Little Cinema, which burst onto the experiential marketing agency scene in 2016, has helped clients, ranging from Amazon Prime Video to the Kansas City Chiefs to Disney, reimagine their creative possibilities through technology integration and content. It’s been a busy season since the group picked up the 2024 Grand Ex award for Taco Bell’s Live Más LIVE last April, an industry-first product showcase experience held leading up to the Super Bowl.
We dig into lessons from that project with the Little Cinema team, the agency’s overall ethos, and the future of hybrid.
Jacqui Rabkin, Marketing Director, Little Cinema
Event Marketer: Tell us about Little Cinema’s roots?
JACQUI RABKIN: Little Cinema started life as a DIY artist collective in Brooklyn, producing immersive over-the-top theatrical cinema shows at the House of Yes. Our founder Jay Rinsky would remix cult classic films and layer in live performances and interactive experiences at key moments to make the audience part of the show. Little Cinema’s artistic reimagining of cinema was covered in Forbes, Time Out, and beyond.
We were eventually invited to bring our signature immersive touch to a flight of TNT shows. From there, a relationship with Warner Media blossomed. We were the first people they called when COVID shutdowns hit Hollywood and an innovative way to premiere shows in the digital realm was needed. Together we created a new medium for immersive digital events.
Since 2020 we expanded to a full-service experiential agency and built our own technology platform to provide the most interactive digital platform for clients like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney, Warner Media, Taco Bell, Xbox, Amgen. And to date, the platform has been officially integrated into Amazon.com and Netflix.com. It’s been a whirlwind!
EM: How do you describe your approach to experiential work?
Matt Hill, Narrative Director, Little Cinema
MATT HILL: It’s a story-first approach. Our first question is always: What’s the story we’re trying to tell? Figuring out an easily digestible and emotionally engaging answer gives us our North Star. It sounds easy, but it can be a really tough question to answer. For us, the right answer requires an understanding of who the story is for—the audience’s wants and needs, the brand’s identity and their needs, what success looks like for this particular project, the current climate and trends, and a ton more.
Once we have our North Star, it becomes about how to tell that story. Certainly, a good amount of this is determined by practical elements like budget and time. Other elements are much more nebulous and more difficult to pin down. I often say that we are, “looking for the edges of the sandbox.” We can build something beautiful, but we have to understand our boundaries.
EM: Biggest lesson or insight for you from the production of Live Más LIVE?
MH: Fans are braver than you think. They crave the unexpected. They want to be surprised.
Chris Schuett, COO, Little Cinema
CHRIS SCHUETT: When we were brought into this project to support the digital experience and the streaming execution, we all thought this was a bold idea, and something to really get excited by. The team at Biite was pushing the envelope with this concept and that always creates a space for innovation.
MH: The concept was just the type of project we at Little Cinema love to wrap our heads around. If someone had polled Taco Bell fans, asking if they wanted an Apple upfront-style show for Taco Bell, the response would be somewhere between really? And why? But surprising them with it, giving them something they didn’t know they needed and maybe couldn’t imagine themselves wanting, clearly was a huge hit.
CS: Building something that reached as many Taco Bell fans as possible virtually only complimented the unexpected. If you are going to go big with an idea, you need to also deliver at every turn, and with LML.com and the digital experience we set out to do just that.
MH: It’s important to understand the brand and its fans because the only way to pull off that surprise or unexpected twist is with a genuine understanding of what fans love about the brand.
We worked to understand the fan culture, and strived to build a digital component that leaned into what we were seeing as relevant and important while also ensuring that it helped provide a unique setting for the messages being delivered by the Taco Bell team and the creative intent behind the whole campaign.
The custom interactive microsite Little Cinema created for Taco Bell Rewards members during Live Más LIVE.
EM: Advice on how to ‘reset’ after a viral, successful project?
CS: Look at what worked well, and what didn’t first and foremost. There were tons of ideas, features, functionality etc. we had on the whiteboard before we got to the final product.
We’ve done over 500 of these experiences to date, and for each and every one we try something new, which in this day and age is what fans and brands are expecting. What works for one brand or client, does not always align with the fans of another, so we really think about each project as stand alone.
EM: Tell us about what else you’ve been up to this year.
JR: We are bringing digital fan engagement to our clients owned and operated platforms and channels. To celebrate the launch of “Bridgerton” season three, we partnered with long time client Netflix to create their first-ever live interactive watch party hosted on Tudum.com, their official fan site. We built a fully branded and interactive virtual destination for thousands of global fans where they could unlock access to the real-time London red carpet and exclusive access to watch episode five before it went live to the public on Netflix. We did a similar format for Prime, bringing Fallout to fans a day early, contributing to it being the most watched title for two-plus weeks.
That same month our experiential team created a one-of-a-kind short film experience at Tribeca Festival starring Robert De Niro. The experience was a unique cinematic portrait of De Niro, created by recomposing five decades of his films and placing his iconic characters in conversation with one another. The piece was showcased on the ISM Hexadome, a six-screen 52-speaker spherical installation that places the viewer at the center of a 360-degree cinema. Busy week!
EM: Where do you see hybrid engagement headed in this industry?
CS: We see it being more and more of a focus and the best approach to holistically reach all fans.
Hybrid engagement is really changing the game for us, especially in how we reach and interact with audiences. As champions of the hybrid model, we’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for campaigns that want to connect with everyone, wherever they are.
We’re all about blending technology with creative production. This approach isn’t just about bridging physical and digital spaces—it’s about opening up a whole new world of storytelling possibilities. Hybrid events let us tap into audience engagement in ways that you just can’t replicate with only in-person events.
It’s exciting to see this evolve. We’re constantly exploring new tools and methods to keep our experiences fresh and engaging, making sure we’re always delivering something unique and memorable.
Image Credit: iStock/luismmolina
