Developing audience awareness

The concept of audience development has become more defined in the last decade, and incorporated aspects of marketing and education. It's a matter of recognising what an audience likes and what is going to attract them to a film.

The main considerations for an audience development are;

Added value  -
Enhancing the experience for an audience, and enabling an audience to gain better knowledge and understanding of a film.

Audience retention - 
This is when you keep your existing audiences.

Frequency - 
Making the existing audiences attend more often.

Social inclusion - 
Including audiences from deprived areas, and communities.

New audience - 
Getting people who haven't attended before to add to the revenue.

Media companies use things like questionnaires, focus groups, and comparisons to existing media texts to see if there would be anyone interested in their idea. Producers want to know:

• income bracket or status
• age
• race
• gender
• location