a willingness to drive to a theater, turn off their phones and pay premium prices for a movie ticket to engage with a film for several hours.

Moviebill's immersive feature allowed audiences at Regal theaters to interact with bonus content tied to the latest blockbuster success, "The Avengers: Infinity War." The first issue of the magazine had 28 full-color pages of tie-ins to "The Avengers," with each page capable of activating an AR experience through users' smartphones. According to the press release, Moviebill will ride its initial wave of success with plans to publish more tie-in publications for summer films like "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" and "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" among the eight issues scheduled for this year.

Moviebill was created as a way to interact with audiences by providing them with AR content that can be activated with a smartphone. The company likens Moviebill's inaugural print run success to Entertainment Weekly, which reaches 1.5 million readers, and Vanity Fair at 1.2 million, per the release. The print magazine is powered by advertisements, letting movie-related brands reach desired and loyal audiences for a fraction of the cost of spending on tie-ins to popular movies like "The Avengers." This also points to a potential revenue bump following Moviebill's first success around "The Avengers."

This move comes as other theaters and production studios are weaving AR experiences into supplementary movie promotions. Marvel this month collaborated with 7-Eleven on a nationwide tie-in for "Deadpool 2," including limited-edition Slurpee cups, energy drinks, candy and food. The convenience chain's mobile app let fans of the Marvel anti-hero unlock immersive features by using their smartphone cameras to scan special "zapcodes" throughout the convenience chain's stores. Warner Bros. promoted the April 13 release of action film "Rampage" starring Dwayne Johnson with an AR app that let fans see their surroundings torn apart by genetically modified giant animals. NBCUniversal partnered with Perfect Corp. on a promotion for "Pitch Perfect 3" earlier this year that let people virtually try on makeup looks inspired by eight of the movie's lead characters.