Identifying Target Audience

When we were figuring out ideas for our film, we had to strongly consider who our target audience would be. When making a film, each company has to know what kind of people they will market it towards, and if this goes wrong it could lose them a lot of money. The company must decide what group of people are going to come and see the film the most. For example, an animated film is usually marketed at kids, since the storyline is usually very simple and there is no violence or swearing in it. On the other hand, a film that is rated 18 would not be marketed towards children. If it was, it would lose money and not many people would go to see it.

We decided to rate our film with a ‘15’ certificate, since it will involve swearing and drug abuse, with a little violence. We feel that this is the correct rating, since we feel many teenagers will see this film. Our specific target audience are teenagers, and adults (most probably men) that enjoy a complex story and a murky atmosphere. This will not be a very light-hearted film, so we will not market it towards younger viewers, and our marketing strategy would aim it at men, aged late teens and above. Our target audience will be similar to the audience that films like 'Stay' (Dir. Marc Forster, 2005) and 'The Game' (Dir. David Fincher, 1997) would aim for.

Our market strategy would involve some teaser trailers, barely showing any of the film itself, but intriguing the audience and making them want to see more. We would want the trailers to feel creepy and make viewers wonder what the film is about. We would also use teaser posters, keeping people wondering about the film. We believe that these techniques would bring hype to our film, and make people want to see it to find out exactly what it’s about. If we used normal trailers and posters with many images, it would give away too much about the film, and we want to keep it as secretive as possible. We want people to know barely anything about it before seeing the film.

Here is an excellent example of a teaser trailer, for 'The Dark Knight' (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2008). We would want our teaser trailer to be similar to this, since it gives nothing away about the film, but immediately intrigues viewers and makes them want to find out more about the film. Also, because no actual images from the film are used, fans will want to go and find out what the characters look like. A similar strategy for our film would be very effective, we think, and would generate much interest for our film, even though it doesn't contain any stars and is low budget.



- Taylor Gladwin