Final Production: Evaluation Q5 - Part 1

Question 5: How did you attract/address your target audience?

Research and Planning

In my research and planning I had three main parts to help me to observe how real productions appealed to their target audiences and how I could incorporate these techniques into my own. These parts were ...

-        Analysis of existing magazines: For this I looked at professional front covers, contents pages and double page spreads of the same genre, which helped me to see common conventions and codes of the rock/metal genre. I looked deeper into the conventions to see how they were utilized to appeal to a target audience, which was usually the young generation from a range of young teenagers to adults in their 20s. From looking at this, I could draw conclusions about how I should target my own audience and what techniques I could use to do so.

      Audience Research: In my audience research stage I found secondary source audience profiling and conducted my own primary research (taking the form of a questionnaire), and lastly, created my own audience profile. This helped me to get an insight into how magazines appeal to people from the audience's point of view rather than purely from analytical assumptions. The secondary audience research gave me information on the readership of magazines of a similar genre to mine, while the primary research taking the form of a questionnaire gave me my own findings to work from. I learned from the primary research exactly what my audience would prefer and this also gave me an idea of the age range of my audience and therefore who exactly I should be targeting it at.
I also made my own audience profile to visually represent my audience. This gave me a more accurate inspiration for my choice in costume for the models on my front cover because I could tailor it to what my audience’s style is.

-        Other Research (regarding the design of my magazine): This included research of mastheads and costumes. In my research of mastheads I found that they are usually very stylized and individual to the magazine, both to give their brand a unique image and to connote the genre to appeal more effectively to their target audience. For instance, Kerrang! magazine’s logo has scratch and crack lines going through it and is in a bold, black font to connote the aggressive nature of the music genre of rock/metal.  

     The research into costumes and lighting helped me to decide what my models should wear in my photo shoot so as to clearly communicate the genre of music to my audience- for example, I knew that accessories like studs and spikes are associated with the goth/emo/metal-lover stereotype, and therefore having my models wear them would give the impression of a magazine based around the rock and metal music genre.

All of this research gave me an overall deeper insight into how exactly magazines appeal to their target audiences, which affected my own ideas because from this I could take examples and incorporate them into my own production. For example, from the masthead research where I found that they are often stylized, I decided to add cracks and scratch lines through my own. This helps to appeal to my audience because it connotes the ‘hardcore’ style of the rock and metal music genre. I also attempted to attract the audience through choosing clothing for my models on the front cover that signified the genre and, how I imagined in my visual representation of my audience, someone with this taste in music would look. For example, I had two of my models wear a checked shirt, which from my costume research I saw was a popular choice in style.