TARGET AUDIENCE & SIMILAR FILMS

This lesson material is taken from FutureLearn Film Distribution by the Film Distributors Association

Today we hear Kezia Williams talk about making a list of comparable films to help identify the target audience for a film. What would this list be for your film? Today's class blog post will enable you to  make your own post on SIMILAR FILMS or you may wish to call it TARGET AUDIENCE

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Skip to 0 minutes and 5 secondsKEZIA WILLIAMS: Really important to understand who your audience is and what motivates them and what’s going to interest them and drive them to go to the cinema. So you start, often, by examining similar films that have been released in the past– comparable films is a way in which we refer to them in the industry– and create a set that we can then look back at data so we can look at lots of different data and do research, really, on those comparable films to identify who the audience was on those films. So it might be that we look at demographic data and think about, did it skew more male or more female? What’s the age group that it appeals to?

0:46Skip to 0 minutes and 46 secondsDoes it have multiple different audiences that that can appeal to? And there’s lots and lots of cinema-going trends that you can dig into from that comparable set. We’ll also look at box office data to understand regionality, to look at the cinema-going skew– so did more people go to a certain cinema chain to see these comparable films? Right down to which cinemas performed. So it might be that there’s a cinema in London that had a fantastic box office share, and that’s an important aspect for us to consider. And then once you really understand who the audience on those comparable films were, you can start to talk about the differences and similarities between those films and the film that you’re working on.

Who is the audience?

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When we talk about the target audience for a film, we are referring to the specific largest group of people who might want to go and see it.

While it is important never to lose sight of the core target audience, the distributor will always try to attract as wide a range of people as possible. They will sometimes refer to films as ‘cross-over’ or ‘break out’ films – those which attract more than just the main target audience and perform better than originally expected.

Defining the target audience will affect the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of the marketing campaign:

• How to reach that defined target audience
• Where to advertise and promote the film

REACHING YOU

Although the UK cinema audience is broadening, 16–24 year-olds are the segment of the population that goes to the cinema most frequently, so how could a distributor reach YOU if you’re in that target group? If you’re in another age range, how would the distributor best reach you in your opinion?

• Which websites/blogs/social networks/apps do you use most often?
• Which TV programmes do you watch, whether live or on catch-up?
• Do you read film reviews in newspapers or online?
• Do you regularly travel on public transport?
• Do you subscribe to any email or text services about films?
• Do you read any magazines or regularly listen to any radio shows?
• What makes you aware that a film is coming?

Each film is positioned through consideration of its key selling point(s) against an understanding of the age, gender, lifestyles and activities of its target audiences. Films have to compete for audiences’ time as well as disposable income.