Marketing to specific audiences continues to cost film studios and distributors millions of dollars each year, however, “reliance on focus groups and long-held audience assumptions are outdated concepts and costing the industry millions more in lost revenue opportunities.”
This is the verdict of audience intelligence platform DiO, who have spent the last two years analysing how different trailers and other screen content lands with particular audiences.
DiO claims their analysis tools – including facial coding, biometric and cognitive data – confound traditional assumptions about audience appetites, and reveal a surprising shift in how viewers engage emotionally with what they see on screen.
Their research was conducted across 37,000 consumers of content and key findings include:
- Younger male viewers respond more strongly to character-driven storytelling with narrative depth than to relentless, high-octane action scenes
- For this demographic, there is a 5% difference in immersion scores between character-driven and action-driven trailers
- For this same audience segment, there is a preference for female characters who are strong and independent over those who are hyper-stylised or given supporting roles
DiO CEO and founder Ade Shannon said: “This data points towards a shifting perception of masculinity and an evolving appetite for richer, more grounded storytelling.”
Indie production studio True Brit recently used the data amassed by DiO to plan the marketing campaign around their title Marching Powder, specifically to pinpoint aspects of the film that would appeal to potential viewers outside its core 35+ male audience.
Released in March, Marching Powder stars popular “hardman” British actor Danny Dyer as Jack, a man arrested for fighting and drug possession during a football hooligan brawl, who is ordered by court to go to couples’ therapy.
True Brit shares that tweaking their campaign based on the data boosted their strong box office opening of £3.1m against a £1.6m production budget, specifically increasing its female audience to 45% without isolating their core audience.
Commenting on the strategy, Chris Besseling, the studio’s head of theatrical distribution, Marketing and Publicity, said: “Using the detailed analytics provided by DiO’s report, we were able to identify the specific moments, characters, lines and gags from the trailer that resonated most strongly with the two distinctly different audiences that we were targeting. This enabled us to build a tailored, two-pronged campaign with bespoke creative assets that best served the different potential audience groups.”
