Posters for Audiences

Part of your GCSE exam will focus on knowing how posters work and how they appeal to their different audiences.

To help us understand this I have taken some film posters from around the world and placed them next to their English equivalents. As you look through these, have a think about why the marketing companies have changed the advertising style for each country:

Saw VI

Hong Kong:

England:


Romancing the Stone



Poland:


England:

Mad Max 2: Road Warrior

Ghana:

England:

Lord of the Rings

Spain:

England:

Ice Age 3

Korea:

England:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

USA:

England:

District 9

Poland:

England:

Activity 1:

Choose at least 4 films from the selection above. Write 1-2 paragraphs for each of them explaining what differences the foreign poster has with the English one and why you think the advertisers have done this.

***BONUS POINTS*** if you can look at each of the foreign posters and tell me what other films these posters make the film being advertised look like (eg. The Polish District 9 poster makes it look like a certain Christian Bale movie involving robots and explosions and the USA Harry Potter poster makes it look like a certain vampire-based teen favorite... you know the one I'm talking about... with the pasty guy looking moody and the girl that keeps biting her lip.)

Activity 2

Find a poster for your favorite action film and create a radial analysis explaining how this poster appeals to the audience for this genre.

Some useful Action Film Links:

Wikipedia Article

FilmBug Article

Rotten Tomatoes Search Engine

MovieFone Article

HowToMake An Action Film

Guest Appearance in Miss O'Reilly's Lesson!

In today's lesson we will begin by learning the skills needed to make this advertisement out of the two images beneath it:

Market Research

The picture above is a joke but it has a serious message to it. Marketing is all about knowing your audience inside out. Making a beautiful product is entirely useless if nobody wants to buy it, and so a good deal of effort has to go into asking questions of the people you want to sell your product to.



The cartoon below is a very good example of the various ways in which people are able to know their audience:

But how do you get to know your intended audience well and find out what their interests are?

The simplest and most common way is with a survey. You see these all the time... on the high-street, on the internet, over the phone on the bus... our lives are full of people with clip-boards and ID cards who "just want to ask you a few questions, it won't take a minute."

I won't lie to you, I hate it when this happens ... getting asked for my free time by somebody who wants an insight into how to make me buy washing-up liquid ... awful business. But it is necessary to running a business and selling a product, and it is exactly what you are going to do to pass this course.

Title : Market Research

Activity 1: Write a paragraph in which you say what your product is (poster, magazine, music video, etc.) and who you are trying to sell it to.

Activity 2: Make a list of what you think are the 15 most important questions to ask your audience so that you can find out about how to sell a product to them.

Activity 3: Take your questions and turn them into a form which you can fill out as you ask various people to answer your questions. I have placed an example below.

Well done... you are now ready to start researching. Ask at least 2 people in the class to complete your survey and make a record of the answers they give.

Homework: Make at least 12 people take your survey and keep a record of their answers. You have until next Monday.