1. LO3
Captain America The Thing
Genre Sci-Fi/Action Horror/Mystery/Sci-fi
Target audience Mid teens – Mid 30s’ Mid teens – Mid
(Male) 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

2. 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.
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)

3. 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.
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.
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. Chris Evans is an actor that would naturally
appeal to woman, the majority of roles he has played has been a ‘ladies man’. So
when women found out that he was acting in this film, they had a good idea what to
expect.
The research method the producer would use to find information about the target
audience, in my opinion, is simple. All they have to do is find out what kind audience
has an interest in the comic book character. He would be looking at an audience of
predominatly males aged around 15-40.

4. Captain America was an extremly success movie, taking $65,058,524 in the box
office, a notible higher amount than ‘The Things’ $16,907,450. Compared to Captain
America, The Thing was ‘low budget’. The substantial difference could have effected
the movies difference in success.
Star Theory is another reason for the movies’ difference in success. Captain America
featured many well known stars (Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jackson
and Samuel L. Jackson to name a few). The Thing however did not have as many
well known stars. Audiences often judge a film before they have even seen it and
decide whether or not to go see it, based on who is starring in it.