RESEARCH: WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE?

Reaching me


Each film has to be positioned through considering the selling points against an understanding of age, gender, lifestyles and activities of the audiences available – all of which inform the later decisions on how and where a film is promoted. Films have to compete for audiences’ time as well as disposable income.

The target audience can vary considerably from film to film, for example from families with young children to teenagers to older audiences. It is the distributor’s job, through research, comparison with previous films and their audiences, commercial experience and professional judgement to define who the audience for any particular film is. Each film has to be treated as an individual product.

WHO is the target audience?
Kezia Williams
Research - 

• Bespoke research, focus groups, interviews with potential audience
• If the film is based on a book or a film there is already existing data of the audience to access that can be used when targeting the film to an audience
• Talent: if theres actors that appeal to a certain audience 
• Core audience must be figured out before looking at the persuasive audience that could be interested in the film
• Some films have multiple target audiences 

Chris Besseling - 
Research 

• Anomalies at the box office such as surprise hits make research into target audiences even more important 
• Historical data is relied upon to give the 'green light' for a project 
• First strategy is comparing lists of titles that have something in common with the film - actors, directors, genres and subject matter. This is used to find out what the target audience would be.
• Historical fame data is to discover the 'make-up' of the target audience - age, gender and socio-economic standing which gives an overview of who the audience is likely to be and who should be targeted
• How comp titles perform at the box office is another important factor to consider - this influences how much will be spent on P&A