Research: How brands target audiences?

I started to investigate in what ways I could advertise my AS production. The best method in my opinion would be to using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. I would create pages for the movie and let people know about it. I'll also create a movie poster on Photoshop as another way to advertise our movie. 

In addition to that, I'll try and use the advertising methods to target my specific audience and find out why my movie sticks out from the rest of the crowd.


1. Who is my primary target audience? 

The general public, mainly people who are fans of horrors/thrillers. I would suggest that the age rating for our film if it was turned into a proper feature would have a 15 rating. Influence from movies such as Shutter Island and video games such as the  Silent Hill games were our main inspiration. The movie Angel Heart starring Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro was also an inspiration in creating a thriller/ detective film set in the 1950s period. We would expect people who liked both this movie and video games would enjoy the style of film making and genre of our movie. TV shows such as American Horror Story also gave us inspiration.

2. What makes my film stand out from the competition? 

 Unlike many modern day conventional thrillers, our one decides to use a period setting which allows us to experiment with the time period and allows us to explore events that happened around then e.g. post war Britain. The idea of using a private detective as our main character allows us to take elements from the style of noir film making. This style hasn't been explored so much in recent movies so we thought it would be an interesting idea to explore.

3. Why should my audience watch my film?

The audience should watch our film if they want something different in the horror genre that relies more on atmosphere and story rather than gore and "jump scares". The movie is designed to make you feel at unease and rather claustrophobic in some cases due to the asylum setting. The 1950s setting also allows for a different setting rather than the normal present day setting that most other movies rely on.

 Audiences can be segmented and defined by their GEARS
Gender
Ethnicity
Age
Region / nationality
Socio-economic group


From the research that I've done, I found that many different products whether they were movies or magazines have their own specific target audience. These audiences are defined by a number of different things such as age, gender and their social stance. These examples from Bauer Media Advertising helped me understand what types of people read these magazines.
 
 As seen from these individual graphs, there's a difference in audiences between the two. Empire and FHM have a very male dominated audience whilst Closer and Heat have a female dominated audience. This is mainly due to the fact that these topics are generally enjoyed more by their certain gender. Closer and Heat are more popular with females due to the fascination with celebrity culture. FHM and Empire are male dominated as they focus on things that men enjoy more than women.

There are many different models that help us demonstrate audience behavior. An example of this is the media effects model.
This model sees the audience as passively led and they are influenced by everything around them. For example, if a celebrity is wearing some sort of clothing brand, people will automatically get it due to the fact they are impressionable. The model also shows that people have a variety of different needs. 
These include:
 

• entertainment / escapism / distraction 
• seeking information (somethings called surveillance)
• personal identity (to support out world view)
• and social relationships (both on-screen and off)                                                            

Another example that helps us understand audience behavior is Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs. This shows the different levels of needs that people have and what the most important things are.