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Chapter 1: What recent trends indicate that going to the movies is back?
This episode of Stylish is brought to you by Koala. Their biggest sale of the year is on now with up to 30% off everything. Hello, happy Friday. This is Stylish, the corner of Stylish where we talk business, marketing, careers, really anything we feel like. And I'm very excited for today because it's actually Naima and Maya's first time as a duo on a Friday. Yay! Hi, Matt. Nice to have you.
Nice to be here together. I'm so excited. We're talking about a real passion point of yours, which I feel like you threw in our Slack chat and were like, immediately, if not sooner, we must cover this. And I'm really excited for this because I feel like I learnt so much covering this.
I feel like we need to add now movies, spoiler alert, to that list of many items now.
Yeah, cleaning, psychics as of Wednesday. I mean, the list is ever evolving. Off campus. At this point, we're a fan account.
But we're going to start with your word of the week.
It is my word of the week. I'm feeling a bit spoiled because I got a double header word of the week, which is very kind of my co-host to give me. But my word of the week is actually, well, it's a thing. We always break the rules. Was a great business of fashion article that I read that covered the Euromonitor June 2026 reporting of the top 10 beauty brands globally.
And I was fascinated by this because MAC is still number one, which I feel like whether you're a beauty gal or you're not, you're kind of like you might have one MAC lip liner lying around in the bottom. Genuinely shocked me. Yeah, like it doesn't shock me because I've worked in beauty, but I can see how it would shock the average person. Why do you feel like it shocked you?
Maybe because I'm on social media so much that it's not like one of the brands when I think of beauty. I see front and centre on my feed.
Do you feel like it's because you're seeing like the Rez and the Rhodes and the Fenty's of the world? Yeah. I think it is easy to forget these heritage brands have such like mainstay and the breadth of market that they have and the number of markets they're in as well. Like just their sheer volume of markets and distributor points they're available in.
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Chapter 2: Which films are dominating the Australian box office right now?
Specifically, I think in Australia, they were at Laneway Fest, like they had a full activation. The other thing that they do actually quite well is like an ambassador program. So I think they engage a lot of micro-influencers even in Australia. And like the whole premise is that you get a bunch of product once a month and you can make what you like with it. There's no like deliverables, but
what they're getting is continuous amounts of content from their target audience, which is Gen Z. Yeah.
And credit to them. Their products are great. Do you know what I mean? Like the products back it up. And I do think their ability to localize in each market is what is seeing them drive that because so many global brands will have a set and forget strategy for everyone must do the same thing in the same way. I like that YSL is kind of localizing a little bit.
You know, they're having a bit more fun. I agree with the product thing, the mascara. Yeah. So good. Lengthens so much, which I wear glasses, so I really need lengthening because it's like behind a shield. And number two, it doesn't clump.
It doesn't clump. Also, I always say I have a daytime mascara and a nighttime mascara. So I use Tower 28 during the day because it's like a little bit more light and less like dramatic. But I want someone to think I've got lashes on in the eve and I think YSL can do that with a couple of coats. But true, it never clumps.
I love that. We should all have a daytime and a nighttime mascara.
Talk about being indulgent. Yeah. Okay, enough about indulging our favourite mascaras and beauty brands. Naima, this is your passion point. Take the floor. We're talking blockbusters in the box office.
Yeah. Yeah, I am so excited to talk about this today. I'm going to be honest. I've been like sneakily pitching this to Lucy, head of podcast, for a little while now being like, oh, have you seen this on your feed? Oh, have you seen this on your feed? So when the opportunity came up to be on a Friday episode, I was like, Yes, this is my chance.
My time is now. Also, handy being desk side. You're like subliminal message, subliminal message, subliminal message.
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Chapter 3: How have horror films like Backrooms and Obsession changed the cinema landscape?
I've totally noticed. And we even saw that with Barbie and Oppenheimer earlier last year. Barbieheimer or whatever it was called. That kind of like kicked off where I started to be like, oh, wait, a movie? So back. Yeah. And going to the cinema, not just a movie. So I think when you say movie, you instantly think it could be on Netflix. It could be Amazon Prime.
I mean, when someone tells me they watch something, usually my first instinct is to say, what platform is it on? Not what cinema did you head to?
Is it at Hoyts or Village? Hoyts. I think that is the kind of difference that I've been noticing. So obviously, I think the rhetoric has been ever since COVID, sorry, trigger word.
The C word.
Yeah, the C word. COVID, there was, you know, we actually couldn't go to the movies. But not only that, there was that trickling effect of, you know, productions being down. I think we just saw like... a less amount of movies coming into the movies. And obviously because movies take several years to make, often I think there's been like a lay-on effect for a long time.
But what I saw, I saw two things on my feed recently that's kind of made me rethink this and kind of made me think about that people are going to the movies more. So one, I saw a post from Variety saying that the Australian box office has scored its highest results for May in its entire history, which is so crazy to me.
So crazy, especially when we're referencing the blockbuster films that I referenced at the start. How this particular month, when Toy Story hasn't even dropped yet, we're not talking these ones that like big family and troves of people are going out to see. It really surprised me.
I was really shocked by this. Well, the two movies that I think may be possibly also driving this, these are two horror films that have been all over my feed. I will caveat this by saying that I'm a big scaredy cat and I am afraid of horror films, but it has fully infiltrated my feed. Back Rooms and Obsession. both from YouTubers, which is so interesting to me.
One of them is 20 years old, have been all over my feed, their marketing campaigns, the number of people that are going, and they've actually pulled number one and two at the box office in America, which is just insane. And not only that, there's been so many films that have like kind of captured the zeitgeist recently, you know,
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Chapter 4: What marketing strategies are making films successful today?
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So Naima, you mentioned Backrooms and Obsession, two of these films that by your own admission, you're a scaredy cat. And I don't say that from an ivory tower. I too am just so allergic to scary films. But we've found that they're on our feeds. Yeah. Not even as the target audience, being that we're scaredy cats and scary movies aren't our thing.
And as you mentioned, YouTube backgrounds, but Backroom was directed by YouTuber Kane Parsons. It's become the highest grossing ever A24 film of all time. It's sitting at $212 million USD globally right now. And I had to contextualise this because I was like A24, I think it's really easy to kind of separate who produces a film versus what the film actually is. They've done Marty Supreme.
They've done the drama. Yeah. Like we are talking some massive cultural big name films. I was really surprised by this because this wasn't kind of to the breadth or scale in my mind I was imagining it would have been to hit those kind of numbers. Yeah. It's really interesting because Kane actually created the original YouTube series that the film is based on.
So there was kind of this pre-existing lore and community. There were 3 million people following the YouTube series, which maybe indicated that the appetite was well and truly there. It had 340 million views. Yeah, crazy. Safe to say those 3 million followers were actively engaged.
And he made that when he was 16. What were you doing at 16 months old?
I think I was in debate club. I was pinning something on a blazer and heading to debate club. Like, I'll let you pick what kind of 16 year old I was based on that. But it's really tapped into this like creepy internet law, which previously to date, I would say neither of us have been across.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: Why is Gen Z flocking to cinemas instead of streaming at home?
I know that obviously Obsession made less, but it just made such an incredible return on investment for the production company.
Yeah. And I mean, it's kind of like a business, right? It's not just about what your sales are or what the dollars at the box office is. For the executive teams, it's how much profit are we delivering and how much times our budget. Yeah. Look, Obsessions marketing campaign kind of needed to be seen to be believed.
And if you haven't checked it out, I'd urge you to go and have a look if you are in brand or marketing or you're just, you know, interested in this space as we are now. But they had these kind of giant billboards. And it's funny, I started getting served these and I kind of thought it was like one of those like TikTok mini series. I don't know if you've had those. I think we've all been held back.
It's how I watch movies.
We've kind of been held there at some point. But they bought these out-of-home sites, which are essentially billboards, digital billboards, and each day they kind of transformed from really simple like, hey, how's your day been to why won't you text me back? And as the title might suggest of this film, the whole context is it's someone who does become deeply obsessed with someone they're dating.
And I thought that was genius because it reflected – so much of what happens at least once, hopefully at most once in most people's lives, which is in that dating phase when someone might just be a little bit too keen and you're like, oh, but then, like, it goes beyond that point of, like, oh, it's giving me the ick to, like, okay, we've got a problem.
I think in the movie it's, like, this thing where she's, like... A man has essentially cast a spell on her that he makes her obsessed with him. And it's that, like, it's what you wish for, but is this really what you wish for? They complement it with these, like, flyers. You know the ones where you can rip off the bottom? Like when someone loses their dog or cat. Yeah, yeah, exactly that.
And it had a number on it. And then you had to text the number. And it started out pretty, like...
fine it was like hey how are you haven't caught up in so long and it just apparently gets more and more deranged of like it'll be and it's not just like one text message you get like eight to ten which is like exactly how the movie goes where it just like builds and builds and builds which is such a cool way I think to market something that doesn't have a big budget.
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Chapter 6: What role does community play in the resurgence of cinema attendance?
So this movie, before it even... you know, got marketed, got somewhere. It had a built-in audience, not just the people who watched his YouTube series. It's people who understand that online viral trend of these spaces.
So I think what you're seeing here is that online people or people who are, like, creating content for young people already are going to be the people who break through because he understands how to create content for young people or for, like... online first people, like social first people. I also think YouTube is one of those platforms where it's like gives you constant feedback.
It's like, I don't know, a marketing team, you've obviously worked in marketing for a long time. Market research costs how much?
Like you just, you would start at $60,000 to do like a significant piece. I shouldn't even say significant, largely insignificant. to be honest. But yeah, to get like 30, 40 participants in a room and do two or three of those is like $40,000 to $60,000.
Yeah. Well, he has access to this like millions of people giving him pretty constant feedback around this content that he's building. Yeah. Not only that, it's like I would say YouTube probably has like the best analytics of all the social channels. Sorry, TikTok and Instagram. It gives you pretty consistent feedback of what time people stopped, what parts they paused at. It lets you A, B test.
So he was able to finesse as he went. So I think by the time it was ready to be launched, it was in a really good place. It had a primed audience.
It was ready to go. So winning product aside, he also had the audience. And what I loved kind of as a contrast to the two of these is one was almost like... you were included by being part of that exclusive group that had already watched. And then if you look at Obsession, it was almost like you were invited in to discover.
Whereas this other one was like, no, no, no, we're a bit if you know, you know. Like the mystique and allure of it was that if you didn't understand it, you wanted to be invited in. The other was the door was wide open. It was like, come in and we'll text you. Like we will go as far as to send you 24 text messages.
Yeah, I will be in your home. But it's like me looking into it, I was like, there was so many steps for me to figure out what the law was. Like it was not like an easy thing to figure out, but it's like people are going on this journey, which I find super interesting too. Yeah. And they did some in real life pop-ups. You were mentioning the doorways. Yeah.
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Chapter 7: How are social media and platforms like Letterboxd influencing movie discussions?
And the virality is existing on the channels that these, like the audiences exist on. People are taking the photo and like, I don't know how many people live in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but it's like, so you're not going to get massive out of home eyes, but it's the people who are like bringing it onto the internet. That's where you get your most amount of value there.
I actually think one of the biggest marketing wins that I had from the start, actually, before any of this came to be, I read this article on Puck, basically that a director and a production company asked one of their production assistants to troll through YouTube and TikTok to find creators who were making amazing videos.
So it's like from the start, they've had this objective of like, we want to target these younger audiences and And they've gone to the platforms that they are.
Yeah, gone straight to the source. But also, isn't it so ironic that to get people to go offline by going to the cinema, they're diving into people that are online chronically?
Yeah. And like, imagine being that 27 year old right now being like, yeah, I found him. I did that.
That was me. So, like, when we talk about marketing for films, obviously we've gone into these two, which are similar genres, both in horror, you know, anticipation, all of those sorts of things. Scary. Scary. It's giving, like, just can't watch. Just couldn't if I tried.
Do you know what? I will promise that I will go see one of the two.
I actually saw a creator, I can't remember if it was on her Instagram or TikTok, Georgia Hayes, who went with like a little fluffy bunny and basically just hid under, like I think she had a hoodie or a blanket or something that she just was like going through obsession being like, I will not be watching this.
Yeah, maybe we should go and just live tweet.
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Chapter 8: What predictions do the hosts have for the future of film and cinema?
Yeah. Look, I should caveat by saying it was chef's kiss until he shat on the ballet and the opera. Yeah, yeah. The two arguably oldest, most established, like, creative art forms. And I was like, oh. And that's probably what lost you the Oscar.
But, like, the merch rollout and the celebrities in the Marty Supreme jackets, like, he must have, like, as a collective, A24 and Timothee Chalamet must have called every celebrity in their, like, notes app.
Yeah.
Well, it's like merch and it's like getting it on like Susan Boyle. Perfect. It's like going for the underdogs as well. There was like kind of like a story behind all of it. And even that like unhinged video that he made where he was the one pitching the marketing strategy on a Zoom call. That is cheap to make outside of obviously Timothee Chalamet's time.
Yeah, you're hoping you're baking that into his feet. That one I loved because it was like creating these like hyper moments outside of the movie. You were like excited before you even got in. I don't know, like I watched the movie, didn't like it, but I was like on the bandwagon. You're like, I'm wearing orange. Yeah, I was like, I love this. I love the like movement behind it.
And even with the Devil Wears Prada, did you see the red handbag?
I did. My niece actually has my red handbag. She's two, so she doesn't know quite how lucky she is because it's sold out, didn't it?
Yeah. So for context, it was a popcorn bucket shaped as a red handbag and it was $55.
I just want to put a big asterisk that I did not personally pay $55. I picked it up in the cinema I was in.
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