Defining my target audience
- 2. RESEARCHING INTO MY TARGET AUDIENCE In order to reach my target audience, I needed to identify who my target audience are, for example, their age, ethnicity, social class, gender as well as their media needs. My target audience’s media needs are the most vital element in enabling me to produce a film they will want as well as finding out how I can reach them to promote and market my film Surplus. In this PowerPoint I will be presenting how my research into my target audience has influenced my planning.
- 3. HOW BRANDS PROFILE AUDIENCES Before creating my own audience profile for my AS foundation production, I had to research how other brands defined their own audiences. For that reason I investigated many brands owned by Bauer Media, and here present my analysis on how Kiss, NME and Sky defined their audiences. In doing this, I was able to begin to profile my audience.
- 4. KISS KISS is a UK radio station which broadcasts nationally on several different radios such as DAB digital radio and FM in London, for example. KISS profiles its audience along traditional lines of age and gender: it has identified its audiences as being between the age of 15-34 with a 60/40 female to male divide. KISS identifies that their audience loves technology and it really excites them as they are the generation where technology predominantly advanced. This has been proven by the amount of Kiss Kube App downloads onto digital devices (1.3 million). KISS notices one particularly interesting aspect of its audience: it used to be predominantly urban but as it has grown up and moved out of London, it has now become increasingly national with 65% living outside of London.
- 5. NME NME stands for New Musical Express and it is a British music journalism website and former magazine. NME profile its target audience along traditional lines using age, gender, sociographics. On average, NME’s target audience is predominantly male (69%) with the remaining 31% being female, 52% of these people are working full time and 7% are part-time workers (they are well educated), on average these people are around 24 years old. Moreover, NME’s audience enjoy spending their high disposable income on their passion for music, so they tend to spend money on concert tickets, they are enthusiasts for the newest technology and entertainment. NME’s audience is mostly contemporary and they have an interest in video games and music. 73% belong to the social grade ABC1. Additionally, NME’s relationship with its audience is strong ‘I can trust it’; they completely trust NME’s brand, this aids in promoting other brands within the magazine as NME audiences trust these brands. What struck me about this profile was its high level of detail, with NME knowing so much about how its audience spent its money and time. NME’s audience may be similar to mine.
- 6. SKY SKY profiles its audience along conventional lines using age, gender and sociographics. ‘Sky UK is a British telecommunications company which serves the United Kingdom. Sky provides television and broadband Internet services’. Sky media presents its audience data in a pie chart format, which I plan to do. This includes male to female ratio and sociographic profiling which explains below what W16-34 means (An index which shows the likeliness that a particular audience is watching that channel). On average of Sky's 8 million average monthly reach more men (57%) are watching SKY in comparison to women (43%). - this is shown on sky's main page.
- 7. AUDIENCE THEORY As part of my research, I have looked into various aspects of audience theory. I have considered whether an audience is active or passive, defined or segmented and finally, what audiences aspire to and how they use the media to gratify their needs, and how audiences interpret texts in varying ways: reception theory. It was important I had researched into audiences so that I could identify my own and create my own audience profile based on both this and my audience questionnaire (which I go onto explain in my next slide)
- 8. MY AUDIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE I devised an audience questionnaire using google forms and analysed the results. The results really helped in helping me identify my own audience. To begin with the most popular trailer from my questionnaire ended up being ‘Split’, the results from my questionnaire explained that the reasoning behind this behind their favourite trailer included reasons such as: ‘The trailer sets out the plot and the lead actor plays the different roles very well. It makes me want to see if and how the girl gets away.’
- 9. MY AUDIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE Out of the film trailers the least liked was ‘The Widowmaker’ for reasons such as: ‘Whilst I think I would enjoy this film I did find the trailer a bit confusing. I couldn’t make out if the “cure” was causing people to die. I did like the documentary style of the trailer.’ Overall the results from my questionnaire concerning the trailers really helped in giving me an insight into what audiences both like and dislike about the films with a similar genre to mine.
- 10. MY AUDIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE Out of the film posters the most likeable one ended up being the ‘Shutter Island’ for reasons such as ‘The poster portrays a sinister island and the shading on the actor also shows this. It makes me want to watch this film as you can tell it’s a thriller.’. The least liked one was ‘28 weeks later’ and this was due to people finding it didn’t ‘Give any hints of what the films gonna be about’. Overall this was helpful when it came to creating our own film poster and the information it included.
- 11. MY AUDIENCE PROFILE I analysed my questionnaire data and I created an audience profile from that: My primary target audience for our thriller is from the age of 15+. As a thriller, it contains adult content such as death, which is the reasoning behind my decision on age classification of 15. They are likely to prefer watching films in the cinema such as the Everyman because they want to get the full atmosphere of the Adobe surround sound speakers and the large screen. However, they do also like watching films (mostly thrillers, horrors and comedies) at home on Netflix. They are likely to find out about upcoming films through media platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram and because the audiences also include older generations they may also find out about upcoming films on Facebook and Twitter. My audience’s ideal clothing brands may differ from JD Sports to brands like H&M. They may wear rather modern clothes which are rather casual and relaxed, as those are the types of people my audience are like. They also may eat at places like Wagamama's, Nando's and Pizza Express.
- 12. • My audience pics
- 13. I watched Matt Smith’s interview on the FDA website, in this interview Matt Smith defines the difference between marketing and publicity. Marketing you pay for, whereas publicity you do not. Publicity: Matt Smith explains how social media has become a large chunk of marketing and advertising and effort of publicity can now be online and digital. Now digital platforms have become increasingly popular, when promoting the film they have to ensure the film has been formatted to make thing specifically for digital platforms such as iPads, for that reason certain clips or trailers have been re-cut and designed to be watched portrait on a smaller digital device as a normal film is landscape. Additionally, they have also managed to cut down trailers to shorter lengths as Matt Smith explains audiences have a 5 second tolerance and in that time their attention must be hooked. For that reason, often on digital trailers there is a 5 second information panel which informs the audience that there is a trailer coming up and it is worth watching, this is in order to prevent audiences from switching off and going to visit a different site. Distributors are changing the elements to better serve the digital world. MATT SMITH
- 14. MATT SMITH Marketing: Film influences have now become vital in raising awareness for a film. The value of film influences is that they provide third party endorsement. There are many websites which are particular for a certain audience (niche market) such as mum vloggers, this will help in promoting specific films which may target a particular audience. If an influence has recommended something (a film) then their audience listens and they go and do what they say as vloggers are severely trusted by their audience and their opinion matters deeply to them. Distributors can involve influences from a very early stage, they occasionally invite an influence on a set visit for example in order to include them. By doing this, it brings and creates early awareness to help plant that seed to produce early buzz as a film can take up to a year to make.
- 15. OUR MARKETING AND DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES From watching Matt Smith’s interview and becoming well aware of the increasing promotion of films on media platforms I have devised marketing strategies. Our production team has created an Instagram, Facebook and Twitter account along with a film poster so that I am able to reach my target audience. Out of my production team I have created the Facebook page which I will go onto explaining further in my next slide.
- 16. FACEBOOK PAGE Out of my production team I made the Facebook page, I named the page ‘Film Surplus’ as I wanted it to be clear as to what the Facebook page includes. In the making of this Facebook page I posted an image of our poster, this helps in conveying to our audience that this Facebook page is for our newly released thriller film: Surplus. Our film is a 15-rated film, Facebook is a media platform which is used by predominantly older generations, this means that by creating our ‘Film Surplus’ Facebook page our target audience are going to be intrigued by our film and will
- 17. FILM POSTER This film poster I believe conveys the genre of our film ‘Surplus’ to our audience very well. The monochromatic red used throughout this poster is enigmatic as it has connotations of blood, death and jeopardy. Our film being a thriller, and containing a vast amount of death from the epidemic itself killing off a large amount of the population to the prime minister herself ordering the hitman to kill the scientists to prevent the cure from being leaked, this enigmatic colour of red is suitable. Moreover, throughout our film there is suggestions of red, such as the prime ministers dress and the hitman's red tie. The image in the centre is of a man wearing a suit with a red tie, in our opening sequence the hit man wears a red tie, this helps in creating a link between the film opening sequence and the film poster.
- 18. TWITTER ACCOUNT Our Twitter page ended up being the most successful. In the creation of this page that we entitled ‘Surplus Film’ we used a photograph of cells as the pages profile picture this is so our audience had a clear understanding that this page consists of a film about some type of disease. After posting an image of our film poster, Marc Zammit with 238 k followers retweeted, this was extremely pleasing to see that someone at such a high level of media found our poster thrilling. Similarly to Facebook the majority of twitter users are aged 25 and above, this is correspondent to our target audience (aged 15+), this means that they are being informed about the newly released film and becoming intrigued by the film poster and the story
- 19. INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT We chose Instagram as our first marketing strategy due our familiarity with the social platform. Once we developed an account name, we moved onto our biography content “Britain is gripped by an epidemic that threatens the population. An effective antidote has been developed, but the government has its own agenda”. Here we explained our film in the hope of drawing our target audience in. Once we attracted an audience we were able to maintain them as followers, allowing us to remain in contact through our feed/profile; keeping them informed.
- 20. OUR FILM’S USP Our film clearly signals its thriller genre through visual and sound codes such as the serious subject matter, the sense of danger and intrigue, the realistic sets and editing, and the sense of suspense. However, our film has a unique twist which will persuade a thriller film lover that our particular film has something novel to offer them: a political twist. Our narrative builds on the current sense of unease and suspicion in the country towards the government during a very unsettled political period of Brexit. In our film, the government is depicted as self-serving and determined to exercise power even at considerable human cost. Equally, the annual fear of catching the flu virus which wipes out so many people is another element that we build on in order to engage our audience.
- 21. HOW WOULD MY FILM BE DISTRIBUTED AS A REAL MEDIA TEXT Matt Smith from the FDA website explains that distribution is the process of getting the film into the hands of the theatre chains, broadcasters, video stores and video on demand (VoD) operators. The companies that do this are called distributors. In general a producer uses a sales agent to license a film to distributors outside the producer’s own country. An independent distributor would distribute my film. I have chosen the independent distributor (Warp). I have come to the conclusion that this is the best independent distributor for my film Surplus because I researched thoroughly into Warp and I found out that the films warp had previously distributed had a similar genre to that of mine. My film focused on how a new epidemic wipes out a large proportion of the population and the Prime Minister attempts to prevent the cure being leaked into the public, from this synopsis, my film would be deemed a thriller. If my film had been fully produced then I believe it could possibly be considered a prestige film.