Film Distributers and Audience Research - Audience Profiling

Film distribution is the act of promoting and sustaining movies in the market place. In order for a movie to be distributed successfully, it is important for various bits of audience research to be undergone. 

Audience Profiling is the method in which researchers find out the characteristics , attitudes and social habits of a particular audience. This enables film distributors to make better, more consistent decisions as to how to best sell and market a particular film or movie franchise. Audience Profiles can drastically reduce marketing costs and ensures that advertisements and knowledge of the film is communicated to the targeted audience in the best and most efficient way possible. 

Demographics
Demographics are the measurable characteristics/aspects of society which can be used to categorise all members of the public. Typically examined demographics are age, gender, class, race, job, sexual orientation, religion, generation and disability. Once the demographics of their targeted audience have been identified, researchers can then work on shaping their marketing campaign in a way which will appeal to the specified audience. Demographics are useful as they are a way to group the population using hard facts and statistics. It is a lot simpler to classify people based on factual information such as age or gender than it is using personal information such as favourite movie. One large drawback to basing marketing strategies on demographics is the fact that demographic information is not predictive it is only suggestive. For example, a researcher could notice that Prada shoes sold well in the sales last season and a lot of the buyers were women aged 35-45, then they could put 100 more Prada shoes out for sale in an area where you know that this demographic are sure to be passing - but that does not mean that they are guaranteed to sell all of the shoes. Demographics only suggest possible behaviour, they don't guarantee it.

One very common method market researchers use to divide the population is through the comparison of socio-economic status. The entire population can be sorted into six different groups depending on their occupation and income bracket. 

National Readership Survey (NRS) demographic categories

Social Grade	Social Status	Occupation
A	upper middle class	higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	middle class	intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	lower middle class	supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	skilled working class	skilled manual workers
D	working class	semi and unskilled manual workers
E	those at lowest level of subsistence	state pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers

These social grade definitions are used as a generic reference series for describing and identifying social classes, especially by consumer marketing researchers. A problem that could arise when trying to base marketing strategies on this type of audience segmentation is the constant change between jobs and the income being received. The increase in income of many of the categories has blurred the boundaries between classes. 

Demographics describe who people are using quantifiable methods whilst Psychographics focus more on the attitudes, beliefs, aspirations, values and needs of an individual, categorizing people on these bases. Whilst demographics could look at an individual's annual income, psychographics would focus more on identifying the individuals spending habits - how much they spent per month, for example. Psychographics allow researchers to understand why certain types of people are attracted to particular things. They put the audience into groups with labels which suggest their position in society. Film Distributors are able to understand the subconscious and motivational drives of an audience and therefore aim to portray their movies in as desirable a way to their target market as possible. Demographic analysis is a useful method to gain quantifiable information from an audience but psychographics is essential to understand the consumer in depth. 


There are many measurements of psychographics; Crowd DNA's UK Tribes, Maslow's Hierachy, Young and Rubicam's 4 C's and ACORN, being just a few.

The Youth Market can be segmented into 'tribes'.  There are five main group types and then several further branches coming from each of these in which today's youth could be classified into:

• Mainstream - chavs, fan girls, boy racers, etc
• Leading Edges - TUMBLR kids, DIYers, indie scenesters, etc
• Alternative - emo, nerds, hardcore, scene kids, etc
• Aspirant - new casuals, rah, etc
• Urban - get paid crew, stylers, etc

The idea was to establish terms that would make sense to both the youths being classified and the media and marketing industries.

Maslow's Hierachy of Needs (1969) argues that if an individual does not have their basic needs then there is no chance of them moving up on the scale. That means that without the basic physiological needs of a human, such as food, water, breathing, etc, an individual cannot experience safety and security. Without security, the individual cannot experience love and have a sense of belonging. In short, for a person to achieve self-actualization, supposedly the main goal for all humans, they must first gain the other four needs first.




Young and Rubicam's Four Consumers
Young and Rubicam's Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation is a consumer segmentation which characterises people into a set of recognisable stereotypes. The stereotypes reflect a set of human motivations: Security, Control, Status, Individuality, Freedom, Survival and Escape. From this theory, the idea is that the seven kinds of people in this world consist of mainstreamers, aspirers, succeeders, explorers, strugglers, reformers and the resigned. Mainstreamers make up 40% of the world's population. These people are quite domestic and seek security. They enjoy being a part of a group. The aspirers seek status and admire those in a position of high status, also appreciating status symbols such as designer clothes and labels. The succeeders are the group of people who already have status. They seek control. The reformers define themselves by self-esteem and self-fulfilment. They seek enlightenment. Explorers seek discovery and crave new experiences. They are usually made up of the younger demographic. The strugglers are those who tend to feel alienated and disorganised. They seek escape from their normal lives and are typically from the D and E demographic. The resigned are usually those of an older generation. They are interested in past tradition and they simply seek survival. All seven groups are explained in more detail in the image below. 



The results of my 4C's questionnaire:

As my main value is Enlightenment this suggests that my characteristics are most like those held by the Reformer - independence is important to me.