Dosing instead of spreading
It’s easy to say. But choosing the right spice for each dish and precisely balancing the intensity of the flavor with the delicately prepared dishes—that’s what sets a truly good cook apart. If, on the other hand, salt, pepper, or nutmeg are added by the spoonful while seasoning, the food is guaranteed to taste terrible. By Florian Weischer, Managing Director of WerbeWeischer
What can the medium of cinema learn from this? Clearly, advertising also has to taste good - for the advertisers, but above all for the target groups at which the advertising is aimed. Cinema advertising per se is traditionally very popular with moviegoers. But what does "dosing instead of scattering" mean for cinema campaigns? It means that we are looking for planning solutions that filter out the people relevant to a brand within the medium of cinema. And this works best via the movie - anything but simple, but it works.
The general target group structure of moviegoers is interesting: active and mobile, rather younger people, socially engaged, no "couch potatoes", well educated and financially able to cope well in the leisure jungle outside their own four walls. However, it only becomes really exciting when these target groups can be differentiated more precisely in terms of their characteristics. A few years ago, it was still possible to say that cinema-goers as a whole were more specific than any given TV environment (on a reasonably wide-reaching channel). In a differentiated media world with an exponentially increasing number of available channels, this no longer applies.
For us, this also means that we have to offer finer and more precise instruments. Compared to TV - especially with the current desolate data situation - this is a rather simple exercise. Precise attendance figures from all box office data of the cinemas per screening, day and campaign already provide an unsurpassed accurate picture of the performance achieved. Even a functioning panel will not be able to keep up with this. The challenge for cinemas, however, lies with the films. Why shouldn't a campaign that is primarily aimed at women also be shown to a female audience? A cinema campaign will therefore have to be geared towards the structural data of the target group. To do this, it must be known or validly forecast what the visitor structure of the 500 or so new films that are released in cinemas every year will look like. It's a lot of work, but it can be done. Once this task has been solved - and please at the individual film level and not by genre - a reliable audience forecast per film is required. Also a lot of work, but solvable. For this purpose, all films from the last few years are used for referencing with their audience structures. The better this preparation is done, the higher the target group share will be in the planning - and the more accurately the campaign will achieve or even exceed its performance targets.
To avoid having to "reinvent" every target group, we have created prototypical clusters that make planning easier for agencies and clients. Experienced cinema planners can also get very close to their target group by selecting individual films. We call the process "Werbe Weischer CR" and are a little proud that it works so well in Switzerland. Within just under six months, it has completely redefined the standards in a market that was previously completely static for long periods of time. We are also pleased that some (but not all) of its components have been imitated in the market.
Taking a closer look and adapting to the specific tastes of the target group has always been an advantage. It's all about the right dose - in the movies as well as in food.
