Marketing our Product and Audience

We have intended from the start to target a specialised niche in the market, in order to create a product that our target audience wants. Our target audience is typically British film fans with some interest in the issues explored in our film. The gritty issues of drugs and starvation mixing with the pleasure of music and dance gives us a strong juxtaposition. fans of music and dance are a segment of our target audience, whilst so are fans of gritty films with strong issues explored. Our genre is more of a sub genre, as we would define it as gritty musical dance film. The film is much about the issues explored and the reactions of the characters in response to the challenges they face. This in its way can be considered by some as feel good, as it is a cathartic experience, in watching how others live their lives and deal with the problems that arise.
Whilst we intend to aim our product at a predominately British audience, meaning that we are looking at producing mainly on a national scale, will still give us a strong and diverse opportunities for interest in our film. The issues explored are also relevant in other parts of the world, meaning there are opportunities for our product to diversify and expand into becoming a worldwide product, even though the product is mainly geared on a national scale. Any film institution, alike to AHA! films will prefer to launch a product on a global scale, if they have the marketing powers and can therefore allow the product to be appealing to a world wide audience. This gives the product higher levels of access, and therefore is mediated to a wider audience. From a business point of view, tackling the world market would mean greater chance of being successful as there is a larger target audience to capture. With greater popularity in the product, greater sales can lead to greater profits on the product, which is ultimately what any business wants to do. However other targets and aims for the institution may be to explore complex and important issues in order to improve many people's lives.
Our institution would like to hope the audience take a great sense of vicarious pleasure, and gratification from our film product. Although we believe it important to specify our product to the target market, to make sure there is an audience for our product. With out an audience for our product it cannot be successful, and that would mean in the big world of film production, it would not be financially viable.
Film production companies would have a budget to work to, this budget would need to be covered by the takings from the movie, otherwise this would not be financially viable, and would make a loss. Therefore it is important there is demand for our product from an audience.
The importance of an audience who are going to buy our product is why we chose to conduct audience research. We needed to find out exactly what the audience wanted from our product. We took many of the points from our survey on board, and we knew we were doing well when our audience agreed with many of the issues and content of our film. This gave us confidence to produce our product.
Big film institutions such as Disney, have a strong identity as the audience understand the products they produce well. Our institution would hope to develop an identity also, in order to gain a trust able name, with a regular customer base, alike to Disney. If a large company like Disney decided to conduct audience research, they would do it on a large scale, by using statistic sample techniques such as quota and stratified sampling in order to segment their market and reach different segments of their audience, in order to maximise their popularity and profitability. Our institution would obviously have to start small, identify a target audience, and then create an identity allowing for trust able regular custom. The company would then have to try to expand and increase its audience share which can be done through a strong brand name, and reaching many segments of the market to increase potential audience. With profits from films, the company can then increase budgeting for films and marketing of films to increase popularity.
Harry