Industry

• Marketing


  Essential in the television industry to appeal to and attract a range of target audiences
• High viewing figures


  • Important for programmes like Hinterland which was originally broadcast on public service broadcasting channels to justify the licence fee
• Programmes broadcast on commercial channels like ITV


  • Must be popular with audiences to attract advertisers who fund these channels
• Advertising techniques used to promote Hinterland and Prime Suspect


  1. Compare to establish their historical contexts

  2. Show evidence of developments in advertising techniques

  3. Analyse how successful these have been in an increasingly globalised market
• Prime Suspect


  • First broadcast in the early 1990s before digital marketing became a main feature of marketing campaigns
  • Had to rely on more traditional advertising techniques such as trailers, posters, actors being interviewed on television, articles in TV scheduling guides and newspaper reviews
• Hinterland


  • A much more recent crime drama
  • Able to access recent online innovations such as the social networking sites of Facebook and Twitter
  • Also took advantage of the more traditional techniques employed by the producers of Prime Suspect
• Marketing


  • Important for the success of both programmes both before and after release as each relied on DVD sales and selling of the programmes to channels in other countries as well as streaming sites
• Measuring success of marketing campaigns

  1. Viewing figures

  2. Global uptake
• Hinterland trailer


  • High quality pre-release trailer on S4C and BBC Wales
  • Made audiences aware of its bilingual unique selling point to attract those interested in Welsh culture
  • Included many scenes of the Welsh countryside as some of the funding for the programme was provided by the Welsh Government who were promised by Fiction Factory that Wales would be promoted in the series
  • Added to audience appeal and resulted in an additional £4.2m of income into the Welsh economy through increased tourism
  • Use of wild landscapes and the clever combination of high-key and low-key fighting connotes the Nordic noir sub-genre of the programme, attracting a niche audience who are fans of this sub-genre
  • Inclusion of the BBC and S4C logos acted as assurances to audiences that their expectations would be fulfilled
• Hinterland trailer focus


  • Key features of traditional crime drama such as character types
  • Audiences introduced to DC Mathias who comes across as a low-key, dedicated detective more interested in doing his job well than showboating to impress
  • His serious, anti-heroic personality would appeal to a more modern audience, who prefer more realistic character portrayals in TV drama and is also typical of the Nordic noir genre
• Hinterland promotional posters


  • Present audiences with many features to attract them to the programme
  • Include the main Nordic Noir features of the trailers, focusing on the landscape and moody, atmospheric shots
• Hinterland's marketing


  • Bleak settings
  • Combining half-sight and shadow to evoke atmosphere
  • Ensemble cast of well-known actors
  • Connote detective team-work
  • Traditional iconography of the genre (police uniforms)
• Enigma


  Captures audience interest and drives narratives
• Hinterland's marketing included Welsh and English written codes, indicating the programme as a bilingual crime drama
• Hinterland's interactive, personalised web page "Catch-a-Killer"


  • Attracted a more modern and younger audience
  • Encouraged audience participation
  • Promoted the programme to participants' Facebook friends
• VR experience


  Provided audiences with the modern desire to participate with media texts
• Hinterland was the most widely viewed programme on BBC Wales and was sold to twelve other countries in Europe, Japan, the USA and eventually to streaming site Netflix
• Prime Suspect's marketing


  • Promotional posters
  • Trailers
  • Pre-release interviews with the main star, Helen Mirren
  • Carefully constructed DVD cover
• Main selling point


  A list star, Helen Mirren
• The trailer focuses on the character of DCI Tennison and appeals to audiences who would have been enthralled to see a woman take on a dominant role in a TV crime drama
• The series' promotional posters focus mainly on Mirren and emphasise her active female role as her image dominates the mise-en-scene
• The images of other well-known actors in the posters and DVD cover indicate an ensemble cast, similar to Hinterland, fulfilling audience expectations of crime drama
• The posters and DVD cover also include typical crime drama iconography such as police uniforms, line-ups and the inside of police stations
• to further satisfy audience expectations of the gerve Las Hinterland, also
• logos


  such as Granada as a mark of excellence
• Although the dremo had Imitations in how it was marketed due to it being produced at
• time when the internet was in its infancy, it wil was extremely successful
• Its first episode attracted over 14m viewers and consistently attracted over 10 mion throughout the r series
• It went on to have five subsequent successful series
• I received many awards for its acting and writing in both the UK and the USA
• A version of the series was also produced in the USA
• Furthermore, in 2013 Netflix made the series available for online streaming and is still extremely popular with modern audiences, having withstood the best of time
• is reasonable to conclude therefore that both programmes relied on very succes marketing campaigns for their initial popularity
• both employed traditional marketing techniques, although the more recent Hinterland benefitted from modem interactive methods made available by the internet
• Their success emphashes how crime drama was and still is the most popular TV genre and vital to the success of both commercial and P58 channels