Task 1- Unit 6

Defining an audience for a media company is very useful as it means that they can analyse
their viewers and create new media products that they would want to watch which
ultimately brings in more money for them.

“Your task in defining your target group is to identify and understand your particular niche
and dominate it“

Targeting an audience comes in useful when:

 Creating relevant content
 Creating Ads
 Putting messages across

Case study :

Stranger things

Looking at the different social media outlets , the clear target audience would be students
that are around 15-20. They include memes which generally is targeted at young teenagers
as they create similar memes for their own entertainment. The show itself targets anyone
that grew up in the 80s, Steven Spielberg fans, sci-fi fans and teenagers. On IMDb 710,534
people have given it a rating and the overall rating is 8.8
stars. It got 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.

There was an independent study that was held when the

third season of Stranger Things was released and it found
that 26.4 million unique viewers in the USA watched the
show within the first three days. Netflix itself found that
more than 40 million people watched it within the first four
days globally. This unique study could be wrong due to kids using their parents Netflix
account, people pirating it off websites as they cant afford a Netflix account etc. Therefore
this study might not be correct. Netflix Instagram account has 14.4 million
followers and on average gets 1-2 million likes per post. On Twitter they
have 2.8M followers and on Facebook they have 7,642,350 likes. By using
Social Media they aim to create a community for the audience of the
shows where they can see exclusive behind the scenes content and get to
know the stars. By looking at the different social medias I found that
Instagram had the most followers which gives a hint that perhaps it is a
younger audience that follows the show as Instagram is the most used
social media outlet for teenagers.

There are different references to 80s films such as The Goonies, E.T, Close
Encounters etc. This appeals to people that grew up in the 80s as it
reminds them of their childhood and they grew up watching films that are
incorporated into the television show.

In IMDb the keywords that they use are “Government conspiracy, cover up, 1980s, mk ultra,
friendship” and under Genres it is Drama, fantasy, horror, mystery, sci-fi and thriller. If
someone was to type one of them keywords or genres into Netflix or into Google they
would get Stranger Things recommended to them – bringing in an audience that might not
have thought about watching it.

Promotional posters for

each season of Stranger
Things (so far) is above,
each is very similar to the
other and all include the
same title writing in the
same place and they kept
the same colour scheme
which is eye-catching,
mysterious and sci-fi
themed. The colours are
usually blue and red which
suggest danger, anger and
loneliness, depression.
This colour scheme makes sense as there is danger on
earth with the government doing the experiments and releasing a Demogorgon. The blue
suggests that the ‘Upside Down’ is lonely and mysterious as Will is lost all by himself in a
strange reality. These promotional posters are very similar to the Blade Runner and Star
Wars posters as the colour scheme is similar however they have different meanings for the
films. The layout is very similar as they have the main characters bigger than the others so
that they can promote that certain actor as being the main story. They have the secondary
characters beside the main character and have clues about what is going to happen in the
film/TV show to entice the audience to go and watch it as they can find out who that certain
person/thing is an why it is important to the story. This also brings us back to the reference
of the 80s as the marketing team wanted to make it clear to the targeted audience.

Another clue as to the target audience being younger teenagers is that big brands have
been advertising their brand as well as Stranger Things with clothing brands, Coca-Cola,
Burger King, Mongoose Max Bikes, H&M, Universal Studio Horror Nights, Video Games,
Baskin-Robbins, Nike, Ikea, Lego etc.

Coca-Cola

The reason that the Coke and Stranger Things worked together so good was that the
synergy between resurrecting 1985’s New Coke brand matched with the retro vibe that
Stranger Things does so well. The New Coke advertisement/Stranger Things teaser hybrid is
a cornerstone for the campaign and
was directed by the Duffer brothers.
This advert really aims at any coke
lovers as well as young adults.
H&M

The main reason that H&M and Stranger Things have this is due to fans wanting to dress like
the characters they love. This gives the shop a chance to make a lot of money off a brand
while also advertising Stranger Things. Some of the items of clothing has been replicated to
look similar to the clothes people wear in the show such as the Hawkins pool lifeguard
shirts, shorts, sandals, hats and visors which relates to the 4 th July theme in Season 3. This is
mainly aimed at teens or young adults.

Lego
This is aimed generally at anyone over the age of 15, a lot of people grew up with Legos and
this brings them back to their childhood in a reminiscent sort of way which is kind of what
the Duffer Brothers are trying to achieve with the 80s theme of the show. Once the set is
built, you have the Byers’ house in the

‘real’ world but also the upside down.

The set comes with all the favourite
characters of the TV show such as Eleven, Mike, Sheriff Hopper etc.

This all shows that the age of the viewers tends to be quite young however a good majority
of the audience can be adults as they have grown up in the 80s and can feel like they have a
bit of their childhood back.