Who would be the audience for your media product? I made my magazine to represent and appeal to a young target audience aged between early teens to late twenties, as this is the main audience who are interested in the type of music featured within my magazine and are most likely to buy the magazine to find out more about the artists and music they are interested in. The reason I decided on the young audience is because my research suggested this was the main age group likely to read this genre/type of magazine. I choose to aim my magazines to primarily a male audience as this is the gender I carried out most of my market research with and they showed an interest into music magazines proving there is a large target market for music magazines for this audience. My target audience are likely to be fans of pop music as this will be the genre featured primarily within my magazine, therefore this is one of the main reasons they will buy the magazine. They are also likely to have a big interest in music overall, as they are paying for a magazine to find out more about the bands/artists they like when they could find similar information online for free, which shows how technological convergence will have affected music magazine sales. A large proportion of my audience are likely to be students therefore they will have a low income therefore I had to make sure the price was suitable for my intended audience otherwise they would be unable to afford to buy my magazine on a regular basis so; I would have priced out a large target market. I also made sure there looked like they were getting good value for money from my magazine by featuring a wide range of articles. The main target audience I have chosen would fit into Group E in the social class rating table as they are students on a low income however it may also appeal to an audience within Group B as a lot of people within this group are creative and interested in media and music therefore a music magazine will appeal to them to find out the latest news about different artists.
Example
Name: Tom JohnsonAge: 18 years old Occupation: Student/Part Time Worker in Local Supermarket Social Status: Class EInterests/Hobbies: Playing Guitar, Listening to Music, Concerts, Football, GamingFavourite Bands/Artists: Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars
Target Audience Responses – Focus Group
I decided to carry out a focus group with my target audience to see what they thought of my final products. I did this by creating 2 closed groups on Facebook and inviting people within my target audience to comment on my final magazine so I could see their opinions about it and make changes accordingly.
Firstly I created a group and invited 12 people to the group to get a general response of what they thought of my magazine. Overall I got positive reviews about my magazine from this, suggesting that my target audience liked the product and would be interested in my magazine and thought it looked good. Below are a few of the comments I received from this focus group:
I then created a second group to get more in detail responses. I invited 3 people to answer a series of questions to see their views about different areas of my magazine as shown below:
Overall, the response about my images was positive as they thought they worked well within my magazine, and that they were appropriate for the style. However I found out from this that my contents page image was strongest meaning some of the other images may need more work to match the same standard. As a result I enlarged my main image on the front cover so it was mainly the artist’s face showing. This helped to get rid of any dead space remaining while also making the image stand out more on the front cover following conventions set by other magazines. I also adjusted the background on the double page spread so it contrasted more with the main image to help make the page overall look more appealing, and help the image to stand out within the page.
From this I found out that they thought the article was well written and suitable for the audience, meaning there was no need for me to make any changes to this area, while this also proved that my magazine would appeal to my target market. This showed that they were interested in the content of my main article therefore showing my main audience were interested in the article so, provided good feedback suggesting that they are likely to buy the magazine.
From this I could conclude that the audience for my product liked the overall colour scheme and font throughout the magazine so there was no need for any changes within this area either as overall the audience liked the design. Within my first group I also got a comment saying about a good colour scheme suggesting this may be one of the strongest areas within my magazine and is easily recognisable so, could be used for the audience to quickly identify my magazine for future editions.
Overall people liked my magazine and said that they would be interested in buying it meaning I have succeeded in making it appeal to my target audience. I also concluded that there were very few changes I would have to make to my magazine as from my focus group I could see that a lot of people liked my magazine overall and would buy it in its current form, so I have met the needs of my target audience.
