Audience

Profiling

What is Audience Profiling?Audience Profiling allows a researcher to find out the profile of the audience before hand so that you can put across your message to the right people in the most effective way to produce the best result.

This can include details such as age, sex, educational qualification, work experience, financial background, field of work, interests, mood, orientation, bias, food habits, religious background, physique, health condition etc...

Why do companies use Audience Profiling?

Audience Profiling is a task all games publishers need to perform when creating a new product to launch onto the market. When defining an audience, factors that must be considered include:• Age, Gender, Race and Sexuality• Education • Occupation• Annual Income • Disposable Income• Current Lifestyle / Aspirational or Desired Lifestyle • Culture • Media Interests• Buying Habits• Loyalty to Brands

Mind map

DemographicsA common and traditional method of audience profiling is known as demographics. This defines the adult population largely by the work that they do.

It breaks the population down into 6 groups, and labels them by using a letter code to describe the income and status of the members of each group.

Psychographics

This is a way of describing an audience by looking at their behaviour and personality traits. Psychographics labels a particular type of person and makes an assessment about their viewing and spending habits.

The audience is the group of people who are going to be watching your media products. What this means is that what is produced must appeal to those people or else they will not buy it.

Audiences come under four categories which are Mainstreamers, Aspirers/Social Climbers, Succeeds and Reformers.

Mainstreamers - People who fall into this category tend to take a liking into popular TV shows that are on during peak times, films that are currently showing in the cinema and music that features in the charts. They do not like media products that are too offensive or challenging against the 'norms'. Any example of some music that is in the charts at the moment, that is similar to our song, is Ed Sheeran's Lego House. This shows that even though the song we've chosen, Answer Machine, isn't a typical chart song it can appeal to mainstreamers.

Aspirers/Social Climbers - These type of people are ones who look up to the characters the actors play in the TV shows and/or films, or music artists. They see them as their role models, someone to base themselves on or someone to follow in the footsteps of to make themselves better people. They take what their models have achieved and turn them into goals that they would like to reach. Physical materials and social statuses can drive these kind of people to do well, for example getting money for expensive cars, jewellery and designer clothes.

Succeeds - People who fall into this category tend to already have established their place in life as they know what they want/need and how to get it. They believe that they are successful. In order for all this they would need to have had experience and therefore would probably be the older audience members.

Reformers - Those who can be put into this category like media products that challenge the 'norm'. They have a tendency to use new technologies to gain access and research into new music or music that exists in niche markets. Personal growth and how they can take part in make social changes as they view this to be very important. Also they care about the well being of other people and believe in caring and sharing. Sarah McLachlan is a Canadian singer/song writer who made a video for her song, World's on Fire, which cost a total of $15 instead of the $150,000 it would of cost if it was done professionally. All McLachlan used was a friend and a home video camera. Throughout the video it shows how much each component of the music video, from make-up artists to lighting, would cost and how that money could instead be used to help people in under developed countries. The first figure is $200 for a production assistant for a single day which could pay for 100 children's school fees for a term in Ethiopia. At the end of the video, it says that all the money that could be sent to help all those people was actually sent. This makes people think about how we're spending money and of course caring for the well being of others.

Young & Rubicam's 4Cs Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation

Questionnaire

I created a questionnaire to gain both quantative data about the gaming likes, and dislikes of Eccles college students .

From results I found that most people who belong in E of the Demographics category (Students) played for the longest amount of time, also the games in which they played were mostly games in the charts. Popular titles such as Call Of Duty, Halo & Skyrim were the most played in the group of people I asked. Also the majority of people I asked were gamers and owned some of the best selling gaming consoles such as Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

23%

32%9%

23%

14%

What Forms do people play games on?

PlaystationXboxWiiPhone/TabletPC

22%

22%

19%

19%

11%

4% 4%

What Genre people prefer?

FPS

Adventure

RPG

Puzzle/maze

Family

Educational

Indie