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

The role of a film distributor is to make sure that the marketing for the movie is chosen correctly and targets the right people.  They have to make sure that the ways in which the movie is marketed are worth the money and time.  A lot of research has to go towards all of this.  The film distributor has to make sure that film is also shown at the right cinemas.  Research will show what kinds of locations that the movie should be shown in.  Whether the film is quite niche and will only need to be shown in limited cinemas or whether it is a massive mainstream movie that’s demand will be very high and will need to be shown in nearly every cinema. 

Different advertising techniques would be used for different target audiences.  Techniques commonly used for films are TV and cinema adverts, radio adverts, billboards, web adverts and newspaper adverts.  Using specific TV channels, radio channels, websites and newspapers is very important for targeting the right audience.  Viewers of National Geographic are usually very different to those of TLC.  Advertising on the right channel will allow you to target the right audience.  The same with newspapers, readers of The Guardian are very different to readers of the Daily Star and therefore different films will be advertised in these different newspapers to target the right audience.  Populist newspapers like The Sun would advertise mainstream movies whilst The Independent might advertise something a bit more intelligent and obscure.  

Billboards are a good way to advertise movies.
They are used to advertise mainstream films like Monsters University.

























Popular and mainstream movie directed by well known director Tim Burton was on the front cover of popular newspaper, LA Times.





















The Independent had the trailer for The Drop on the film section of their website.  Websites like this will advertise lesser known films like this one




















The Woman in Black used an interesting way to promote their movie which was people submitting their ghost stories in order to win prizes that related to the movie.  This technique would appeal to a younger audience.  The fact that Daniel Radcliffe is associated with the prizes would also attract Harry Potter fans. 

Audience research is incredibly important for determining who the target audience is.  Audience research is usually carried out with surveys, questionnaires, online forums and focus groups.  These all allow the researchers to gather opinions from different types of people and to gather an idea of the best way to make the movie.

Below is my annotated YouTube video (please watch in full screen):