Creating An Audience Profile

Why do media producers classify their audience?

It is important for Media Producers to classify their audience. If they are going to release a new product, start a new business or generate sales on existing products, they need to know what their audience is for that product. Not knowing their audience’s interests can affect sales, or make a product not be popular for who they are targeting.

Media Producers use different methods to classify their audience. Depending on what product they are creating, they will use more of the same methods than others. They do this to gain an insight on what their audience is. They will want to know what the audience likes to help create their product. They will also want to know about them as individuals as well, by looking at Demographics, such as age, gender, employment status & location, as well as Psychographics, such as personality, values, attitudes, interests & lifestyles. This is to generate their audience to know where they stand when creating a product, & to bend that product to meet the aims of the audience. They will gain this information about their audience through Quantitative research, which will consist of structured data, statistical analysis, objective conclusions & surveys/experiments. This research is the bulk research giving you hard statistics & numbers. They will also use some pieces of Qualitative research, which would consist of a summary of their audience, subjective conclusions, unstructured data & interviews, observations or focus groups. This research allows you to gain an understanding of what your audience is, and what they like.

The reason Media Producers do this is to classify their audience, & bunch together who they will need to target. If a company was to create a sport magazine, they wouldn’t make the magazine appeal to people who may not participate in sports, enjoy sports or not interested in sports, as it would make sales plummet & then there would be no profit. When classifying audiences, they learn about the specific attributes that they need for the product they have or are making. To gain this information they will most likely use methods which would gather a large amount of responses, to help push their target audience to one side, so they know what to do to generate sales. This would most likely be surveys or questionnaires as these methods would gather a large amount of responses, as well as keeping the information that they need to know in there.

Classifying audiences is very useful for Media Producers as it will allow them to create a product for that specific group. This means they can include content which is going to appeal for this audience, which will make more sales & generate more profit. If their product makes enough revenue, then they can produce more products like this one to create more profit which can then be used for more product making or even advertisement. They would mainly look at specific attributes to see if they need to create a product which would appeal to only one gender or to both, and employment/social status, to make the availability to their audience easy. It is VERY important for Media Producers to classify audiences, otherwise they have no market. Without a market they have no company itself. Making sure that their products meets the aims of their audience, and they know what to include, allows the companies to be successful when making current products or new products, allowing their company lifetime to continue & reach out to bigger audiences, generating more sales.

Quantitative research is important for Media Producers when creating a new product. Gathering statistical information on their audience allows them to look at how big their audience is. The information is varied on what factors you use, such as questions asked & locations used to gain your information.

There are 2 major companies who currently do Quantitative research in the UK for the print media industry. The NRS (National Readership Survey), one of the major companies, provides estimated circulation figures & readership. They also create socio-economic breakdowns of audiences, which is based on income, education & occupation.

The other major company is called ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations), which are an industry body for media measurement. They product figures on audience numbers for both Digital & print formats. This company would be used to gain data on how large their audiences are, which would allow Media Producers to create a product which would appeal to this audience group.

Quantitative research will usually come in forms of graphs & other statistical measurements. This is to give specific data to Media Producers about their audiences, which can then be used to affect how they make their products. Since Quantitative research is more logical & statistical, this research is used to gather large amounts of data so it can easily be organised & manipulated into reports for analysis. This means using methods such as using surveys, which would rely on same questions being asked in the same way to a large number of people, Observations, which may involve counting how many times a particular phenomenon occurs or how often a word is used into interviews, or coding observational data to translate it into numbers; & Secondary Data, such as company accounts. This research method would be used if a company are creating a product & need specific data which concludes how large their audience is.

Quantitative Research

Qualitative ResearchQualitative research is also important for media producers when they are creating a new product. Gathering in-depth information on their audience allows them to gain an insight & understand who their audience are, what they like & don’t like, & their opinions/viewpoints on certain things.

There are multiple methods you can use to gain access to this information, but the main 3 what most companies would use are Focus groups, where a group of people would be asked about certain things such as their perceptions, opinions, beliefs & attitudes towards a/the product which is or has been produced. Questionnaires are also a form of Qualitative research, in which people would answer a bunch of questions to gather information from the respondents. This information gathered could then be transformed into useful data. The last method which would be used are Face-to-Face interviews, which is used to gather an understanding to the meaning of what the interviewees say. It is a technique which is used to understand experiences of others.

Qualitative research would be useful to use when companies are trying to get opinions on certain things which could be used in their next product. If creating a new magazine, they may want to know what their audience would like to see included so that they don’t make any mistakes on their product & make it not appeal to their audience. This research would be used every time a company choose to make a new product, as it gives them a larger amount of data to work with when choosing what to include or not include in their new product. This research is more aimed ‘for’ the audience since it is gathering opinions & viewpoints instead of gathering data which tells them ‘how many’ or a statistical answer.

AudienceAudience is the key part to a successful media company, as this is the group of people who are buying their products. One definition of ‘Audience’ are a regular public that manifests interests, support, enthusiasm or the liking to something. In this case, the audience are the group of people who are interested in your products.

Audience is one of the most important things for a media company as this is what makes the company run. They are extremely important as these people are the consumers of your product. They buy your product, which means you gain revenue & income to keep your business running. If your audience wasn’t there, your products would not be bought, which means you would have no reason to create these products as they would not sell & you would eventually go bankrupt from not making any profit.

Media producers want to know about their audience so that they can create a product which is just right & fit for them. This means the will want to know what the audience likes, their interests & what they enjoy to look/read about. They would like to know about their hobbies & other activities they might follow like sports so they can gain a better insight on their audience as a whole. Doing this allows them to be able to gain knowledge of their audience, which lets them understand what would work in a product & what wouldn’t, so they would be able to create a product which is going to appeal to their audience & generate profit. Also knowing about their audience, will let them be able to create and product a product which would best suit their audience. Things which are key for a company to know about would be;• Age – This is so that media companies know what age range they should be aiming for when creating their product. It also allows them

to know what maturity their audience is, what kind of topics they can cover in their magazine & what type of adverts they can include inside.

• Gender – This is to allow media companies to know what male to female ratios there are in their audience. This will then let them produce a product aiming either specific at one gender or appealing to both.

• Socio – economic Status – This lets media companies gather information to define their audience based on income, education and occupation. This allows them to make a product which will fit around their income for pricing, and where to distribute these products.

• Social class – This allows media producers to be able to determine what social class their audience are. This links in with Socio Economic Status, but it will allow media producers be able to define their audience into a social class, which will then let them be able to distribute and price their products in the correct areas.

• Geo – Demographics – This allows media companies to target specific audiences. This method is mainly used by direct mail and similar marketing companies, instead of mass media producers. This method allows the advertisers to target a specific audience, as people living in the same postcode have similar lifestyle and spending tendencies.

• Lifestyle/Psychographics – This method allows media products be able to learn & study personality, values, attitudes, interests & lifestyle. This is to understand what your audience is buying, so that you can keep the audience happy.

• Mainstream or Niche – This allows media producers be able to further profile their audience. Products which are aimed at mainstream, will try to capture and appeal to a large audience. This like this would be a blockbuster film or music in the charts. They are something that most people will be aware of. Niche audiences are small, and have specific interests. As such, media producers may target a niche market with the hope of capturing a large share of it.

Age

• Age is very important category when media producers want to create a new product.

• This technique will be used to define what age ranges they have in their audience. The ones which have a larger amount will affect who the media producers target their products at.

• Age also determines what kind of product they will try to produce as certain age ranges will have different preferences & interests.

• Age also shows the maturity of their audience, allowing them to realise what content they can include in their product.

Gender• Gender is very important as it defines who the product is

aimed at.• Finding out an audience’s gender can help make a product

more appealing to that gender.• Men & Women both often have very different interests,

which will make them want different things from media products.

• Products which are aimed heavily at one gender can often push away the other.

• When products are produced, they are portrayed in different ways to the other, e.g a men’s magazine targeted at men will have tend to have heavy use of block letters & consists of male celebrities in the magazine which would be for inspiration. In a woman’s magazine, the woman celebrities will be their for inspiration to make the women think they would want to look like her, & the text tends to not only be block letters but consists of hand written information too.

Socio-Economic Status• Socio-Economic Status, is important for media producers to know what kind of education, occupation & income their

audience receives. This will then let them determine how much to set prices on their product so it is affordable for their audience.

• The National Readership Survey use 6 different categories to define readers of magazines and newspapers in the UK. There are;

• Grade A – Upper middle class: These people are higher managerial, administrative or professionals & are at the top of everyone else.

• Grade B – Middle Class: These people are intermediate managerial, administrative or professionals & are just underneath of the people who are at the top.

• Grade C1 – Lower middle class: These people are in the middle of the population’s income occupation. They are supervisory or clerical & junior managerial, administrative or professionals which are higher up than their opposites.

• Grade C2 – Skilled working class: These people are skilled manual workers who are in the middle of the ladder. Their opposites tend to be higher up a group & are more respected than themselves.

• Grade D – Working class: These people are semi & unskilled manual workers. They are near the bottom of the ladder & tend to earn enough for themselves with the jobs they can find.

• Grade E – Those at the lowest levels of subsistence: These people are casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners or others who depend on the welfare state. This means their income is given to them by their state, and these people don’t work. They are provided for by other means than self work.

• Socio-Economic Status will allow media producers to be able to target their products in the right areas for the right prices which will allow them to be more successful.

Geo-Demographics• Demographics uses information on where people living around

the same area/postcode & live similar lifestyles to allow advertisers & media producers to target specific audience types.

• It will also determine what kind of people are living in that area e.g families will live around the same areas rather than having young professionals or retired couples living in the same areas.

• This method is used for mail & marketing companies rather than other mass media producers, & it is of interest to us but Demographics is less important than other elements.

• There is a system called ‘Acorn’ which is used to map wealth across cities. Using certain information

Psychographics

Mainstream & Niche

Task 2

Large, clear & bold fonts are used to make the text easier to read. The masthead is located at the top left in bold text with bright colours to stand out & grab attention. The magazine stands out with the big text & having all the letters in capitals for the cover lines. The text is informal but casual language. There are multiple pull quotes upon the front cover which are used to grab attention. This would be most of the cover lines which are on the front.

The main subject for the ‘Take a Break ’ is the woman on the right. This is due to her being the largest image on the front cover, but she is also on multiple different issue covers. There Is little obstruction towards he face so that the audience can see who she is.

There are multiple blobs & stars which are mainly located in the bottom half of the magazine. The images which are used for these are candid, & they show what kind of stories are within the magazine. This helps give the consumer more understanding to what kind of magazine it is.

The size of the magazine, the artwork on the magazine (kind of glossy artwork), the specific font choices for the cover lines & masthead are technical codes which are helping the consumer to understand what the magazine is about. Candid photography is mainly used for the blobs & stars.

The magazine has a similar colour scheme throughout multiple issues, but the main colours which are consistent are they pink & red. The colours which are used are all bright which will effect upon the magazine’s intention to appeal to the audience. As the colours are bright, the colours will stand out from the variety they have to the audience.

AudienceB,C,D classes, young adults (18-30) mainly a female audience.

The images are staged & dotted around the page to illustrate certain parts of the article. The main image is placed at the top of the right in a larger size than the rest to appeal more to the audience.

Magazine page number & magazine name at the bottom of the pages in small font, like everything else. It’s still easily readable & is in a bright red colour to stand out.

Clear & standing out pull quote that is important about the article, surrounded in a bright box to stand out & catch the viewers attention.

There is a specific colour scheme on the page which consists of bright colours to catch the viewers attention

Large, clear & bold fonts are used to make the text easier to read. The masthead is located at the top left in bold text with bright colours to stand out & grab attention. The magazine stands out with the big text & having all the letters in capitals for the cover lines. The text is informal but casual language. There are multiple pull quotes upon the front cover which are used to grab attention. Similar to the Take a Break magazine, the bold writing, font size & pull quotes are scattered around to interest the reader.

AudienceB,C,D classes, young teenagers (14-21) mainly a male audience but will try to appeal to both genders.

The main subject for the Official Xbox Magazine, is the giant image within the centre of the cover. This usually is the main subject of what is being covered in the magazine. There is little obstruction on the main image, so it stands out, with blobs and stars dotted around it.

The magazines colour scheme tends to be consistent designs throughout issues. Depending on what the main subject is, the colour scheme on the front cover will try to work around it using white text and bright colours for the blobs and stars. Within the magazine, Offcial Xbox Magazine tend to stick to a green and white colour scheme, with certain articles having different colour schemes to suit what the article is about.

The size of the magazine, the artwork on the magazine (kind of glossy artwork), the specific font choices for the cover lines & masthead are technical codes which are helping the consumer to understand what the magazine is about. As the magazine is a gaming magazine, the images are more controlled as the producers can choose how the images look like.

The images are candid as the producers have a piece of art in the double page spread. They are similar to 'take a break's images as they are also staged.

Magazine page number is in the bottom corners to state which page you are on. Very small but easily noticeable to the viewer to not draw any attention.

Clear & standing out pull quote which draws the attention of the viewer. Also Is used to inform the viewer of what the article is about.

There is a specific colour scheme on the page which consists of bright colours to catch the viewers attention. These colours also change throughout depending on what the article is about.