CONSTRAINT 01
How do you compete in streaming without subscriptions or originals?
Fandango sells cinema tickets. Rotten Tomatoes is where people check whether a film is worth the trip. Fandango at Home rents and sells those same films to watch later. One company owns all three, and none of them has ever handed a viewer to the next. That gap is the only thing on the table a competitor cannot buy.
Role & Team
The problem
The insight
Outcome
5
1
Most buy-in
Quick walkthrough of scenarios showing how the ecosystem creates new value
Context
A movie store, asked to become a streaming platform.
Fandango at Home was built to sell and rent films one at a time. The brief was to turn it into an ad-supported service without losing the people who had spent years buying digital copies there.
Our challenge was to define what could make Fandango at Home uniquely valuable under AVOD (Ad-Supported Video on Demand) constraints, while retaining legacy digital collectors and attracting a new generation of streaming-first users.
CONSTRAINT 02
No subscriptions
CONSTRAINT 03
No originals
The designs
Five proposed connections that funnel viewers through the ecosystem.
Each one sits at a different moment in a viewer's evening: choosing, buying, waiting, watching, and the bit after the credits nobody designs for. Each hands the viewer on to the next product in the chain.
1.Rotten tomatoes spotlights the platforms in the Ecosystem
Rotten Tomatoes is where the decision actually gets made, and it is the one product of the three that everybody already uses. A viewer who has just read a 94% is holding the highest intent they will hold all evening, and the page currently spends it on nothing.
94% · 92%
94% · 92%
Where to watch
2.Raise perceived value of conversion while buying tickets.
Give every Fandango ticket an added value by showcasing rewards that unlock on Fandango at Home. This creates a unique purchase incentive while strengthening the connection between both platforms.
AMC Pacific Place · IMAX
3:305:157:008:4510:30—
Unlock FanRewards with this purchase
Order summary
Tickets × 1$21.25
Fees$2.45
Total$23.70
FanRewards unlocks
+125 pts unlocked
+250 pts earned · Ticket confirmed
12 MIN
48H ACCESS
GIFT 30 MIN
5 PICKS
FanRewards unlocks
+125 pts unlocked
3.Fandango at home turns the wait time into a Ritual
Between booking a ticket and sitting down for it there are usually a few days, and nothing is built for them. At Home already knows the film and the showtime, so it can open on a short playlist made for that specific screening instead of on a catalogue the viewer has to work through.
Ticket confirmed
+250 pts earned
Prepare for your screening
4
DAYS
14
HOURS
22
MIN
Your pre-movie playlist
0/5 watched · +25 pts on complete
4.The end credits are the only moment a viewer is satisfied and still watching
Openness to a next step
Browse
Deciding · Guarded
Watch
Locked in · Unreachable
Credits
Satisfied · Receptive
Exit
Gone
Rate it
Where it connects
FranchiseDirectorMoodGenreCast
Explore all connections →
In theaters now
2h 15m · Rated R · 94% · 92%
Feeds Rotten Tomatoes
Deepens Fandango at Home
Returns to Fandango
5.Every platform stamps the same Passport
Member since March 2024
● Silver Tier1,618 to Gold
1,372 pts
At home
Films
Theaters
Visits
Reviews
Written
Total films
Home + theater
Watch hours
Est. total
34
21
18
12
Findings
Users want ads last.
The business needs them first.
Viewers wanted breaks in the last 30% of a film, where an interruption costs them least. The business needs them inside the first 70%, before the drop-off curve takes the audience with it. Both positions are correct and they do not overlap.
What users want
What business needs
NOW PLAYING
Upcoming break
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Tune how ads interrupt youYou can change them later.
Your Episode will look like
STARTEND
Everyone knew Fandango. Everyone knew Rotten Tomatoes.almost nobody knew Fandango at Home.
Worse: nobody knew the three platforms belonged to the same parent, Versant. It became apparent that the company didn't have a content problem, they had a handoff problem.
Decide
Attend
Re-Watch
Strategy
So we stopped designing a store and started designing an ecosystem.
Three platforms, one loop, and a role for each of them.
Audience
18–34 years
Surfaces
TV · Laptop
Content Focus
Franchises
Entertainment ecosystem engine
Entertainment ecosystem engine
Entry
Engagement
Conversion
What I'd change
Every one of them landed nearer the business than the viewer.
We softened the ads argument instead of settling it
Viewers wanted breaks in the final 30% of a film. The business needed them inside the first 70%. We went with the business and cushioned it: a countdown, a 30-second cap, a control panel. That is a defensible call under an AVOD brief and it is still not an answer. What I never tested is whether a story-aware mid-break actually protects emotional continuity or just moves the interruption somewhere else.
The concept that won is the one I could prove least
Cinematic Passport got the most stakeholder buy-in, and it only works if all three platforms are already connected, which is the thing the project set out to argue for. The three smaller proposals could each ship alone and earn their keep. Given the time again I would have sequenced the pitch that way round.
We tested with the people we could reach
The strategy targets 18 to 34 streaming-first viewers. Our participants were largely fellow students, which is a slice of that range rather than a sample of it. The findings held up, but I would treat the ad-tolerance numbers as a direction and not a measurement.
Reflection
The work turned out to live in the handoffs
We were slow to put concepts in front of people
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