Research into target audience and how to attract them
Target audiences are an important part of any promotional campaign. What is a little different for us from the real media world is that we need to research two things at once: what is the target audience that products of the kind we are making seem to be aimed at and what we can do to attract this audience. In the real media world, I suspect that the main attention and research goes into the second of these tasks, and I also imagine that a great deal of attention is paid to attracting new and unexpected audiences to increase profits.
In order to research target audience, I am going to look at some theories around this and then look more practically at my film.
Theorists such as Fiske state that target audiences no longer exist and everybody has an individual liking – so we have audiences rather than an audience. So I need to think about a wider appeal that might catch many different kinds of people. By doing this I will also be able to provide the audience with more choice when it comes to watching a film and seeing a trailer. This in general is a more active audience approach.
In order to research target audience, I am going to look at some theories around this and then look more practically at my film.
Theorists such as Fiske state that target audiences no longer exist and everybody has an individual liking – so we have audiences rather than an audience. So I need to think about a wider appeal that might catch many different kinds of people. By doing this I will also be able to provide the audience with more choice when it comes to watching a film and seeing a trailer. This in general is a more active audience approach.
Another way I could target my audience is by taking a demographic approach. For my trailer/proposed film the target audience is around 15-35 years of age. This is contained well within the key demographic boundary of 18-34 as this gives film the best potential to succeed as this is the age group associated with the most disposable income and leisure time. This is a very broad audience which means the trailer may appeal to a variety of ages within this boundary giving the trailer/proposed film greater potential. Research into my target audience also provides evidence that my trailer is non-gender specific which again widens the prospect of appealing to a greater audience.
However, this demographic approach may not be sufficient in order to help my promotional campaign succeed. Theorists such as Ang state that it is harder these days as age, class and gender divsions close to use demographics in order to identify a target audience and this method is old-fashioned so instead I may have to use the VALs approach which looks into values, attitudes and lifestyle of the potential audience. The attitudes of my target audience may be of fear of war as a lot of our trailer/proposed film is focused on a war situation. Many of the values held by our audience may be similar to the attitudes and their lifestyle may be similar to one that is present in the film (violence/tension at home). Or it may be a direct contrast to their lifestyle and they may be curious to see the direct opposite.
Other theorists state that when considering target audience we should forget about the demographic and VALs approach to targeting an audience and look at the audience as a ‘user’ Theorists such as Blumer and Katz state that we should look into the Uses and Gratification of an audience. Many audiences may choose to see a film because of entertainment value so we must seek to show a good balance of emotion and include opposing genre factors e.g. comedy v drama. By doing this we can provide the greatest amount of entertainment possible. Many audience individuals also enjoy the fact that a film can provide escapism. Escapism is when a film can entice you so much that you forget almost everything that is going on around them. To achieve this we must look to provide many enticing factors in our promotional campaign so out trailer/proposed film can provide this sense on escapism that much of the audience seek. Audiences also seem to like the factor of self-worth. This is the situation where a film/text can cause the audience member to feel better about their own life and situation. We can achieve this by including really gritty and hard-hitting emotional factors within our promotional campaign. Social bonding is also a vital factor that may help our promotional campaign succeed. This is when a film has plenty of talking points and can help people socialise to a certain extent. To do this we must look to include certain degrees of controversy and tension so that people have plenty to talk about throughout the promotional campaign and with the proposed film if it was to be released. Using social networking sites as part of the campaign will also help with this. The theorist Silverstone also stated that many of us consume films just for the enjoyment factor of seeing something new so by including lots of enjoyable and enticing factors we will be able to make the consumption of the film satisfactory. A lot of audiences also like to believe the world of the text/movie is true, or in other words, the audience ‘plays’ with the text/movie. Fan fiction is a common outcome of this and by supplying lots of background information within my promotional campaign, audiences may be able to begin writing items such as fan fiction before the film is even released. By making our trailer memorable, people may also be more enticed into attempting to make spoof and parody trailers. By doing this our promotional campaign and proposed film can achieve more publicity and actively engage the audience.
So, in theory, we can say that our intended film should attract quite a healthy audience. At the same time, I think I think I have shown that while some genres have quite an easily defined audience (chick flick for example), ours is not so easy and we have to think more carefully about who might watch our film.
These two articles both investigate why people like war films:
http://jainismus.hubpages.com/hub/Why-People-Like-War-Movies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/may/15/gender.world
They contradict each other a little - one suggests it's all about the action, and the other that it's less about brutal scenes than about a process of identification - working out what you would do in the situation. Interestingly, the guardian piece implies a largely male audience, as you might expect for a war film, although it is obviously written quite light-heartedly. Overall, I think audiences expect action scenes and scenes of danger and tension in war films and would be disappointed if they didn't see them, but I agree that a lot of the appeal is about projection.
This blogger compares The Pacific and Band of Brothers to identify what kind of appeal war films have to women:
http://allaboutwarmovies.com/2010/09/13/do-women-prefer-the-pacific-to-band-of-brothers/
This and the following comments are interesting. Of course, our film is not totally a war film because it compares two brothers, one who actively hates the military life chosen by his father and brother, and there is also a lot of anti-military feel. We think this and the strong family storyline might appeal to women, and this blog and the comments suggest this is a valid approach, even thought it might feel a bit stereotypical in its approach. It is also true that there are often not many female characters in war films so the process of identification described above is not so easy. We have the mother character in our film and we imagine the younger brother would also have a girlfriend.
So, in theory, we can say that our intended film should attract quite a healthy audience. At the same time, I think I think I have shown that while some genres have quite an easily defined audience (chick flick for example), ours is not so easy and we have to think more carefully about who might watch our film.
These two articles both investigate why people like war films:
http://jainismus.hubpages.com/hub/Why-People-Like-War-Movies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/may/15/gender.world
They contradict each other a little - one suggests it's all about the action, and the other that it's less about brutal scenes than about a process of identification - working out what you would do in the situation. Interestingly, the guardian piece implies a largely male audience, as you might expect for a war film, although it is obviously written quite light-heartedly. Overall, I think audiences expect action scenes and scenes of danger and tension in war films and would be disappointed if they didn't see them, but I agree that a lot of the appeal is about projection.
This blogger compares The Pacific and Band of Brothers to identify what kind of appeal war films have to women:
http://allaboutwarmovies.com/2010/09/13/do-women-prefer-the-pacific-to-band-of-brothers/
This and the following comments are interesting. Of course, our film is not totally a war film because it compares two brothers, one who actively hates the military life chosen by his father and brother, and there is also a lot of anti-military feel. We think this and the strong family storyline might appeal to women, and this blog and the comments suggest this is a valid approach, even thought it might feel a bit stereotypical in its approach. It is also true that there are often not many female characters in war films so the process of identification described above is not so easy. We have the mother character in our film and we imagine the younger brother would also have a girlfriend.
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