Evaluation Question 2

A film distributors job is to market, advertise and distribute a film. To do this, the film distributor has to work with the director, producer and exec to understand who the target audience is, what demographic they fall under and the best advertisement techniques to inform them of the film using a range of different media platforms. There are a lot of methods that the film distributors are able to use nowadays thanks to a proliferation of hardware and content concerning the internet. The purpose of these methods is to inform and spread awareness of the product to their target audience and create a kind of ‘hype’. For example, some film distributors might choose to advertise outdoors, this would include billboards, building canvas’ bus stop and bus body posters. Digital advertisement seems to be the dominant form of advertisement in our day and age, a film distributor can use website adds, YouTube video’s, tweets, radio adverts, and more to spread awareness to the public audience. This being said, it depends which demographic the distributors are trying to appeal to. For example, if the demographic is young teens, the distributors are likely to invest in online advertising or more specifically, social media advertisement due to the high usage of social media in youth today. 

Another valid example is the recent ad campaign released for the late Deadpool. This is a film with a large target audience therefore the distributors are likely to invest equally in both online and outdoor advertisement that will appeal to a large demographic and mass audience.  It is enormously important for the distributors to know the film’s target audience so that they can invest money in understanding how and what the audience want to see in the film in order to gratify their needs.

Deadpool is a 2016 American Antihero film starring Ryan Reynolds. The film is based on a story from an amalgamation of many original Deadpool comics published by Marvel and was distributed and marketed by the media giant 20^th Century Fox. 20^th Century Fox is an American film studio that has distributed a respectful portion of Marvel films including the entire X Men franchise as well as spin-offs like The Wolverine and Logan. It is one of the biggest film heads in the world having featured its iconic intro in some of the best films ever made; It only takes a glance of the company’s logo for the audience to gather that the film will be a smash at the box office. Unlike the previous Marvel films released by 20^th Century Fox, Deadpool was rated a 15 certificate in the UK which tells us a lot about the film and its audience. Due to the film belonging to the Marvel universe, its primary demographic was mostly men and male teenagers, because of its R- rating, many of the younger teenagers had to be accompanied by adults in order to legally view the film. This caused the demographic to include Women and children due to the younger ones having to bring an adult.

Deadpool is a fitting example of unified identity with its variety of marketing techniques. To start with genre, Deadpool is a hybrid film containing iconography from action films, science fiction, romance, adventure, comedy and more. This means that naturally the film appeals to a huge audience due to the variety of its themes. In order to meet Deadpool’s already existing comedy values, 20^th Century Fox went all out on the advertisement for the film. For example, because the film was due to be released around Valentine’s day, the distributors released a series of mock posters for the film that made the film look like it was going to be a love film. They also made a billboard that made the words Deadpool using popular emoji from the Apple IPhone, the distributors then mocked their own poster with another poster enforcing those comedic values that fans identify as belonging to Deadpool. The whole campaign seemed a little bit homemade and desperate which was intentional to try and make it look like Deadpool had made the advertisement himself; this is conventional to the way that Deadpool continuously breaks the 4^th wall with his audience no matter the platform, be it video game, comic, or movie.

Deadpool had two audiences who were very likely to go and see the film no matter how effective the advertisement campaign. You had the pre-existing fan base for both the Deadpool character and Ryan Reynolds which was advantageous. Ryan Reynolds took control of the social media accounts and was posting teaser videos and images, some were serious and some were funny; some of the funny ones went viral so people who didn’t know about the film were informed of its release on social media. Aside from this the iconography of guns and swords within the film is conventional to action film genre, it is also a phallic symbol connoting power. Since Deadpool’s release in early February, the film has made over $780 million. This ranks the film the 8^th highest grossing film of all time, critics believe it was down to its incredibly strong marketing campaign and gripping narrative along with the colossal demographic that went to go see it.