Film Marketing& Audience Targeting

Audience targeting As you may have learnt, before even making the film the

company will put time into assuring they have identified the target audience for the film.

During todays session I will be focusing on these topics:

How the audience was targeted for TWO films of recent memory

How the target audience was considered during these films production/post/advertising

17 essential ways marketing is used in todays movies.

How many ways to advertise a film can you think of right now?

Lets list them.

Marketing Techniques used: Press Junket (Interviews on TV, With the film poster in the

background)

Publicity blitz (Traditional advertising such as posters, trailers, TV spots, Magazine ads, Newspaper ads, newspaper promotions etc)

Viral Videos & campaigns (We will discuss these later)

Product tie-ins and corporate partnerships (such as on food packaging,

Publicity stunts. (orchestrated media event where someone does something incredibly silly, dangerous or spectacular to draw further attention to the opening of the movie)

How were the specific Audiences targeted for two films?

Transformers 4 This film has an interesting Target audience because it has a core

fanbase before its been even released. You have normal people who have seen the previous 3 films (like many of you perhaps). And then you have a large, worldwide fan-base community.

Taken from http://www.the-numbers.com/, This franchise has taken $3,250,731,968 in worldwide boxoffice at this current moment. Which brings with it a huge budget for production and therefore advertising

This gives the film the power to be advertised based on the films name, and is known by most people and highly regarded by a loyal, highly Vocal fan-base (even with their own conventions etc)

What Main techniques were used to reach target audience? Film trailers included nods to Transformers lore for older fans of the

franchise, this was essentially to entice themain fanbase for the franchise, because of ageneral negative reaction to these films withinthese people

Trailers, Press Junket (Mark Wahlberg), Publicity blitz, TV Spots, Viral Videos & campaigns, Product tie-ins and corporate partnershipsand Publicity stunts via Social media. And Most importantly for this franchise, the TOYLINE.

In essence, a well established franchise with little need for advertising, but with the budget to utilise it all regardless.

And now for something completely different…

TF4 Eventually created over 30 separate TV spots with mostly the same footage, but occasionally new shots.Here is a 16 second one.

Who has seen Cloverfield?

What do you know about this film?

Any Ideas about how they approached Advertising the film?

Cloverfield New franchise. Small budget. In some senses, production

team slightly less sure of target audience. This meant a reliance on a different and unusual technique to drum up interest

Believe it or not this website was actually used in the viral marketing campaign for Cloverfield.

http://slusho.jp/

As you can see, they went to a lot of effort to provide a cryptic backstory. JJ Abrams wasn’t Director, but he was heavily involved. Watch this video if you have time. (JJ abrams mystery box)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8

Essentially the films target audience was almost entirely internet based, word of mouth, with little to go on in terms of story, style or plot. Until the first trailer.

Cloverfield Trailer

What does it tell you about the film?

What feeling does it provoke?

How does it sell the film?

Techniques used to target their audience, The CURIOUS! Unique, groundbreaking way to create a target audience from scratch

with little or no direct advertising about the film.

Deflection, Fake websites to link to the conspiracy behind the film such as Slusho, 1-18-08.com,

Creating confusion, The producers of Cloverfield, tricked the audience and helped keep them interested by constantly changing the name, for instance; 1-18-08 (USA) Slusho (USA) etc

Social media, The producers created MySpace profiles for some of the characters. These profiles contained; pictures, videos, blogs, etc. This created lots of hype and confused possible viewers, as it made them question if the characters were real people

17 TIPS to marketing online I found an excellent site for information on this I will link for you,

http://www.ventureharbour.com/ultimate-guide-marketing-films-tv-shows-online/

These include: #1 Do Something Remarkable – The Publicity Stunt #6 Involve your audience in the making of the film #8 Create a visually compelling & functional sub-site #9 Make your Facebook Page Interactive #11 Auction props used in the film or TV show #12 Use social competitions & quizzes #13 Using Celebrity & Brand Partnerships

Inspiration before the task.

Task for the rest of todays session You will be divided up into groups of 2/3

You will be given the story-cubes to quickly create a generic Film Idea

Throw the dice, write down the 9 images, use the images to write a film premise. A premise is a short, one to three sentence statement, which captures the essential elements of the films screenplay.

You will then in your groups attempt to define the target audience.

You will then produce on paper ideas for a marketing campaign using all or some of the techniques discussed! Be as detailed as possible, and assign job roles within your group!

Above All, Have Fun!

If we have time at the end, we can quickly present your ideas to the whole group!