Discusses How a target audience can be identified for two seperate films. Focuses on Transformers 4 and Cloverfield and the difference between how they have targeted their audiences.

1. Film Marketing
& Audience
Targeting

2. Audience targeting
 As you may have learnt, before even making the film the
company will put time into assuring they have identified the
target audience for the film.
During todays session I will be focusing on these topics:
 How the audience was targeted for TWO films of recent
memory
 How the target audience was considered during these films
production/post/advertising
 17 essential ways marketing is used in todays movies.

3. How many ways to advertise a film
can you think of right now?
Lets list them.

4. Marketing Techniques used:
 Press Junket (Interviews on TV, With the film poster in the
background)
 Publicity blitz (Traditional advertising such as posters, trailers, TV
spots, Magazine ads, Newspaper ads, newspaper promotions etc)
 Viral Videos & campaigns (We will discuss these later)
 Product tie-ins and corporate partnerships (such as on food
packaging,
 Publicity stunts. (orchestrated media event where someone does
something incredibly silly, dangerous or spectacular to draw further
attention to the opening of the movie)

5. How were the specific Audiences
targeted for two films?

6. Transformers 4
 This film has an interesting Target audience because it has a core
fanbase before its been even released. You have normal people who
have seen the previous 3 films (like many of you perhaps). And then
you have a large, worldwide fan-base community.
 Taken from http://www.the-numbers.com/, This franchise has taken
$3,250,731,968 in worldwide boxoffice at this current moment. Which
brings with it a huge budget for production and therefore advertising
 This gives the film the power to be advertised based on the films
name, and is known by most people and highly regarded by a loyal,
highly Vocal fan-base (even with their own conventions etc)

7. What Main techniques were used
to reach target audience?
 Film trailers included nods to Transformers lore for older fans of the
franchise, this was essentially to entice the
main fanbase for the franchise, because of a
general negative reaction to these films within
these people
 Trailers, Press Junket (Mark Wahlberg),
Publicity blitz, TV Spots, Viral Videos & campaigns,
Product tie-ins and corporate partnerships
and Publicity stunts via Social media. And
Most importantly for this franchise, the TOY
LINE.
 In essence, a well established franchise with
little need for advertising, but with the budget
to utilise it all regardless.

8. And now for something
completely different…
TF4 Eventually created over 30
separate TV spots with mostly
the same footage, but
occasionally new shots.
Here is a 16 second one.

9. Who has seen Cloverfield?
What do you know about this film?
Any Ideas about how they
approached Advertising the film?

10. Cloverfield
 New franchise. Small budget. In some senses,
production team slightly less sure of target audience.
This meant a reliance on a different and unusual
technique to drum up interest
 Believe it or not this website was actually used in the
viral marketing campaign for Cloverfield.
 http://slusho.jp/
 As you can see, they went to a lot of effort to provide a
cryptic backstory. JJ Abrams wasn’t Director, but he
was heavily involved. Watch this video if you have
time. (JJ abrams mystery box)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8
 Essentially the films target audience was almost
entirely internet based, word of mouth, with little to go
on in terms of story, style or plot. Until the first trailer.

11. Cloverfield Trailer

12. What does it tell you about the
film?
What feeling does it provoke?
How does it sell the film?

13. Techniques used to target their
audience, The CURIOUS!
 Unique, groundbreaking way to create a target audience from scratch
with little or no direct advertising about the film.
 Deflection, Fake websites to link to the conspiracy behind the film
such as Slusho, 1-18-08.com,
 Creating confusion, The producers of Cloverfield, tricked the audience
and helped keep them interested by constantly changing the name,
for instance; 1-18-08 (USA) Slusho (USA) etc
 Social media, The producers created MySpace profiles for some of
the characters. These profiles contained; pictures, videos, blogs, etc.
This created lots of hype and confused possible viewers, as it made
them question if the characters were real people

14. 17 TIPS to marketing online
 I found an excellent site for information on this I will link for you,
http://www.ventureharbour.com/ultimate-guide-marketing-films-tv-
shows-online/
These include:
 #1 Do Something Remarkable – The Publicity Stunt
 #6 Involve your audience in the making of the film
 #8 Create a visually compelling & functional sub-site
 #9 Make your Facebook Page Interactive
 #11 Auction props used in the film or TV show
 #12 Use social competitions & quizzes
 #13 Using Celebrity & Brand Partnerships

15. Inspiration before the task.

16. Task for the rest of todays session
 You will be divided up into groups of 2/3
 You will be given the story-cubes to quickly create a generic Film Idea
 Throw the dice, write down the 9 images, use the images to write a film
premise. A premise is a short, one to three sentence statement, which
captures the essential elements of the films screenplay.
 You will then in your groups attempt to define the target audience.
 You will then produce on paper ideas for a marketing campaign using all
or some of the techniques discussed! Be as detailed as possible, and
assign job roles within your group!
 Above All, Have Fun!
 If we have time at the end, we can quickly present your ideas to the
whole group!