How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary texts?

A film distributor has many roles in a highly competitive business. These roles include identifying audience, considering why they would go see it, estimating the revenue potential across all formats of its release, developing plans and partnerships to build awareness of and interest in the film, aiming to convert as much interest as possible into cinema visits, persuading exhibitions to play the film. Promotional and advertising vary depending on how big the production company is and how big the production budget is. Within advertising there are many platforms which you can take to promote your film they can include- TV, magazines, newspapers, interviews, photo-shoots and many more. A good example of a film which used a lot of media platforms was The Women in Black (Watkins 2013).  They used very good marketing techniques and were able to reach their target audience easily. Depending on the type of audience your trying to attract can depend on how you’re going to do it. If you know that you target audience watch a lot of TV then you’re going to do interviews, adverts, trailer’s or if they read a lot then newspapers and magazines. The more technique used the higher and bigger the platforms will be. 

Platforms are how many different sources you have used to advertise your campaign in order to promote them to your target audience. Making sure that those sources which you use when advertising apply with your audience. If you’re using sources which doesnt relate to your target audience then you won’t get the right people wanting to watch your film which you had hoped for. So using the right sources and reaching your audience is important in order to get a big viewing. If you use varies sources and increase your platforms but don’t succeed reaching your specific audience then this could result in jeopardising the success of the film on the releasing date potentially losing a lot of profit; but also your wasting money which your investing into making these ads be success.

Marketing differs depending on your audience that you’re trying to attract. Depending on the demographics of your specific audience size will depend on how your market your ad. If your audience is into reading a lot on a regular basis then you will know that pushing advertisements through books, magazines and newspapers are the way forward to capture your audience’s attention. If you class your audience as technology junkies then you know to push through via the internet and more technological visual resources.

Depending on the type of genre of the film depends on how it is advertised to reach their audience. Comedy films for example like The Inbetweeners was advertised on television throughout the day each day of the week knowing that their target audience would see it. Whereas horror films are normally advertised at night and the early hours of the morning. Paranormal Activity was advertised via the internet as they knew that their specific target audience would be easier to reach through that process.

The value of audience research is important to distribution companies because knowing what their audience wants is the key to their success. When developing campaigns it’s crucial to know what they want and what they’re looking for in order to make a good marketing campaign which will be successful and achieve the targets which you want. Putting time and money into campaigns, you want the best strategy in order for the campaign to be a success so no money which you have invested has been wasted. 

Woman in Black (Watkins 2013) was a huge viral success appealing with their specific target audience. Knowing that Daniel had a big fan base it was easier for the word to spread about this amazing jaw dropping horror. The production of this company made sure that they used the right platforms and sources which would make their audience want to go and watch the film and even persuade others to also go to see the film. What made this ad campaign so successful and what appealed to their audience was that each poster or cover which they produced followed the same designs.

Each one of their poster or covers above shows the audience exactly what the film is about. Their audience can tell that there’s a ghost and that the main character in the film is getting haunted and they want to find out more. All these images show a horror film and build an ad campaign which relates to their audience and grabs their attention. Every one of these posters shows us who the main character is and we can relate to this male actor as Daniel Radcliffe because majority of us know that he was the leading role in Harry Potter so we know that this film is going to be good.

When trying to publicise an ad campaign you need to make sure that the unified identity of the film is represented the same throughout advertising. Each cover or poster has to be linked in with each other and also the trailer.  In order to get the genre of the film across all design need to be similar and need to link with each other; if not your target audience may get confused and not understand if the film is really what they want to watch. From the poster, covers and other advertisement the audience needs to be able to understand a narrative from looking at the layout and design which would be shown. If it’s hard to get a message across then the ad campaigns may not work in the way which you had hoped. If all advertisements have links with each other and are able to show a narrative this will then encourage your audience to want to see the trailer and want to go and watch the film.