Promotions and similar campaigns are usually temporary, here for a while and then gone. Yet a few seem to have remained in the public consciousness. Two good examples for 30-year-olds are the plastic Tazos found in Walker chip bags in 1994 and the motorcycle model seen on Kellogg’s cereal boxes around 1989.
Of course, in the digital age, promotion for Electronics, the rate has changed significantly; usually including a mobile phone or a special code that must be used. By dedicating the site to collecting requests and categorizing them, users can more easily find what they need. The offer ranges from beauty products to supermarkets and casino offers.
Orange Wednesday, a decade-old promotion that allows customers to buy two cinema tickets for the price of one, holds a special place in Brits’ hearts, making it what TimeOut Magazine described as a “national treasure”. The end of this seemingly criminal proposal, which came into force in February 2015, was even reflected in the press as moviegoers complained about expensive cinema visits.
But what happened? The campaign survived the challenges of Orange’s energy efficiency retrofit but suddenly found itself out of demand in the middle of the last decade. Inevitably, the telecommunications giant came up with the wrong answer in its statement: Customer viewing behavior has changed, but how did Orange Wednesday become trendy?
Unfortunately, while EE’s statement is close to the Orange Wednesday myth, it is probably not far from the truth. However, it did not take long for the decrease in cinema attendance in 2013 and 2014 to perhaps cause the promotion to be stopped. Visitor numbers have been consistently hovering between 150 and 160 million for the longest time, with 2019 visitor numbers the highest since 2001.
In short, the development of online streaming has not significantly changed the popularity of cinema in Britain. This probably has to do with movie theaters being in a unique position as theaters hosting new Star Wars and James Bond movies before Netflix, Disney+ or Prime Video. These qualities appear to be written in stone, no doubt to the chagrin of some media giants.
If we can believe the internet, EE wasn’t entirely candid about his reasons for drinking oranges on Wednesday. It was possible that the promotion had already ended and no theaters wanted to honor the two-for-one deal, meaning EE had no choice but to end it. Considering popular movie ticket prices, prices may be high. We can only imagine how many bankruptcies would occur with the addition of popcorn.
