Rave Motion Pictures wants students to think of their theater at Levis Commons as an affordable option, and a recent underwhelming promotion has not deterred the company from its goal.
The promotion awarded the first 500 students buying tickets with a “bounce back ticket” at Rave Motion Pictures Levis Commons 12, according to Casey Pogan, marketing director for the Town Center at Levis Commons.
“If you came and bought a ticket to go see a movie and showed your ID, you got a ticket to come back for free another time,” Pogan said.
The bounce back promotion ran every Thursday starting at the end of September but was opened up to every night by the middle of October, she said.
Vice President of Marketing for Rave Motion Pictures Jeremy Devine said Rave would like to try the promotion again at a later date because September may have been too busy for students.
“Kids are just coming back, you have a lot of parties, you have a lot of new classes–that may be too cluttered,” he said.
While the promotion was not overwhelmingly successful, Devine said Rave thought the response was decent.
“I would have loved it to have had the problem where we were out of vouchers,” he said. “It was close to 500 as I recall, but it wasn’t like we had a report that [said] ‘Wow, we could have given away 3 times as many of these.'”
“It wasn’t like we had 1,400 people saying ‘Daaamn, I was too late,” he said.
He said the promotion was only advertised from September through October, but spot redemptions likely ran until Jan. 1.
“It was a way to announce ourselves into the marketplace and do some outreach, drive awareness of our new name and let people know there is affordable student pricing in case they didn’t know,” he said.
The theater, previously owned by National Amusements, was purchased by Rave Motion Pictures last spring.
“We felt this was a great way to introduce it to the students,” he said. “I like doing promotions like this within an institutional environment like a school because I think that if it catches on, you can get some really powerful word of mouth,” Devine said.
Junior Ryan Braham, a film production student, said he had not heard of the promotion, but that he wished it had been more advertised.
“I think a lot of students would head over there if they knew about it,” he said. “As far as I know, no one I know knew about it.”
Braham said he usually goes to the Cinemark at Woodland Mall because of the lower pricing, but that he would definitely go to the Levis Commons for a similar promotion.
Students looking to save some money can still get a free medium popcorn by signing up for Rave’s newsletter at ravemotionpictures.com.
