Who would be the audience for your media product?
Q magazine describes their readership as being "Open minded experience seekers, the Q audience don’t define themselves by the music they listen to. Music is an important passion, but their love of music will never be to the detriment of their other passions, such as film, sport and comedy." This seems to be showing that Q is aimed towards a mass audience rather than a niche one, as opposed to a magazine like Kerrang! which focuses almost entirely on rock. I have already drawn (in question 2) similarities about which social group my magazine represents and that which Q represents, and the target audience relates heavily to this idea of representation. Therefore my target audience is likely to be similar to that of Q but not exactly the same, as I chose to distribute my magazine with Bauer Media and they would not like it if two of their magazines had the exact same target audience and were competing against one another.
The foremost reason for needing to look at target audience is obvious: so that one can make the magazine's content appealing to them and therefore sell lots of magazines and make lots of money. For example, it would be foolish to do an exclusive interview with Eminem for a hard-core rock and metal music magazine, as metalheads would not be interested in it and would not buy the magazine. Another reason for needing to know one's target audience is for advertising. An extremely high proportion of a music magazine's revenue comes from advertising, and I found from my research that over one fifth of Mojo magazine is made up of adverts, and this was not even including Mojo's adverts for its own concerts and subscription offers etc. To make sure that advertising is effective one must know their target audience so that companies know to put adverts in magazines that have the same target audience as their product. Another example; it would be a waste of time, money and effort to place an advert for the Playboy channels in an issue of Woman's Weekly and the magazine creators probably wouldn't allow it anyway, as it would alienate their audience.
The following is my own audience profile, which will describe the average reader of my magazine in terms of socio-economic groups, personal tastes in media and attitudes.
Age
Young people (15 to 25) who are interested in more mainstream, casual music acts such as Cheryl Cole, Black Eyed Peas and Green Day are likely to be the main age group to take an interest in my magazine. The accompanying photo shows what this age group within my target audience might look like. However, there is also room for my audience to include slightly older people (30 to 45) who take an interest in the music they hear on the radio or on TV adverts and buy music magazines about them to try and be trendy. I had to keep both age groups in mind during the creation of my music magazine.
Socio-Economic Groups
I conducted some research on socio-economic groups so that I could get a clearer idea of how to categorise my target audience. I priced my magazine at £4.20 which is quite a high price for music magazines in general though a more average price when one considers the higher prices of monthly magazines. This higher price means that I should be aiming my magazine at the higher socio-economic groups, such as B and C. However, this is actually not very realistic, as there is not necessarily any indication that people in higher socio-economic groups are more likely to buy my magazine. In fact, according to economic theory, poorer people have a higher tendency to spend than richer people, who are more likely to save. This is kind of irrelevant though, as the most important factor for someone deciding whether to buy my magazine is their personal interests, and I believe that all people are equally likely to have an interest in my magazine's content regardless of their occupation. One should also consider that since my target audience's age group starts at 15, it is likely that the younger members of my audience will not have jobs and will therefore technically not fit into any socio-economic groups.
Music Tastes
As already mentioned I consider my target audience to have more broad music tastes as a mass audience, rather than being particularly attached to a single genre as a niche audience. The image to the left shows a selection of albums by artists that I think my target audience would like/be interested in. These artists bear quite little similarity in terms of musical style, but they have the common factor that they are all popular bands/singers commonly heard on the radio and well-known to the general public. My audience are likely to be the kind of people that happily listen to and enjoy the type of music that other people say is good, rather than trying to expand their interests into specific genres and learning about obscure bands. This sounds like I am being critical of my target audience but this is not the case; everyone has their own tastes and just as someone with individual tastes shouldn't be criticised people with totally run-of-the-mill tastes shouldn't be criticised either.
Social Status/Groups
This would usually be considered quite an important segmentation of target audience, though for my magazine I don't feel it is to a great extent. The social groupings of Kerrang!'s audience would include things like grungers, goths and emos while the readership of Mojo would be considered oldies or hippies. I am personally not a big fan of such generalisations, but it is a fact that they are used regularly by advertisers in determining who to aim their product at. However, my dislike for them is not what makes these groupings less relevant to my magazine. The reason is that I am appealing to a mass audience which encompasses lots of different types of people, and so trying to neatly categorise them all would be pointless. If I absolutely had to though, the only thing I would be able to say is that my audience are quite mainstream. This means that they themselves do not dress in a particular way and tend to like whatever things it is normal to like at that moment. The above "tribe map" which I took from uktribes.com, a website which analyses the different social groupings of Britain, depicts what are considered to be the main types of young people. In relation to this, I'd say that the people buying my magazine would fit into a mixture of the Urban, Mainstream and Trendies categories, though still primarily in Mainstream as I said previously. The Alternative grouping would likely be uninterested in my magazine with its more general coverage, since they have their own specific tastes and disapprove of people who like the same things as the majority.
Q magazine describes their readership as being "Open minded experience seekers, the Q audience don’t define themselves by the music they listen to. Music is an important passion, but their love of music will never be to the detriment of their other passions, such as film, sport and comedy." This seems to be showing that Q is aimed towards a mass audience rather than a niche one, as opposed to a magazine like Kerrang! which focuses almost entirely on rock. I have already drawn (in question 2) similarities about which social group my magazine represents and that which Q represents, and the target audience relates heavily to this idea of representation. Therefore my target audience is likely to be similar to that of Q but not exactly the same, as I chose to distribute my magazine with Bauer Media and they would not like it if two of their magazines had the exact same target audience and were competing against one another.
The foremost reason for needing to look at target audience is obvious: so that one can make the magazine's content appealing to them and therefore sell lots of magazines and make lots of money. For example, it would be foolish to do an exclusive interview with Eminem for a hard-core rock and metal music magazine, as metalheads would not be interested in it and would not buy the magazine. Another reason for needing to know one's target audience is for advertising. An extremely high proportion of a music magazine's revenue comes from advertising, and I found from my research that over one fifth of Mojo magazine is made up of adverts, and this was not even including Mojo's adverts for its own concerts and subscription offers etc. To make sure that advertising is effective one must know their target audience so that companies know to put adverts in magazines that have the same target audience as their product. Another example; it would be a waste of time, money and effort to place an advert for the Playboy channels in an issue of Woman's Weekly and the magazine creators probably wouldn't allow it anyway, as it would alienate their audience.
The following is my own audience profile, which will describe the average reader of my magazine in terms of socio-economic groups, personal tastes in media and attitudes.
Age
Socio-Economic Groups
Music Tastes
Social Status/Groups
This would usually be considered quite an important segmentation of target audience, though for my magazine I don't feel it is to a great extent. The social groupings of Kerrang!'s audience would include things like grungers, goths and emos while the readership of Mojo would be considered oldies or hippies. I am personally not a big fan of such generalisations, but it is a fact that they are used regularly by advertisers in determining who to aim their product at. However, my dislike for them is not what makes these groupings less relevant to my magazine. The reason is that I am appealing to a mass audience which encompasses lots of different types of people, and so trying to neatly categorise them all would be pointless. If I absolutely had to though, the only thing I would be able to say is that my audience are quite mainstream. This means that they themselves do not dress in a particular way and tend to like whatever things it is normal to like at that moment. The above "tribe map" which I took from uktribes.com, a website which analyses the different social groupings of Britain, depicts what are considered to be the main types of young people. In relation to this, I'd say that the people buying my magazine would fit into a mixture of the Urban, Mainstream and Trendies categories, though still primarily in Mainstream as I said previously. The Alternative grouping would likely be uninterested in my magazine with its more general coverage, since they have their own specific tastes and disapprove of people who like the same things as the majority.
No comments:
Post a Comment