The Film Marketing of

Somers Town
(S. Meadows, UK 2008)
by
Cina Aissa
cinnaramone@yahoo.co.uk

In this essay, I am going to analyse the campaign behind the 7th film of Shane
Meadows, Somers Town (S. Meadows, UK 2008). A typical coming of age film,
Somers Town follows the cartoonesque adventures of two adolescents: Tomo, freshly
arrived from the Midlands and Marek, a withdrawn polish boy who lives alone with
his dad. After meeting by accident in Somers Town, the boys are brought together by
their loneliness and boredom. At the local greasy spoon café, they meet Maria, a
French waitress who they both fancy. Meanwhile, on the estate, an eccentric
neighbour gives them small cash-in-hand jobs. But when Maria vanishes, the boys are
devastated and look for a way to see her again. Thankfully, after saving some cash,
and getting discounted tickets through Marek’s dad , they can jump on the Eurostar,
which is a mechanical character in the background ready to take them there. Just like
in the Wizard of Oz, the boys escape their grim black and white reality and dive into a
dreamlike Technicolor montage of happy moments with Maria once they have
crossed the channel.
First, I will explain how Somers Town came about, how it was marketed and who is
its target audience?
Then, using the responses I got to my questionnaire, I will try and draw a picture of
the primary and secondary Shane Meadows fan and Somers Town audience.

Quite unusually, the ‘Somers Town’ project was born when Eurostar
approached Mother, the advertising agency, to create a positive narrative around the
place of the Eurostar train in the context of the overall regeneration of the King’s
Cross area. “Mother wrote a screenplay entitled ‘Somers Town’ around the emotions
evoked by Eurostar , when tasked with creating a ‘legacy’ and positioning Eurostar as
THE definitive high-speed cross-channel train service ahead of market deregulation in
2010. The approach secured Shane Meadows as the director.”

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(http://www.motherlondon.com/)
Here, the film was based on a campaign rather than the other way around. The
Eurostar brand was positioned through the Somers Town film. But the film still
needed to be marketed as a film for the commercial message to emerge and reach as
wide an audience as possible. The commercial goal was twofold, one was to entice
people to see the film and the other one was to get those who saw the film or heard
about it to spread positive word of mouth about the passage to Paris, even
encouraging them to book tickets on the Eurostar. Somers Town is also a road movie
by train and the happiness found on the other side of the tunnel is directly associated
to the Eurostar brand.
There were several avenues to be used in building attention, interest, desire and
action. Choosing Shane Meadows to direct Somers Town was no coincidence. An
acclaimed British director known for his cinematography, his humorous settings in
the lower classes of British society and his use of non-professional actors, Meadows
is the epitome of the hard-working director who started at the bottom of the ladder, by
doing no-budget short films, employing friends and family. Like an old wine, he has
matured and is now associated with quality by connoisseurs. Those connoisseurs
constitute the target audience for both Somers Town and a Eurostar trip. They are
baby boomers with a good disposable income and a love for art film, which has “an
increasing audience”(Durie 2000:92). From the same generation as Meadows, they
are nostalgic of ‘teenage kicks’, old England and the ‘good old times’. They take
comfort in Britishness.
Meadows’ name is put forward on the poster, his ‘personal style’ (Bordwell and
Thompson 1990: 29) is recognisable and announces “that the film is clearly an art
house film-one that will appeal to a specialized audience that is primarily composed
of relatively affluent, educated people living in urban areas” (Durie 2000: 94). The
poster also presents Somers Town as an “intimate art house drama” (Durie 2000: 94)
with only the name of the director, the awards and the big sans serif title in yellow
(one of the colours of the Eurostar logo) stand out the black and white photography of
Tomo and Marek in the background..

Somers Town (...summer time?) was released in the UK on the 22 nd August 2008 on
60 screens for the two weeks but then dropped to 39 screens in the 3rd week. It was
introduced to an expecting audience through advance screenings on 11 th august 2008

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across the UK. It was an end of the summer release that relied on the last week of the
summer holiday’s time and spending budget to invest in this feel-good social drama.
Prior to that, Somers Town had travelled through a network of key film festivals in the
spring and the summer. The film was officially selected at The Berlinale (February),
was awarded best actor at Tribeca Film Festival (April-may 2008) in New-York and
won the Best British Film award at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June 2008. All this
information presented the film as a high quality production that earned high
exposition through a multitude of reviews and positive word of mouth and before its
anticipated release. Even controversy claiming that Somers Town was just product
placement gave extensive coverage to Somers Town. The film did £ 121,345 during
its first week in the UK ‘s box office. Because of its success in England, it was later
bought by Film Movement in the US and Advitam in France.
It was released in both countries in July 2009. Its Total US Box
Office was $46,660 (http://www.thenumbers.com/movies/2009/0SOTO.php)

In doing the questionnaires, I tried to build a profile of the type of people who
are familiar with Shane Meadows’ films and to see what motivated them to go back
and see more of this director’s films. My first question asked people if they had seen
Somers Town. If not, they were then advised to turn to question 4 which was more
generally about Meadows but not only in relation to Somers Town. In analyzing the
questionnaires, I separated the ones who had seen Somers Town (4) from the ones
who had not (16). I was shocked to discover how hard it was to find people who had
seen the film. Out of 20 people, only 4 people had seen it. It really is a culty
conceptual movie, people are more aware of ‘This is England’. I now realise that
people who had neither seen the film or any other films from Shane Meadows were
left alienated and have obviously also skipped the questions about the expectations of
a Meadows film.
Looking first at the people who had seen the film, I asked who and where they saw it.
I was trying to establish there if they went to the cinema or were more likely to watch
on DVD. I was also trying to catch the mood of the audience that went to see Somers
Town: did they go with a large group of friends, alone or in a couple? I was unable to
draw any conclusions as my sample was too small and my questions could have been
better but here are my results (see also appendix 2):
-The people who saw the film seem to have been more influenced by word of mouth

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and their liking of a previous Meadows’ film than by advertising.
-This is England (2006) was the film that had been the most watched, followed by
Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) and Twenty Four Seven (1997).
- Surprisingly, the actors, plot and setting were more liked than the cinematography.
- Expectations of Shane Meadows movies were equally about the use of non-
professional actors and realism, followed by an alternative plot, cinematography and
providing intellectual stimulation.
-Out of the 20 people, 9 said they went to the cinema yearly or rarely, 6 said they
went monthly.
- In terms of occupations, 5 of the 20 were self-employed creatives, 4 were office
workers and 3 were skilled manual workers.
- The media consumed was mostly Internet, followed by television and broadsheets.
- 13 men and 7 women filled in my questionnaires. 3 out of the 4 people who saw
Somers Town were male.
- Most of the people who took part were between the ages of 35 and 44 but there was
also a fair amount of awareness within the 25 to 34 category .

Finally, in my next essay, I would like to compare the marketing campaigns of

2 of Shane Meadows films. One of them will certainly be Somers Town (2008) but I
am still hesitating between This is England (2006) and Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee
(2009). Le Donk is a spoof-documentary/ comedy that takes place backstage of an
Arctic Monkeys concert.
If I go with Somers Town and le Donk, I will most certainly focus on the tie-ins with
Eurostar and Arctic Monkeys. I think it would be interesting to look at the
relationship between the people who have watched Somers Town and people who
travel on the Eurostar, to see these groups are homogenous or if they mix. In Le
Donk, I will focus on seeing if any Meadows fans were already into Arctic Monkeys
or if any Arctic monkeys fans have become interested in Shane Meadows because of
his latest film.
In looking at This is England, I want to find out who the target audience was, how
they were hooked and why it is the most famous Shane Meadows’ film as quoted on
the cover of Somers Town. How did it become a turning point in Shane Meadows
career? I would also like to learn from the way I have conducted my survey and ask
myself what I can do better next time. I already know that I need to take more time in

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selecting whom I give my survey to, when and where I can find such people. I think
more planning can get me more satisfactory results. I also want to narrow my scope of
research and focus my questions more.

Bibliography:
- Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, an introduction, McGraw-Hill, New-York 1990

-Durie, Pham, Watson , Marketing and selling your film around the world , Silman-
James Press, Los Angeles, 2000.

-Jancovich et al, The Place of the Audience, Cultural Geographies of Film

Consumption, BFI Publishing, 2003, London.

Websites:
http://www.motherlondon.com/
http://shanemeadows.co.uk/
http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/14634