Jess Stratton A2 media Blog

Evaluation Question 2- How effective is the combination of my main product and ancillary texts?

Film distribution is making a film available for audiences to watch. This is done through exhibits such as: cinemas, DVD's, online streaming and television. The distributor will obtain the rights to the film. Film Distributors are responsible for the marketing of a film. They will market the film based on the target audience to determine the best marketing strategy. They want to ensure that the film is shown in as many cinemas as possible to ensure the most revenue is created from the film, they do this by ensuring they have marketed the film to the target audience correctly by looking at their demographics. Their main job is to organise the releasing of the film, often deciding on the release date.

They may use outside adverts such as large poster’s on billboards, this would reach a huge target audience. They are usually used on road sides, although people over the age of 17 drive, a younger audience would also be reached through road side posters on billboards because they are usually in the car. This is a good way of reaching a large target audience as so many people will see it and see the advert for the film you are advertising. Cinema adverts are also a good way to promote your film because it is likely to be advertised before a film of the same genre, therefore the specific target audience will already be reached. If they have already chosen to watch a film of the same genre, they are going to be automatically interested in the film that you are advertising.

Web adverts are also a good way of promoting your film because everyone uses the internet every day and therefore they are constantly being exposed to adverts, this is how some people test how many people are interested in the film, by counting the number of clicks on the advert. They also pop up of the sides of social media which is a huge platform to advertise your film, people can then share the link among their friends which helps to reach an even bigger audience. These media platforms help to reach the target audience and promote films because they are so big and there are so many different platforms that can be specifically selected to reach the right target audience.

The marketing of the film differs depending on how big the distributors think the film is going to be, how many people they need to reach and how much money there is to market the film the budget of the marketing strategy also plays a huge part in the ways the film can be advertised. It also depends on the demographics of the film, if the age range is large, for example age 20- 45 then you would have to advertise the film on many different platforms to reach every member of the audience. They also have to fully understand their target audience through audience research, they would have to understand the kinds of people they are trying to reach by understand the things they do on a daily basis. This would include understanding they types of wed sites they would look on and which social media sites they use. For example teenagers would use Instagram and twitter slightly more than adults who would probably use Facebook more than Instagram. Adults would also read the newspaper more than the younger audience and therefore film distributors wouldn’t advertise a film for young people in a newspaper as they would simply not be exposed to it. The genre of the film is also advertised differently. For example a horror film is likely to be advertised during the adverts of another horror film in cinemas with the same age certificate. A horror film poster with a certificate of 18 is not likely to be advertised in public as young children would be exposed to it and this would not be appropriate.

An example of where the budget for a marketing campaign has been shown is through the woman in black poster and the first paranormal activity poster. The paranormal activity poster is a cheap and low budget poster that has been made, the front cover has actors on that we do not know. The Woman in Black had a huge marketing campaign and their poster is much higher quality and has the face of the very famous actor Daniel Radcliffe on the front.

Pitch Perfect 2 was released in 2015 and is the musical sequence to the box-office smash Pitch Perfect. Pitch Perfect 2 was the first movie to ever use Snapchat in its marketing strategy. This earned then 300,000 followers on the platform. I think this is a successful marketing strategy because of the growth in Snapchat, it is becoming one if the more popular social media sites therefore using it for their marketing strategy works well to keep up with the growing levels on social media of today. At the premiere of the film, there was a Twitter Mirror, an Instastop, a Tumblr GIF booth where stars at the premiere could literally create marketing content just by posing. I think the merge between celebrity endorsements and social media is a highly successful because their target audience was women aged between 16-30 and with a strong fan base of teenagers, the social media elements compliments the marketing strategy and reaches the target audience successfully.