AUDIENCE RESEARCH

10/9/14 | PLANNING | AUDIENCE RESEARCH

I did some research into audiences and how to target hem as part of my research for my audience profile. To start with, I researched how audiences are targeted by brands, and part of the way they do this is through marketing strategies. Therefore I will aim to market my film through social media like Facebook and Twitter pages, a website for the film and a poster. This will help me reach as a broad an audience as possible, and market my film more effectively than sticking to one type of marketing strategy. I will also need to consider why my target audience would want to watch my film. I must think about what makes my film stand out from competing films in the same genre, why my target audience would be interested in my film, and if my film meets the expectations and requirements of my target demographic.

 

Who is my target audience?

1.     My primary target audience: Any nationality or gender, ages 15-30+ who enjoy psychological thrillers and general horror films like Pyscho, as well as TV series of the thriller/action genre like American Horror Story.

2.     What makes my film stand out from the competition: Our film is about a girl with multiple personality disorder who is simultaneously a sweet little girl and a merciless killer. The thing that makes our film different is that unlike some films with this concept, no one knows that she is the murderer or that her condition is so serious so she is not being treated. Of course would never suspect an innocent little girl, so the story will follow whether she is found out and what will eventually happen to her.

3.     Why my audience should watch my film: My audience should watch my film because Cinema Scope, “One of the most respected publications on film” (www.cinema-scope.com) says that it is: ‘The most thrilling, exciting, gripping psychological thriller of the year!”

Understanding my audience will be very helpful when it comes to creating my own audience profile and devising my marketing strategy. A good way to define or segment an audience is through the acronym ‘GEARS’:

Gender

Ethnicity

Age

Region/nationality

Socio-economic group

I used the Bauer Media Advertising website to investigate how all products have defined audiences, which are segmented using the ‘GEAR’ concept. Here are some examples from my research on the Bauer website:

 

I got these results by using their ‘Audience Finder’ and setting the age range from 15-30+, as the target audience for my film is. This screenshot shows some of the results the search returned with some magazines that people in the same age range are interested in.

My target audience may also be interested in other forms of media like radio. In marketing my film, I want to reach as broad an audience as possible so I decided to research a radio station and see if it would be a suitable advertising platform for my film. I discovered that Kiss reaches a lot of people via social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which are media platforms I want to use as well. Kiss also reaches ‘950,000 Adults 15+ a week’ according to their website, and this fits with my target demographics’ age range. Therefore Kiss FM would be a suitable media platform for advertising my film.

 

What audiences are currently offered and how they access it

My audience would not only use ‘second hand’ media like radio, but also the internet to find out about new films. They would use media such as YouTube videos and adverts, Facebook. IMBD Tumblr, Twitter and iTunes movie trailers to learn about new movies that are coming out. Mailing lists also help to advertise new films to our target audience, such as Everyman and Odeon.

I went onto the iTunes Movie Trailers website to research more into what films audiences were currently being offered and how they could access new films. This is what I found:

 

Audience behaviour

Audience behaviour is separated into models, two of which are passive and active. These models construct audience’s differently:

Passive: The Media Effects model (hypodermic syringe model) sees audiences as completely influenced by the media they consume. It views them as easily led and manipulated, constructing them as gullible and passive.

Active: The Uses and Gratifications model sees audiences as viewers who make active choices about what media they consume to gratify certain requirements. Blumler and Katz outlines the four main needs: entertainment, information/surveillance, personal identity and social relationships (on-screen and real life bonding with friends and family).

Audiences can easily access new films through a simple internet search; the iTunes website is especially easy to use. The list of new thrillers is also constantly being updated so I know that if my film was marketed like this it would be easy to audiences to access.

Maslowe’s Hierarchy of Needs

This model of hierarchy shows that the audience needs which drive them to consume media are only important when lower needs are met. These include things such as the need for air, water and food. The drive for consumption of media is only active when these lesser needs are met, as shown in this diagram:

The two-step flow model of audience behaviour

The limited effects paradigm is evidence that social factors, as well direct information from the media, influence the way audiences process texts. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet investigated the way audiences consume media during a 1940 presidential election. They concluded that information flows through two steps to an audience, firstly directly from the text, and secondly through ‘opinion leaders’ who then communicate the information and their opinions on it to the audiences that they influence. The audience listen to the opinion leaders as well as the direct text and make a decision based on what they learn through this flow model. Consequently, researchers found that the media was less powerful than previously thought due to the influence of these opinion leaders.

Socio-economic bands

I researched socio-economic groups so I could see how brands defined and segmented their audiences, and this is what I found out: