Sarasota Film Festival Adds Mobile App Integration for Festival Shopping and Information

The Sarasota Film Festival is going mobile this year with an official mobile marketing solution and app, SAMY.

Developed by MobileBits, SAMY will allow festival attendees to use their smartphones to purchase tickets, view festival information and receive special offers and alerts from sponsors and local merchants near festival venues in Sarasota .

"We are always striving to provide the best festival experience to our guests, sponsors and partners," said Tom Hall, director of the Sarasota Film Festival. "SAMY offers us our first-ever mobile optimized ticket sales platform, giving us a unique opportunity to offer value to our festival attendees and sponsors."

"This was an excellent opportunity to leverage our mobile network to support one of the leading film festivals and recognized events on the Suncoast," added Dan Miller, CRO of MobileBits. "We're excited to support the Sarasota Film Festival and provide their sponsors, partners and the entire Sarasota merchant and retailer community a unique and immediate mobile opportunity before, during and after the event to reach festival attendees and the larger SRQ community."  

SAMY Is not unique to the film festival; it is essentially a global mobile marketing and loyalty network that enables merchants, brands and retailers to combine POS, gift cards, mobile offers and loyalty systems into one synchronized mobile platform. It recently announced that it has grown its European merchants' footprint by 38 percent during the last six months of 2012, adding a range of brands that include Eat.ch, Office World, Pro Baby, McOptik, Cut & Color, Otto's and Blackout.  

SAMY debuted in North America last November with a launch in Toronto. So far, it said that it has two million mobile shoppers who have downloaded the app.