Fandango's on a roll right now.
The company just came off its best quarter in its 12-year history in July, reported record traffic on its site during the summer, and made three huge announcements since the end of last month.
20-year Entertainment Weekly veteran Dave Karger came on board as Chief Correspondent September 27, to represent the brand at awards shows, movie premieres, festivals and more.
Four days later, former Disney digital executive Paul Yanover was named to the newly created position of president. And, on the heels of that news, the company announced three original online programs.
With two big names from different mediums, where does Fandango go from here in 2013?
We spoke with the new president last week to get a sense of the company's direction for the coming year.
On his time at Disney and how being at Fandango will be a change:
“At Disney, we focused on two things, managing a brand and creating a franchise. I've worked at a lot of different parts at Disney from specifically making movies ("Aladdin," "Beauty and the Beast"), to ecommerce and online media.
So if you think about it in those terms, moving here, shares an aspect of both of those. Fandango is the consumer experience, everything from the service experience in terms of making the movie-going experience better, easier, faster and turning it into a destination experience. And, Fandango is an exciting brand to me, a brand that is so well established, and has so much room to grow."
His outlook for Fandango:
“We’ll be looking to expand the brand. Our announcement with Dave Karger is an example of that and a concrete stake in the ground. We’ll be producing a lot more content viewable on multiple platforms.”
How they will achieve those goals:
"We will be looking at how we can broaden the online user experience and the total movie experience–how we think about movies, and how they fit into people's lives, more so then sitting in front of a screen at a theater. We're going find places where Fandango will be a value-add. And I think you can see that that value-add is going to demonstrate itself as a utility in social sharing, and a variety of experiences including mobile."
Among the new programming Yanover mentions are three series where Karger will put his movie and Oscar knowledge to use: "Fanticipation," a weekly show following box office films of interest to movie goers, "Honored," a countdown and analysis for awards season, and "Unsung," including the "unsung" heroes behind big releases.
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