Onni Creative Makes the Lobby Part of the Movie

The pizza was optional. When Onni Creative produced a Five Nights at Freddy’s pizza box, some moviegoers wanted the packaging more than its contents. “They’d just want to purchase the box,” founder Geonni Sigl told Boxoffice Pro. It is a wonderfully literal example of a marketing idea taking on a life of its own: dinner’s container becomes the souvenir.

That small reversal explains the territory Onni occupies. The studio works on what surrounds entertainment: the objects people carry, the spaces they enter, the images that persuade them to show up. A cinema’s screen may be its main attraction, but the concession counter, lobby and Instagram feed all have jobs to do before the lights go down.

Onni combines those jobs with a separate creative discipline: art and production design. Its work ranges from film-branded packaging and theater campaigns to set decoration and editorial shoots. The interesting business question is how those activities help one another. For a company selling a physical night out, a designer who understands both a photograph and a functioning space has something useful to offer.

The cinemas kept calling

Sigl’s route into this business ran through retail marketing and events in Las Vegas, then a move to Los Angeles and studies in interior architecture at Santa Monica College. She also earned a certificate in art direction for film and television. Marketing work at Annapurna Pictures and United Artists Releasing supplied another education: how a studio’s films reach the theater.

After pandemic-era furloughs, she founded Onni in 2020 with art and production design in mind. In her account, independent exhibitors helped change the brief. They needed marketing assistance, and they already knew someone who understood their industry. Consulting for small and midsize theaters became part of the company while its production practice developed.

This was a change in scope, driven by demand. There is a lesson here for anyone starting a specialist service business: previous experience can remain commercially useful even when the founder wants a different kind of work. Sigl’s design ambitions and marketing history eventually found common ground in experiences that require both.

A cocktail with a campaign attached

In a July 2025 GEMA interview, Sigl described a particularly clear example: specialty cocktail programs tied to films. Onni can develop the drink, design the setting for its promotional content, and produce social assets, digital menu graphics or material for the cinema screen. A lobby takeover extends the idea into the building itself.

“We're competing with people's couches.”

Geonni Sigl, speaking to GEMA, July 2025

Each part answers a different practical question. What is the offer? How will it look? Where will a guest encounter it? Who turns the concept into something a cinema can actually use? Taken together, the deliverables make a more coherent brief than treating the photograph, promotion and physical setting as unrelated purchases.

The company’s cinema portfolio makes the range visible through categories including digital menu boards, point-of-sale material, merchandise, private-label products, social graphics and websites. These are ordinary working surfaces. Onni’s proposition is to give them a shared visual purpose, so the invitation on a phone connects to the experience at the venue.

What the customer is buying

Onni sells business services to cinemas, studios, filmmakers and brands. A theater might need ongoing digital support; a production might need a set decorator; a campaign might require physical merchandise. The cinema services page also displays clients including Landmark, Fairchild, Cinemark and Regal, indicating a customer mix that reaches beyond the small exhibitors central to its positioning.

For digital work, the studio describes audience research, social strategy, paid advertising and analysis of audience conversations. Its publicity offering covers print, digital and audio opportunities, from local promotion to national outlets. The practical attraction is extra specialist capacity: someone to develop and execute marketing while the operator runs the venue.

There is also a smaller purchase: Cinepulse, an exhibition-focused social media and digital marketing resource. Sigl’s November 2025 VoyageLA interview listed an annual subscription of $597, alongside monthly and quarterly options. That is a dated published price. Custom art production was described as priced on request.

The distinction matters when choosing a service. A resource can help a staff member decide what to post or plan. A commissioned campaign buys work toward a specific assignment. Merchandise orders introduce another set of decisions, involving quantities and physical delivery. Buyers should define which problem they want solved before comparing offers that happen to share the word “marketing.”

The unglamorous part has a deadline

Onni announced a Coca-Cola partnership at the close of 2024. In its public announcement, the company identified itself as the exclusive Coca-Cola provider for the 2025 spring Share A Coke and summer How to Train Your Dragon cinema channel programs. That is a specific commercial role, tied to named programs, and a useful example of its concessions business.

Physical products also expose the limits of a good idea. In Boxoffice Pro’s November 2024 merchandise feature, Sigl identified inadequate lead time as a major challenge. Elaborate shapes require special molds; overseas production can introduce shipping and customs complications. Simpler formats can be easier to deliver. A release campaign has a calendar attached, however imaginative its concept.

The pizza-box example suggests a sensible starting point: adapt something the venue already uses. The transferable principle is compatibility with existing operations. A buyer considering an activation should ask how it will be stored, served, replenished and explained by staff. Those questions belong in the creative brief because they determine whether the idea will survive a busy evening.

Set skills, beyond the concession stand

Onni’s art and production practice offers color development, custom lookbooks, prop styling, set design and art direction for film, television, advertising and photography. Its capabilities include hand sketches and digital rendering, with tools such as SketchUp, CAD, Revit and Photoshop. The studio also identifies lighting, functionality and building codes among its areas of knowledge.

Public portfolio coverage includes Vanity Fair’s Lizzo feature and The Cut’s work with the cast of Euphoria. Onni’s CinemaCon 2024 introduction also points to Sigl’s work on the second season of I Think You Should Leave and the 2022 NFL Draft in Las Vegas. These credits show the variety of settings represented in the practice, from editorial imagery to live events.

Onni occupies the overlap between entertainment marketing and physical production. Other specialists cover portions of that territory. FilmFrog offers theatrical strategy, creative work and campaign services; a cinema can also assemble its own mix of designers, marketing staff and merchandise suppliers. Onni’s case for selection rests on the combination of capabilities and its familiarity with exhibition. The relevant comparison is the actual brief.

A local expert can be the attraction

The company’s free advice provides a useful sample of its thinking. A December 2025 article on Q&A screenings suggests looking beyond actors and directors to crew members or experts whose knowledge connects with a film. A costume designer returning to their hometown, for instance, can give a screening a local reason to exist.

The same article distinguishes recorded conversations from live appearances and recommends preparing audiences for the discussion. The implication is practical: start with people and formats the venue can realistically host. A compelling guest still needs a workable event, an informed audience and enough promotion to bring the two together.

Onni’s January 2026 Galaxy Theatres interview extends that emphasis on place. It examines school relationships, business networking and philanthropy across different locations. This is editorial coverage of an exhibitor’s approach. The copyable idea is to give local teams room to build relevant relationships, then provide marketing support for what they create.

These approaches depend on participation. A screening discussion needs a suitable speaker and interested guests. A souvenir needs an audience that wants to keep it. A digital resource needs someone with time to use it. The appropriate scale follows the venue’s capabilities and its community; adding more pieces to a campaign also adds more work.

Who gets to work behind the scenes?

Onni’s mission includes opening opportunities for women and underrepresented creators. Its stated production commitments include reusing materials, recycling and choosing environmentally preferable options where available. These are commitments about how the studio intends to operate, with decisions to be made on each job.

Its internship program offers a concrete point of scrutiny. The summer 2026 graphic design listing described work on brand guidelines, pitch decks, graphics and marketing materials, but specified an unpaid, college-credit arrangement. That structure offers relevant exposure while making participation dependent on a student’s circumstances. Access is partly about the terms of the opportunity.

Sigl’s industry involvement has also developed: she partnered with GEMA on its 2025 EmpowerHer event, and Women in Exhibition’s 2026-2027 board lists her as president. The company’s public identity joins those efforts to the everyday work of producing campaigns and environments.

For a prospective customer, the clearest way to understand Onni is to follow an object. Begin with a cup, a prop or a pizza box. Ask who designs it, who turns it into an image, and how it reaches the audience. That is where this studio’s different skills meet - sometimes at the exact moment someone decides to skip the pizza.