Demographics are used in marketing to classify audiences into categories like gender, age, race, class etc. advertising companies this is used in media marketing to advertise a film to different demographics.
An example of demographic information, commonly used by media companies, is the ABC1/C2DE system, which separates the population into different class groups. Newspapers are good examples of this.
The sun news paper is marketed at a C2DE audience, and this heavily influences the content that the sun has, for example, the sun will complain about teachers getting too much time off, generally because the C2DE audience didn't go to university and couldn't become a teacher to know what the job is really like, essentially moaning about people higher up than themselves. The Sun also caters to an C2DE political viewpoint, for example during the elections they would deliberately choose goofy pictures of David Cameron, and try to ridicule the conservative party because it is traditionally thought of as anti working class. This is all what the target audience want to consume, however this can be fairly dangerous as these oligopolies like The Sun can give us extremely biased viewpoints that may change the outcome of who is prime minister, especially as their target audience (C2DE) is 57% of the uk population, which is a worrying concept as it means people aren't making their own decisions.
So an ABC1 newspaper, such as the Independent, will also show news which it's audience will want to consume, which is basically the opposite of what a C2DE audience would want. An advantage of appealing to an ABC1 audience for the independent is that they can charge a higher price due to their higher income consumers (70p instead of 35p for the sun) however, in the film industry, this makes little difference to the price of a film.
A horror thriller film is likely to appeal to appeal to all the social grades, as most people enjoy the thrill that they bring, however some of the C2DE audience may not understand the psychological element of films, due to a being "less educated", they may prove difficult to understand, for example the psychological element of se7en may make the ending hard to make sense of if the viewer wasn't aware of the seven deadly sins from the bible. So because of the psychological elements that my film will have, my film will be mainly advertised at an abc1 audience.
There is no certain race that my film will be directly aimed at, the main character being a white male could influence this, possibly making it harder for for other ethnicities to relate with the main character, but, with psychological thrillers/horrors the main characters are generally white, such as Silence of the lambs, nightmare on elm street, psycho and se7en (with the exception of Somerset.) I will try to market my film towards both genders. the target audience for psychological thrillers is normally more male than female, generally because of the complex storylines and aspects of horror which males seem to find more interesting, but this is mainly because it is very rare to have the main character in as a female. Although the main protagonist in my film opening is a male, there will also be female roles that are being affected by the bad dreams, which will make both genders feel involved.
my target audience will be aged 15 to 25, the age rating from the BBFC is 15 because my film film will contain some swearing (to build verisimilitude), and some graphic scenes, involving blood. the reason why film isn’t rated 12 is because this would force me to hold back on certain scenes, possibly losing demand from teenagers who feel put off by the younger age rating. I have put the top of my age gap in the mid twenties because people older than this might find it hard to relate with a 17 year old, which is why most psychological thrillers have adult protagonists. This creates a niche market for my film.
PSYCHOGRAPHICS
Psychographics are much more personal than demographics, and focus on the opinions, lifestyles, personal traits and interests of an audience. They are split up into 7 categories, as shown in the table below. They basically explain why the audience would want to consume the product. Media advertising can target a certain audience and assess how likely it is that their product would appeal to the certain groups.
Regarding my film, Endless,
the groups likely to engage with it more would be reformer, explorers and possibly succeeders. Reformers because they seek "freedom of restriction and personal growth" and psychological thrillers aren't "restricted"to following the same structure as most action and horror films (props narrative theory) They also have "independent judgement" which would be helpful for Endless because the storyline contains enigmas which would need independent judgement to piece together the storyline. this is the reason why mainstreamers wouldn't be so keen on Endless, because it isn't conventional, and the fact that it's ran by an independent film company (not part of the oligopoly) means that they may be put off, as it isn't well known enough for hem to give it a chance. because this is the largest psychographic group, it's no surprise that psychological thrillers are a nice category.
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