Why the psychographics and Demographics are important

For the marketing for our thriller, we must choose the target audience from the psychographics and demographics very seriously. Much like Michael Bay did with the marketing for Transformers 2 (2009), if the marketing is good and people don’t know about the thriller we are advertising, it could lead to the eminent failure of the films release. To successfully market our thriller to the correct audience, we need to keep into account genre of the film, release date of the thriller, were it should premier among other things. A good example of this would be the target audience for Star Trek (2009, JJ Abrams). They decided in the end not to target the Star Trek fans as they knew that they would go and see the film anyway. They decided to target a brand new audience, with a completely new cast, great special effects and the creative inspirations of JJ Abram, they attracted a wider audience for a greater profit. This worked to great success as it managed to make a profit of $20 million, when the first ten films made a total of $49.9 million.

For our thriller, the marketing must be very specific in targeting the audience. The main target audience for most thrillers are 16–24 year olds because they are the usual age group to go to the cinema with friends in their spare time. Our poster for the thriller must establish the genre, characters and must be something people are interested to look at. The up rise in 3D has made film companies a lot of success in profits (mainly due to the unbelievable success of Avatar [James Cameron, 2009]), how ever, our thriller wont incorporate 3D as it will easily destroy the thriller based atmosphere. Therefore, 3D won’t be our USP (unlike Clash of the Titans after they reformatted the film for 3D). Also, much like Godfather did, we would release the film in as many theatres to gain as much of a profit as possible. To receive a good word of mouth and good publicity, the teaser trailer should be very good, relating back to our preliminary task which turned out pretty well and got everyone who saw it talking.

In conclusion, the marketing strategy should cover the main concepts of gaining a profit in box office. The given examples along with many more need to be used accordingly with the type of genre to maximise profits. A USP needs to also be established, because without it, people won’t be interested in seeing it because there’s nothing about it worth seeing.

- David Huxford