Audience Engagement Research - Halloween

Halloween was a psychological horror film based on the murders of fictitious serial killer Michael Myers. Our films have similar moods that the audience should be feeling. The audience should be creeped out about the location of the main antagonist. The target audience of both of these films is 15-25-year-old males. The marketing of the film Halloween had very little to Michael himself but focused on what he was doing with the slogan "The Night He Came Back" on the poster. The trailer only reveals that Michael is a murderer and that his victims in the film are babysitters. This is very similar to the idea that I pitched to the group when talking about the marketing aspects. I wanted to take a picture of the gas-masked used in the film and then have a simple phrase that didn't give away the plot of the movie. This idea of not knowing what the film is about is the persuasive technique. The marketing for Halloween is surrounded by the mystery of who Michael is and why he is trying to murder Jamie Lee Curtis' character. This is similar to the idea of our film as the movie is based on learning the true intent of the terrorists, so marketing would have to stay away from the idea of why the terrorist plans. Halloween was advertised on TV, radio, and print. The didn't use digital and billboard advertising for two different reasons; budget and technology. The internet hadn't been invented until 1983 so the film had nothing digital to use for marketing. Billboards weren't used to market Halloween due to budget restraints as the film only had $1.3 million (inflation rates applied) to create their entire film. Our film would take advantage of the digital marketing scheme as social media is a huge source of our target audience age range. The two platforms we would focus on using the most would be Instagram and Snapchat as it is easy to upload a shortened version of the trailer which would aid the idea of not spoiling the movie. Instagram's maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) is about $3.00 and Snapchat's ad campaigns are monthly charges of $3,000.