Who would be the audience for my media product and

how I addressed them …

I think that the ideal target audience for my product would be young people aged roughly 15-25. It would appeal to both genders and they would live, most likely, in a ‘full nest’ household in England. They would be from a middle/working class background.

Demograp

hic

profile:

Psychographic profile

Psychograph

ic profile:Not that interested in buying all the new music and being up with the latest tunes.

Not into the latest fashions

Interested in the more non-mainstream and rare bands.

Interested in old methods of producing music aswell as the music itself – e.g. vinyl

Not that interested in the latest gadgets/technology.

Into the ‘retro’ look concerning clothes, shoes, car, bedroom decoration etc.

Alternative in most aspects of life – don’t follow the mainstream. Maybe seen as ‘indie’ or ‘retro’ compared to the norm of teenagers in society Would rather go to festivals than clubs

How I attracted my target audience…

The linguistic style of my magazine takes an informal tone which may encourage my target audience to read it as it is easy to understand.

The font mainly used in my magazine is serif. This may attract my target audience, however it has the potential of attracting an older, more adult generation which is not my intended age group. I could have used a sans-serif font to attract the younger audience, but then this would take away the authenticity of the product.

The mixed up layout of my front cover may attract a younger audience.

I ask a number of people of my target audience what they thought of my magazine. This was a good way of seeing how they viewed it …

Audience research

Emily, aged 17 - into older tunes, Jimmi Hendrix one of her favourite artists, click to hear what she had to say:

• Responses from my media class…

‘Clear what my genre was…’ I was happy with this preferred reading as I

concentrated a lot on getting the right pictures and colour scheme to connote the idea of the older generation of music and what it stands for.

‘Sepia colour scheme wasn’t high quality on some pictures..’I agree with this comment as some of the pictures in my product looked too yellow and didn’t connote the sepia, old style when printed out. I feel that the pictures looked better when viewed on the computer. However this may mean that I should have printed it out first to see what it looked like, then made appropriate changes. This mistake may have caused the reader to have an oppositional reading at times as they may have rejected the values and messages I tried to portray.

‘ Interesting choice of genre…’ I was happy with this preferred reading as I wanted my genre to be a bit different and non-mainstream. Nobody else did what I did so I think I was successful in my choice of music style.

‘ too much white space on the double page spread …’ I agree with this comment as I could have made the main pictures smaller in order to fit in more text. It would then look more professional and less spaced out and amateur.

Responses continued …

Responses of people who are NOT my target audience …

Sarah, aged 13, into new, mainly pop, music:

‘ I thought the magazine was good. It looked like magazines should, but was a bit boring and the pictures and stories were different to the magazines I read.’

• Chris, aged 20, into rap, R&B and Hip Hop:

‘ I thought the magazine looked professional, not something I would buy, but for someone into that kind of music It looks interesting. I liked the Beatles stlye picture on the front though. Very clever.’

• Ian, aged 54, into older music from the 60’s,70’s, 80’s and country and western:

‘ This magazine is very well produced. The colour on the pictures wasn’t perfect but I could see what was trying to be achieved. I liked the Beatles style picture and the article was very interesting. Layout a bit ‘jumbled up’ and difficult to read, however.’

Conflicting views …

From the two sets of responses it is obvious who my intended audience is as the other people I asked liked the magazine but weren’t that interested in the genre and what the magazine was portraying.

This shows that my magazine is more of an alternative product as the people I asked were into the more mainstream tunes. Apart from ‘Ian’ who was into the older generation of music but didn’t seem to like the younger look I gave it with the ‘jumbled-up’ format. This is what I intended.