Audience and Institutions: The Woman in Black

Who do you think the primary and secondary target audience is for The Woman in Black?

The primary audience of The Women in Black are young adults of all genders and fans of the Horror genre. I think this because of the way the film has been promoted. Social media campaigns, YouTube uploads and the use of ‘web 2.0’ were common ways of promoting the film. These media forms are often used by teenagers, therefore, this type of promotion would target them.  

The Women in Black has been adapted from a novel and is also a theatre play. The secondary target audience are people who have seen or had an interest in either the novel or the play. These people are typically older than the primary target audience and middle class. Radio and press advertisement and even a new book cover promoting the film is aimed to appeal to the secondary target audience. Daniel Radcliffe has a large fan base because of his huge success in the series of Harry Potter films. Even if the Horror genre isn’t usually of their interested, fans of Harry Potter will be attracted to this purely based on their interest in Daniel Radcliffe.     

How was The Woman in Black marketed? 

The Women in Black was frequently promoted on social media website such as Twitter and Facebook. They had their own page on each of the sites, which was used to constantly bombard the people interested in the page with updates and information about the film. Online forms of marketing were aimed at the primary target audience of male and females under the age of twenty-five. Whereas, large poster on billboards over the world and smaller posters printed into newspapers were aimed at a secondary target audience. YouTube was also used to create a competition where you could win prizes including The Women in Black merchandise if you entered your own ‘ghost story’. This would entice the audience into entering the competition and subsequently rise their interested in the film.

The marketing campaign for The Women in Black was massive, covering a rage of both print and online media sources. The overall budget of the film was $17 million and 50% of this was likely to have been spent on marketing it which is why it was able to successfully reach a large range of audiences.

Do you think the marketing materials for the film were appropriate? 

The Woman in Black is rated a 12A. Therefore, the main target audience of the film will be adolescent and young adult horror fans. Appropriate marketing materials such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have been used to attract this audience. However, the marketing has been taken border to places such as The Guardian and IMDB to attract an older and more mature audience, which was also successful. Merchandise is normally aimed at children or families and the Horror genre is far from that. None the less, “The Women in Black” merchandise was sold. This may have been a little inappropriate, as the typical target audience for merchandise is not Horror fans. However, people who really enjoyed the film may be interested in this.

What kind of release did the film have?

The Women in Black had an average sized release of 2,855 screens in the opening weekend. This number of screenings was made to seem average when compared to other Horror film released in the same year such as The Devil Inside (2,285 screens) and The Possession (2,816 screens). However, V/H/S, another Horror film released in 2012 only had 15 screenings on its opening weekend. So, compared to this, the release was extremely large. 

How much did The Woman in Black cost to make and what was the industry impact of The Woman in Black?

The estimated production budget for The Women in Black was around $17 million. It cost almost half of this to market the film, leaving the other half to spend on producing the film. The Women in Black was the biggest selling British Horror film of 2012 with a worldwide gross of $127,730,736. After the success of this film, it impacted the industry as other films wanted to market their own film similarly in hope of reaching the success this one did. The Women in Black also allowed its production company ‘Hammer Film’ (once known as ‘Hammer Horrors’) to have huge success again after many years of producing many unsuccessful films.        

Why do you think the film was so successful?

I think the key reason The Women in Black was hugely successful was the use of Daniel Radcliffe as the main character and how well and involved he got in the marketing of the film. Radcliffe has a massive fan base from his success in the Harry Potter franchise. So, naturally, all these fans are going to want to see him in the first film he appears in after this (whatever the film may be). Radcliffe was very involved when marketing the film. As well as appearing in all the posters and trailers, he was also willing to take part in a large amount of interviews to promote this film. This was because he wanted to escape from being known as only Harry Potter and take on more mature roles in future films. Another reason the film was so successful was because of vast amount of advertising. Over $5 million was spent on advertising to film on a diverse range of platforms including radio, TV and billboards. They advertised the films in areas that they knew they would get the attention of their primary audience. But, the secondary audience were also reached due to the large amount of advertising.