Big screen adverts with young women in mind

Carlton Screen Advertising is seeking to woo healthy lifestyle brands by promoting a new year’s advertising package for films such as Les Misérables that are likely to attract female cinemagoers.

“The cinema is the ideal place to target health-conscious females and persuade them to incorporate your brands into their new year’s resolutions,” the cinema sales house is reminding advertisers.

Ignore the calories in those butter-drenched popcorn buckets for a moment; forget about the kidult pleasure of pick-and-mix – Carlton cites data collated by marketing researchers Target Group Index that suggests 15- to 34-year-old women who are “heavy” cinemagoers are more health-conscious than the average 15- to 34-year-old female.

According to the data, this group is 39 per cent more likely to visit a gym or leisure centre once a week or more and 61 per cent more likely to agree that they “follow a strict diet”.

They are also 20 per cent more likely to buy food with added health benefits, with 23 per cent more likely to seek light or diet versions of food and drink.

“Obviously, in the first quarter there tend to be slightly more highbrow films on release – films with slightly more cerebral content to them,” says Eoin Wrixon, Carlton’s general manager. “We have looked at the ones that will have a certain appeal to women.”

The musical Les Misérables, which stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried, is “obviously going to be a big film for Universal”, he adds.

“The comparison being done profile-wise is with Mamma Mia, although Les Misérables is probably a bit more appealing to men than Mamma Mia.”

Over the Christmas period, Ang Lee’s adaptation of The Life of Pi is also expected to bring in a female audience, while films scheduled for release in the key movie month of February include the adaptation of David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, zombie rom-com Warm Bodies, historical comedy Hyde Park on Hudson and the re-release of two Baz Luhrmann films, Moulin Rouge! and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet.

Awards package

As well as offering packages segmented by age, gender and positioning in the reel, CSA also sells an annual Awards Package to advertisers who want to associate their brand with “the more discerning 20-plus ABC1 audience” that seeks out Oscar-bothering films at this time of year.

Healthy lifestyle brands are not in the regular habit of using cinema advertising to sell to a captive audience.

“That’s the nub of it,” says Wrixon. “We’re trying to look at markets that we wouldn’t traditionally pick up.”

In 2013, Carlton Screen Advertising will pitch for the business of other fast-moving consumer goods brands, insurance firms and the motor industry, which is a big cinema advertiser in car-producing countries, but less so in Ireland.

Although production costs have in the past restricted cinema advertising to large consumer brands, the recent proliferation of digital cinema screens has made it cheaper and easier for advertisers to make big-screen versions of small-screen campaigns.

Despite smash hit box office performances by Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises and a strong fourth quarter, Carlton forecasts that cinema admissions in Ireland are likely to be down 3-5 per cent on 2011.

“The Olympics did have an impact,” Wrixon adds.

However, the opening of new screens next year and enhancements such as the arrival of the Imax screen in the Dublin Cineworld should help put bums on seats.