Orange Wednesdays: final reel for popular two-for-one cinema ticket offer
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Version 0 of 1. Mobile-phone company EE have finally called “wrap” on the massively popular 2-for-1-plus-pizza cinema offer, formerly called Orange Wednesdays; the end of the promotional offer was announced in December 2014, but 25 February is the last Wednesday it will be available. Originally designed to try and boost the worst-performing day of the cinema-release week, the two-for-one promotion began in 2003 and allowed Orange customers to pick a film and cinema, and get a free extra ticket via text message. EE are remaining tight-lipped about how many tickets were given away during the promotion’s life, but in 2010 it was reported that 23.5m extra tickets had been taken up over the whole life of the scheme. If rate of use remained the same, the current total would be around 38m tickets. Clare Binns, programming and acquisitions director of Picturehouse cinemas, who participated in the offer, acknowledged the effect it had, but said that its end was far from catastrophic. She said: “It’s always been a positive way of bringing audiences in to cinemas, and I have every confidence something new will emerge to replace it. That said, it’s never affected our programming and it won’t affect us going forward.” Orange merged with T-Mobile to form EE in 2010, and the company now say that changing commercial priorities have led to the scrapping of the scheme. “After 10 great years,” EE said in their 2014 statement, “our brand has changed and our customers’ viewing habits have also evolved, so it’s time to move on.” Twitter users are rolling back the years with the hashtag #OrangeWednesdayMemories, but what are your favourite Orange Wednesday experiences? Let us know in the comments below. |