RESEARCH: WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE

On the FDA website, Kezia Williams, Head of Theatrical Distribution at Entertainment One UK, explains that defining the target audience will affect the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of the marketing campaign; 

For example: 'Where should the distributors promote and advertise their film on social media?' and 'how should they would promote the film to appeal to and to engage their target audience?'

Kezia William explains, in the video, that distributors will start to define their audiences by comparing other films with their films. 

Reaching Me:

Genre and audience:

Keiza Williams, eOne distributor, explains the importance of understanding who is the target audience, so that they can successfully market the film. She explains that they need to establish what motivates them, what their interest are and what drives them to going to the cinema.   

The distributors will examine comparable films, so that they can understand what the best distribution method is for distributing their film. They then create a set that they can look back at data and research to identify who the audience was for those films. 

Distributors collect data on audiences by Demographs which shows whether the audience is male or Female and their ages. The distributors also look at Box office data, which is;

• regionality 
• how each cinema performs 
• was there a specific cinema chain people went to?

Furthermore, distributors do this research to understand their target audience and by interaction with them, they can engage their target audience with their film. Many use bespoke research to focus on different groups, within their target audience, so that they can interact with them in a way that is tailored to their interests. When using this research, they can understand the core audience and persuadable audience. Alternatively, if a distributors is promoting a film based on a book/novel/game, they can use the data on who was interested in these, so they can focus on appealing to them first.

Chris Bessling, Director of Marketing at Pathe UK, explains how distributors need to research to support the release strategy. He further explains that this is because the film industry is massively high risk due to the unpredictable anomalies at box office weekly. This is why distributors mostly rely on historical data. Historical data allows distributors to compare the success and failures of older comparable films and who watched these films? This data uses age demographics, social groups and box office trends/ ratings that help distributors to understand who their target audience is? And how they can reach them?

The Hook and the audience:

Reaching the target audience:

Marketability and Playability:

Marketability - the ability to use the films potential to be marketed effectively and successfully, e.g. having a good selling point/ hook, such as key stars, genres and directors/producers and this can be turned into a strong advertising campaign.

Playability - refers to audience reaction to the film. If an audience is satisfied and pleased by what they have seen then they will encourage friends/ family to go and see the film. This allows the film to grow and sustain itself in the marketplace.