Unit 6- Outcome 1: Understand how media producers

define audiences for their products

When marketing any product media or other it is important to be able to
break down the audience into groups and categories. Audiences are
categorised based on any of their basic information such as their age,
gender or class. These categories allow studios to differentiate what kind
of people their audience or target audience are for advertising and
marketing purposes.
In its simplest for film audience categorisation can be very basically
broken down into one of four categories.
As seen on the picture below the four sections are males or females either
under or over 25.
Broadly speaking many films will appeal to two of four categories for
example the overtly masculine A-Team which would mostly be favoured by
males under and over 25.
However there are family films such as the Avengers which are whats
referred to as four quadrant films which appeal to all four demographics.
As four quadrant these films have shown themselves to be the most
profitable and stable investments hence Hollywood studios, Disney
particularly Disney are trying to produce as many four quadrant movies as
they can.

However this category is very broad and unspecific. For example the
section of males over 25 includes such a wide range of people you simply
cant assume they will all like a certain film when all they really in
common is their gender.
So there are other more specific categories.

For example an audience members social class:

The job a person has can have a huge impact on lifestyle, where they live,
their interests, hobbies and social life. For example someone who is
unemployed or work part times is more likely to watch Jeremy Kyle and
other day time television as they are at home during the middle of the
day. Where as a politician is likely to watch question time to support their
party and to be able to discuss the show with their work colleagues and
other friends that share an interest in politics.
This chart presents social class on a scale from low income grade D/E up
to high income Grade A. Also on the chart are some general examples of
the common media preferences of each grade of class similar to the ones I
just gave.
This information can be used by producers of a film for advertising
purposes when promoting a film they can advertise to the audience they
want through the media they view.

Media organisations can gather information by one of 2 methods:

quantitative or qualitative.
Quantitative data comes in the form of mass none personal data from
large quantities of people. For example tv networks use official viewing
figures to determine which shows and time slots are popular with which
audience demographics. This research is usually comes from third party
companies such as non profit organisation BARB which provides the official
statistics for the UK. The Broadcasters Audience Research Board
(BARB) provides official viewing figures for UK television
audiences. It commissions specialist research companies Ipsos
MORI, Kantar Media and RSMB to collect data that represent the

television viewing behaviour of the UKs 26 million TV

households.
This is done by collecting data on viewing habits from houses specially
selected by RSMB to be representative of all TV watching homes across
the UK which allows estimations to be made of how many people of what
age/ gender are watching a show.
This tells the TV network how successful a show is allowing them to build
up a profile of who their audience are and determine the shows
advertising worth.
The film industry equivalent to this process would be the box office
figures. On a films opening weekend sales figures are gathered directly
from certain theatres by one of two box-office tracking firms Rentrak and
Nielsen EDI's Flash service. The data these organisations compile is not
available to the public but is uploaded to a secure website that only
certain studio executives can access. Here this huge information database
can be used to assess and track a films success as well as compare with
previous releases. This can be used to make educated predictions for how
well the film will continue to perform in theatres.
The issue with quantitative statistics is the even though two people of the
same class grade may share a similar income and lifestyle they are still
two individual people with their own personal interests and tastes. So
while quantitatively a class grade can be a useful category for marketing
major release films with large advertising budgets. To a smaller or
independent filmmaker audience classification often needs to be much
more personal.
Psychographic study as defined by bussinessdictionary.com is the
analysis of consumer lifestyles to create a detailed customer profile.
This information would come only from qualitative surveys or interviews
where the specific opinions and responses of audience members can then
be taken into account and applied to a detailed and reliable audience
profile.
While researching this essay I came across this Vimeo video where
independent filmmaker Robert Toombs http://vimeo.com/24708485
mentioned a film he once made about Buddhism which he intended to be
seen by Buddhists. However he found at screenings of the film and from
DVD sales that many Buddhists due to their beliefs had quite a relaxed
approach to wanting to go see the film and own it on DVD. Whereas many
of the people who did come to see the film defined themselves simply as
spiritual people rather than anyone part of a specific religion. And so they
changed their promotional angle and targeted advertisements to

spiritualists rather than Buddhists using techniques such as online ads

saying looking for enlightenment? Click here on relevant websites and
Facebook pages.
While bigger Hollywood films have more access/ use of quantitative data
than smaller productions they can still make use of qualitative research
and studies. People can be very easily categorised from the results of
Psychographic studies into groups of their interests and preferences.
For example any Americans who are by nature more right wing/ republican
are more likely to enjoy a film like American Sniper as they support the
main character and the themes in the movie as they are true to their own
beliefs.
Big studios have their own methods for collecting specific audience
feedback.
For example the producers of a film may hold advanced screenings of a
film in full or in part to a few select members of the public. These
audience members will then fill out detailed questionnaires or do
interviews to provide specific feedback to the producers from a 3rd party
audience perspective. The feedback from these screenings can potentially
lead to re-edits or even reshoots of the movie before final release. For
example Wallace and Grommit Curse of the Wererabbit had multiple
advanced screenings of animated storyboards in order to trial multiple
alternate endings to the film. This technique is essentially a filmmakers
equivalent of a focus group.
Using information gathered in these various ways studios can construct a
detailed profile of who their audience are, what media they are interested
in and how they are likely to respond to certain films.