Digital Media Case Study
Cineworld.
Performance Creative to deliver full-funnel Performance Marketing.
Cineworld is one of the UK’s leading cinema operators, with over 80 locations across the UK, offering audiences access to major blockbusters, family releases, independent films and event cinema.
Its proposition is built around the shared experience of watching films on the big screen, enhanced through premium formats and USPs such as 4DX, IMAX, ScreenX, Superscreen and VIP experiences. These formats give customers a more immersive and memorable alternative to at-home entertainment.
Operating in a competitive, title-led market, Cineworld’s success depends on promoting the right films at the right time, understanding audience behaviour and giving customers strong reasons to choose cinema as a leisure experience.
Skills
Performance Marketing • Performance Creative • Campaign Planning & Strategy • Audience Targeting • Scaling Creative with AI • Cross-Platform Media Planning & Buying • Performance Analysis
Tender & Brief
One Day Agency was appointed by Cineworld through a competitive five-agency tender process, which included the incumbent agency from Publicis Groupe, to manage performance marketing and creative across all digital channels.
The goal was to completely overhaul Cineworld’s digital strategy, with two clear objectives: to resurface the brand and its key USPs, including premium cinema experiences such as 4DX, IMAX, ScreenX, Superscreen and VIP, while increasing ticket sales through greater media efficiency.
We were selected to deliver a £1 million+ UK budget, alongside a similar scale of investment across seven additional international markets, including Poland and Israel.
Today, the partnership operates with daily communication and direct reporting lines between One Day’s team and Cineworld’s CEO and VP of Marketing, reflecting the level of trust, accountability and strategic importance embedded in the relationship.
Challenge and Approach
Our strategy is designed to win market share in an environment where demand has become overly dependent on major film releases. Rather than relying solely on slate driven spikes, we focus on rebuilding sustained brand presence. The overarching brand message operates at scale, reinforcing core USPs, premium formats, and membership value to ensure the brand is front of mind regardless of the specific title in market. This builds long term equity and stabilises demand beyond blockbuster moments.
Alongside this sits a localised brand layer, applied in priority areas and tailored by audience. We segment by broad age groups and interest clusters, then layer location specific messaging, family focus, format pushes, and retention activity driven by CRM and pixel data. Channel selection supports this structure across Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Google Search, Display, and YouTube, ensuring we build demand, convert intent, and compound loyalty in a structured, measurable way.
Campaigns are structured across three dimensions: funnel stage, geography, and film slate. At the top of the funnel, broad brand messaging drives awareness and mental availability. Mid funnel activity introduces location specific messaging, premium formats, and targeted audience pushes. Lower funnel campaigns capture high intent demand through search and retargeting, converting engagement into measurable ticket sales and membership uptake.
Within this structure, budgets and creative are flexed dynamically based on seasonality, release calendar, performance by location, and commercial priorities. Major blockbusters, family slates, niche genres, and format specific pushes are weighted accordingly, with messaging adapted for each priority audience. This level of granularity ensures media investment is not just distributed, but actively optimised to drive both immediate returns and sustained market share growth.
Challenge and Approach: Creative Framework
Our creative framework is built to maximise output without compromising quality or brand consistency. We use a modular system where every asset is constructed from core building blocks: a constant brand anchor, a dynamic film or format visual, a tailored message lead, and a clear action driver. This ensures every execution reinforces the brand from the first second while allowing flexibility across audiences, formats, and locations. The structure protects brand equity while enabling high volume production across multiple channels.
This approach gives us agility without fragmentation. Creative is updated based on triggers such as major releases, seasonal peaks, performance shifts, or competitive pressure, rather than fixed calendar cycles. Tiered asset production allows for high impact brand pieces supported by adaptable variants that localise, personalise, and scale efficiently. The result is a reactive, relevant creative ecosystem that maintains consistency while driving performance.
Outcome
Since onboarding the account in late 2025, our approach across the entire brand and all markets has delivered an 18% reduction in cost per acquisition. At the scale and competitive intensity of this category, where media spend is significant and competition for attention is high, this efficiency gain translates into materially stronger marketing ROI and meaningful incremental ticket sales.
Importantly, this CPA improvement excludes all brand terms, which were removed across every channel to ensure the uplift reflects genuine performance gains rather than the capture of existing branded demand. The result is a true improvement in efficiency, driven by strategy, creative integration, channel optimisation and stronger budget allocation.
Alongside performance gains, we are also seeing a reversal in brand awareness trends. In a high-budget, highly competitive entertainment market, we have started to rebuild Cineworld’s visibility and strengthen awareness of the brand and its core USPs, while improving the efficiency of the digital activity designed to convert that demand into ticket sales.
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