SM Cinema, the Philippines’ leader in movie entertainment, recently took home a slew of top honors—three bronzes and one gold—in the prestigious 2020 Stevie Awards. As the world’s premier business awards, The Stevie Award judges include many of the world's most respected executives, entrepreneurs, innovators, and business educators.

These awards recognize SM Cinema’s aim towards making moviegoing more inclusive, enticing and exciting, and most of all, help foster family ties in a big way.

In the Award for Innovation in Community Relations and Public Service Communications category, SM Cinema’s entries — Into the Moors: A special exhibit for children with special needs, and SM Cinema’s “Kids Watch for Free”: Championing Filipino families through movie watching, bagged bronze awards each.

Meanwhile, in the Award for Innovation in Entertainment Events category, SM Cinema’s entry —SM Cinema Into the Movieverse: Bringing the cinema experience into the real world, also won a bronze.

For Into the Moors: A special exhibit for children with special needs, SM invited the children of Deaf and Blind Foundation Philippines, an institution that caters to the educational and physical welfare of PWD kids, where they were treated to a multi-sensory exhibition, allowing them to experience the tale of Maleficent through a specially-made Braille system. Thus, SM Cinema becomes known as a place for all as everyone gets to experience and enjoy going to the movies.

For “Kids Watch for Free”: Championing Filipino families through movie watching, SM featured a kid-friendly title every month, wherein children under the age of twelve can watch the movie free of admission, given that they are accompanied by a paying adult. This helped strengthen family relationships—fun bonding moments—through movie watching!

For SM Cinema Into the Movieverse: Bringing the cinema experience into the real world, SM Cinema embarked on a “Reel-to-Real” campaign which showcased various movie-themed special events inside some of the biggest SM malls in the country, bringing movies to life and bring cinemagoers to a movieverse beyond the theater walls.

Meanwhile, in the Award for Innovation in Entertainment Events category, SM Cinema’s entry, Sine Sindak: A winning Halloween movie event, won a gold award.

Here, eight (8) spine-tingling and scream inducing horror film features were screened, each one handpicked by the booking and marketing teams of SM Cinema, with fun side activations and events. These included a special press screening with games and cosplayers in creepy costumes that spurred interest in movie watching while making the trip extra thrilling!

What makes these efforts innovative and unique is how these were able to engage mallgoers with exciting activations, Instagram-worthy and larger-than-life installations and interactive displays, as well as through fan fests and meet-and-greets. Similarly, these activities also impacted the local entertainment industry by attractive movie and TV celebrities and influencers, garnering conversations and engagements online and on social media.

“We’re extremely honored and thrilled to take home these top honors from the 2020 Stevie Awards,” said Ruby Ann Reyes, SM Cinema’s Vice-President for Marketing. “At SM Cinema, our aim has always been to elevate the local movie going experience by mounting various innovative and themed promotional events that not only help create awareness and anticipation for new films, but also add an additional fun and exciting dimension that viewers can look forward to, thus sustaining patronage among moviegoers.”