1. LO3
Task 1
Captain America The Thing
Genre Sci-Fi/Action Horror/Mystery/Sci-fi
Target audience Mid teens – Mid 30s’ (Male) Mid teens – Mid
30s’ (Male & Female)
Year of production 2011 2011
Director Joe Johnston Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Producer Kevin Feige Marc Abraham &
Eric Newman
Distributor Warner Bros Universal Pictures
Box office takings $65,058,524 $16, 907, 450
Budget 140, 000, 000 $35, 000, 000
UK release date 29th July 2011 2nd December 2011
T.V.
TV advertising is one of the most useful forms of advertising for a movie. So long as the
advertisement is aired on a suitable TV channel. It would be inappropriate and ineffective to air an
advertisement for Horror movie on a child’s TV station, such as CITV. The target audience for a
horror movies is men and women aged from around 15-35. It would be much more appropriate to
air a horror advert on channel with a similar target audience such as E4.
Web (social network)
Advertising via social networking sites is a very useful medium. This is because once one person has
seen the advertisement, they can then send the link to their friends, with this the advertisement is
passed around and more people see it. Friends can then talk about the product on and off the site
thus creating ‘word of mouth’ advertising.
Cinema
Cinema advertising, in my opinion, has the same concept as television advertising. It a very effective
medium, as long as it is aired before an appropriate movie i.e. it would be inappropriate to air a
child’s’ film before a horror movie. This is because those who are watching the horror movie are a
specific audience of which, the majority of people would not be interested in a child’s’ film.

2. Billboards
Billboards are generally targeted at adults in my opinion. I believe that this is the case because
billboards are generally positioned by the road and so the people who tend to see them are in cars.
Location is important with billboards. It would be useless to
advertise a newly released movie where there is no cinema in
the local area.
Posters
Posters have the same concept as billboards. They must be
strategically positioned. I believe that they differ from
billboards in terms of target audience. An ideal location for
poster would be at a stop. This means that the target audience
for an advert at a bus stop be the young, on their way to and
from school, and those who cannot afford to drive. This
information can be useful because if you know the bus stop
near a school you can advertise products that would appeal to
teenagers.
Newspapers
If you are literally putting the advert into the newspaper, it can be a useful resource. However if the
newspaper is writing a review of the product e.g. a film, it cannot always work in the companies
favour. Because it is the newspaper company and not the production company’s review, the content
might be positive or negative. If the feedback is positive then readers will believe what they read
because in their eyes, the content is from a reliable source, however if the feedback is negative then
the reader will already have negative feelings towards the film, before they have seen it.
Magazines (interviews/reviews)
A magazine review has the same concept as a newspaper review
in the sense that it can influence its reader’s opinion on the film
before they have seen it for themselves. Where magazine articles
differ from newspapers is where a newspaper article is often very
formal and somewhat factual, where magazines often have a
more informal tone. This means that the writer in a magazine will
express his/her opinions in a much more obvious way. If the
feedback is positive then the writer will of course give praise to
the production company and urge all of his/her readers to go and
watch the film. However the feedback is negative then the writer
will be a lot harsher with their words. If anything they will try to
persuade the readers to avoid the film.
The internet (official web pages)
The internet cannot always be a reliable source of information and so fans of a soon to be released
movie can go to the official web page to read information that they trust to be legitimate.

3. Word of mouth
Word of mouth is a very useful strategy in terms of marketing. However a production company must
first give some information to talk about, thus creating the word of mouth. If somebody reads some
information about a movie that they believe is interesting, they can go a talk to their friends about it.
While the friends are discussing the movie somebody may over hear the conversation and either join
in, or go and research it. And so a number of people now about the movie even though only one
person saw it.
Synergies: Games/books/soundtracks/toys/comics/T-Shirts
Merchandise is a useful source of marketing. In my opinion the
most successful piece of merchandise in terms of advertising is
clothing. If for example somebody is wearing a Captain America T-
Shirt, for the length of time that they are wearing that T-Shirt they
are literally a walking advertisement. Everybody who sees the T-
Shirt will be reminded of the movie.
Task 2
The target audience for Captain America was mostly males with 64% of those attending being male.
More than 55% of males attending were aged over 25.
Kevin Feige has targeted his audience at a similar audience to that of the comic books. However the
majority of those who went to see the film were aged over 35, this means that those who attended
are the group that grew up reading the comic books. In these modern times, very few young people
read comic books. For this reason, superhero movies hold no sentimental value to the young; and so
in order entice this audience the movie must be more than anything, a blockbuster movie.
Captain America is not a movie that one would typically expect to be targeted at a female audience.
It is an action movie with very few female cast members. Because the movie is male dominated
movie, Feige had to somehow make the film appeal to women. To do this he used Chris Evans.