Odeon: ‘Don’t spread yourself too thin in multichannel marketing’

Festival of Marketing: Andy Edge, commercial director of Odeon and UCI cinemas says there is a temptation to “spread yourself too thin” when investing in multichannel marketing.

Odeon-Cinema-2015

Speaking on a panel hosted by Marketing Week editor Ruth Mortimer at The Festival of Marketing event today (12 November) Edge said: “There are challenges in multichannel of weighing and consistency.

“There is a temptation to spread ourselves too thin when investing in channels, you can get a bit lost in trying to do a bit of social, radio, press, TV and cinema.”

When asked about the worst multichannel disaster he’s experience, Edge recalled a social media moment where a customer vented their frustrations about a bad experience they had at an Odeon Cinema which attracted over 40,000 likes on the brand’s Facebook page.

At the time Edge admits that Odeon might not have responded in the right way for that channel.

“There is no going back once it hits that escalation stage so we have to ask, ‘what did we do wrong’. Our policy was right in engaging [with the customer] but the big observation was that we were a bit like an automaton, our reaction didn’t try and make it personal.”

In the panel debate Emma Woods, group marketing director at Merlin Entertainments also expressed concerns over managing different channels, particularly social media.

Woods said: “The real issue with the rise of multichannel and social media is that you notice toxic customers. That’s the thing that we really worry about.”

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