Here’s shocking news: Movie studios market to the young!
A must-read article in TheWrap:
The latest market research by the MPAA carries a clear message to the marketing arms of the studio: Target the young.
This is important to what we see because the six major studios rarely, if ever, greenlight a project unless it is certified as “marketable” in America. What makes a movie “marketable” is that the marketing arm finds that it contains the action, stars, visual effects or other elements that it needs to put in 30-second television ads to activate millions of people on a particular weekend to go to the opening of a movie at thousands of screens across the country.
This operation is extremely costly. The average ad budget was $32 million for wide-released movie in 2010. But even with such huge budgets, given the cost of TV advertising, studios usually can only afford seven times coverage, which means hitting the same television audience seven times in the weeks prior to its opening.
To be effective, not only must the ads resonate with those targeted, but those targeted must be people who are frequent moviegoers. If they are not, even if the ads excite them, they are unlikely to go to that movie. So the marketability decision really comes down to a single issue: Will a proposed movie yield the kind of ads that will reach frequent moviegoers at a cost the studio is willing spend?
In the pre-television era, there was no problem finding frequent moviegoers. That job description indeed fit most Americans. As late as 1948, some 60 percent of all Americans routinely went to the movie theaters in an average week. But, alas, that is no longer the case. According to the 2010 Theatrical Market Statistics Report, “frequent moviegoers,” now defined as people who go at least once a month, constituted “only 11 percent of the population.”
11% of the population who are considered to be “frequent moviegoers.” And nearly half of that group is the 25 and under crowd. That’s who the studios are absolutely obsessed with. Now you know why there are all these movies coming out this summer, one superhero flick after another.
One other point: Occasionally I’ll get an email about why I spend so much time posting about the importance of generating strong high concepts, understanding which genres are the most popular, and movie marketing in general. The answer lies in the excerpt above: “…the six major studios rarely, if ever, greenlight a project unless it is certified as ‘marketable’ in America.”
Good litmus test for that script you’re writing: Is it something a movie studio can sell in a 30 second TV ad? Is it the kind of script to have “action, stars, visual effects or other [significant] elements”? If it is, you increase your chances of selling it. If not, you don’t.
For more of the article, go here.