Kyle W. Johnston

I’m Kyle Johnston, a designer & creative director
This is my portfolio, my story, and contact info

AMC Theatres

New Business Pitch

While at DEG In 2016, I joined forces with our senior sales director, senior email strategist, and other key team members to pitch, and eventually win, email marketing services for AMC Theatres. We won the business – one of the largest such accounts in the history of the agency – by showcasing our capabilities and ingenuity, with a healthy dose of hospitality.

Contributions: Creative Direction, Creative Strategy, Design

AMC Customer Journey

Illustrating the Customer Journey

In the early stages of the pitch, we focused on helping AMC visualize and understand how their email program could influence their guest's movie-going experience with a customer journey map. I created an AMC-branded design, and rather than relying on yet another PowerPoint slide, I printed it really big. This approach allowed our practice director to communicate our vision for the potential of AMC’s program, avoid overwhelming the audience with details, and focus on sharing relevant stories and ideas.

AMC Customer Journey

Ginormous journey map

A Peek at the Pitch

For the next stage of the pitch, I partnered with an email strategist to illustrate an onboarding process for two types of AMC guests. This format allowed us to rely on a storytelling approach, supported with visuals that illustrated how the campaigns could be tailored to different types of movie fans.

AMC pitch deck examples
Persona example Persona example

Customer personae

Onboarding flow example

An overview of the onboarding flow

Illustrating the Steps

At key steps in the journey, we illustrated the personalized messages we could send based on a range of available data, including AMC Stubs membership status, purchase history, and more.

Onboarding step example

Just Enough Research

To support our approach, we conducted a survey of moviegoing habits. Using DEG’s ~200 associates as a research group, we gained valuable insights into how and why people go to the movies. We then used those insights to further illustrate how AMC could make its email program more relevant to different types of guests. During our discussions, AMC confirmed our internal survey results closely mirrored their national survey data.

Research results
Component examples Newsletter matrix

Winning the Business.

In addition to the custom work described above, we hand-delivered custom-made meeting invitations to AMC executives, then literally rolled out a red carpet in our office, where we served popcorn and custom-made, movie-themed cookies. These thoughtful touches, combined with strong, data-driven creative work, led AMC to award their email marketing program to DEG in 2016, one of the largest such accounts in DEG’s history.