Exhibitors Area
What Is Escapes?
Escapes offers regular free screenings on the big screen as part of a nationwide effort to develop new cinema audiences and increase engagement with film and cinema.
Selected films need to meet a set criteria for Escapes, which includes offering accessible screenings to all. Escapes aligns with National Lottery funding principles: equity, diversity, inclusion, UK-wide reach, and environmental sustainability.
Escapes aims to reach 12.84 million people in the UK across the multi-year project period. Of our 840,000 predicted admissions, 75% will come from outside London and the South East.
Inclusion targets are in place for disability, ethnicity, gender, LGBTQIA+, and there are targets relating to accessibility.
What’s in it for cinemas?
- Ongoing hyper-local targeted paid social media marketing campaign: Bringing you new audiences via paid advertising, targeting hard to reach audiences within a proximity of your cinema.
- Targeting audiences that don't currently engage with cinema, or traditionally aren't marketed to for independent film, through the appropriate marketing channels.
- Marketing reach: Audiences given multiple options to opt-in to your cinema newsletter and social channels pre and post screening.
- These audiences will be attracted by our Escapes branding, positioning and the lure of “taking a break” for FREE.
- Regular regional newsletters for audiences that have claimed free tickets, promoting your cinemas + paid screenings and events.
- All with a long term aim to build a sustainable audience for cinema in the years to come.
- Connection to an ambitious nationwide marketing campaign for cinema, in collaboration with well known media and brand partners, creating publicity for all venues involved.
- Increased food & beverage sales: Research shows that free or reduced price screenings are accompanied by a F&B purchase from up to 75% of audiences.*
- New future customers for your cinema + the opportunity to make them a returning audience member at your venue. Research has identified the lifetime value of a new customer in cinemas between $1,100 and $3,300**
- Audience data: Escapes will be ticketed through our external ticketing platform, Cinematik, designed to collate and share detailed audience data.
- Assistance with developing accessibility provision and audience development for your cinemas, through the provision of best practice toolkits and sharing of data and information between participating cinemas.
* MASSIVE free screenings saw F&B purchases from 75% of the audience, National Cinema Day 2023 saw F&B purchases from 67% of the audience.
**lifetime value of a cinema customer according to DX Tech (valued at $3,300 in 2021), Celluloid Junkie (valued at $1,136 in 2015)