Creating an Audience Profile

Tom Brett

Introduction – Why is it important?The audience are the consumers who are interested in the product, they are important because they buy the product and help the company to make the product better. Companies want to know about the audience because they want to know what the audience are interested in and what they can afford. Companies will also be interested in their age and gender so the product can be tailored to them, causing more people buying it which will further increase the sales that the company make, allowing them to make more products that the audience will enjoy it, creating a profitable cycle. Any information that you can find out about your audience is useful.

Quantitative ResearchQuantitative Research is research where you gather numbers and figures also known as structured data, the usual ways to gather this data are through experiments and surveys. Surveys are a good method because they are quick and simple, also when you use websites such as ‘Survey Monkey’ they offer a wide range of question types, they let you ask multiple choice questions, comment box question and more, then they will tae the quantitative answers and convert them into a chart. Quantitative research is useful because it is easier to analyze the results you get because its all done through numbers and statistics which you or a computer can calculate to get a percentage for everything you need. This is an advantage because this makes quantitative research quicker and easier to analyze, it also quicker for people to fill out the quantitative questions on surveys rather than the qualitative ones. However a disadvantage to quantitative research is that you do not get a detailed summary, nor do you get to know what the audience are like, what their exact feelings are towards the subject, making it harder to write a detailed conclusion.

Qualitative ResearchQualitative Research is research where you gather responses that people have given you through interviews, focus groups, observations and even surveys, qualitative responses should be unstructured and just be a summary unlike the structured and analytical responses you get from quantitative research. The best responses are normally detailed and tell you what the audience feels about the topic. Even though surveys are normally used for quantitative research, you can still ask open ended questions in your survey however you are not always guaranteed a relevant or detailed enough answer. This is why forms of research such as interviews or group discussions are preferred because you are going face to face with the people who are responding so you can always ask more questions or try and get more out of their answers. A disadvantage to hosting interviews and discussions is that it can be quite hard to plan a free time for both the interviewer and the interviewee. Another disadvantage to qualitative research is that it takes more time to complete that it does to complete quantitative research.

AgeMost companies normally find out the age of their audience first, the reason behind this is because its simple yet really important to find out the age of people in your audience. Age defines how old the audience is, this will further lead to what their interests may include, how they live and what level of education that they have or are receiving. You can estimate how a person lives based on their age range, for example people who are under 20 will mostly likely be in some form of education, most of them will be living with their parents or with a guardian. People who are in their 40’s will most likely be living with other people such as their children or with a partner. You can use your audiences age as a way to mold your product to suit them, if you had a younger audience then you should use brighter colours, suitable imagery and text that is easy to read and understand. If your audience is older then you should expect them to be more mature, therefore using more toned down and natural colours, and using text that has a larger vocabulary is more acceptable.

GenderJust like age, gender is another very simple yet important way of audience classification. In a similar way to age, finding out the audiences age allows you to mold your product around them which will yet again cause more sales and will give you an increased audience size. Unlike age you will have to use more stereotypes to create gender based products. If you notice that your audience is mainly made out of males then you will have to use appropriate images that will appeal to that audience, every part of your product should be made to please every stereotypical male. The same applies to females as well, other companies use the colour pink and use curly handwritten fonts on their products because that is what they think attracts females to their products. Stereotypically, males are more interested in topics like cars, games and fitness. Where as females are stereotypically interested in make up, cooking and gossip. Even though stereotypes in todays world are not as drastic anymore it still affects the majority of the audiences. To avoid this situation entirely you can also make your product gender neutral, this way your product will appeal to both genders, however you will have restrictions with what you put in your products such as images, text and topics as a whole.

Socio-Economic StatusSocio-economic status is again an important factor when researching your audience. Socio-economic status measures how much someone whether that be an individual or a family economic status is, this is determined through their income, occupation and education. The different levels of status are graded, from A-E. people in the category ABC1 are upper class and middle class people, this is the most common grade of people and are the biggest target for most companies. The other grades are C2DE, these are people who are in working class or don’t work at all, this means they will have a low income. These grades are important because they determine who you want to be buying your product, this will further determine how much you can sell your product for and what adverts should be featured in your product as well. As a whole the higher grade of people you sell your product to, the more expensive you can make it, the more adverts you can feature in it, and you can have more relatable articles.

Postcode and Geo demographics

Postcodes and geo demographics determine where people live. Normally people who live close together will also be part of the same socio-economic status. The main reason why postcodes and geo demographics are important is that it will allow you to target certain groups of people in certain locations.

Lifestyle or PsychographicsThe previous pieces of information and research techniques have been about the audiences demographics, however their psychographics are just important. An audience’s psychographic should include Personality, Values, Attitudes, Interests and Lifestyles. If you want to make your audience really happy with your product then you will have to find out what their psychographics are like because these are what will make your audience happy, and if you can do that then you will get more sales. There are 7 different ‘classes’ when it comes to psychographics, these were created by Young and Rubican. The best ways to find out your audience’s psychographics is through qualitative research such as interviews and questionnaires.

Mainstream or Niche

Like postcodes and geo demographics, mainstream and niche is not as important as other types of audience profiling such as age or gender. Most companies target mainstream audiences because they tend to be part of a huge audience with most people liking new blockbuster movies or recent chart music. However other companies target smaller ‘niche’ audiences because they are interested in less, but more specific things, meaning that if they create a well made product that covers the audiences needs, most of the audience will purchase that product because it will be one in a kind.

Task 2

The part that stands out the most about this magazine is the subject that is placed in the middle of the page and basically takes up all of the page. The subjects face is not covered up by text which means that everyone will notice that part first. The front cover as a whole seems very attractive and luxurious because there are not many cover lines and the colour scheme is very bright and bold.

Another comment about the colour scheme is that the colours chosen are purple and green, these are famously linked with the colours of ‘The Joker’ who is shown on the front cover. The colours are also very enticing because they stand out, especially compared to different magazines that will be on the shelf.

There is not much text on the front cover of this magazine like there is on other magazines of similar categories and topics, either because it is a special edition cover, or because the magazine is solely focusing on ‘Suicide Squad’. Also all the text at the top including the barcode are in line with each other. Then when you look further down the magazine you can that the text becomes more slanted and a more abstract font is used, indicating that ‘The Joker’ is crazy.

As for the photography, it seems that empire magazine have decided to use their own studio photography for the front cover, this is good because that way they can take photos that work with their cover lines and front cover in general. For example this photo is good because its central and the subject is staring at the reader in an intimidating way.

This is an example of a double page spread from ‘Empire Magazine’. As you can see the first thing that grabs your attention is the large picture that almost takes up the whole double page spread. This images lets the reader have an insight about what the article is about. Plus people tend to prefer looking at images instead of reading text. All the images seem to be taken in a studio or taken from the film directly.

Another thing about the images is that there is a larger picture to text ratio, this is good because people prefer to look at images more than they like reading text. The images also fit the orange colour scheme that the article has. One more point about the images is that they all align perfectly with each other and the text, this makes the article pleasing to the readers eyes.

All the text in this article is white, this is because the editor of the magazine has put different coloured shapes behind the text, so by making the text white it makes it easier for the audience to read the article. The title of the article is larger than the rest of the text, this grabs the attention of the audience when they start reading. However the text does not stand out as much as the largest image in the article, but the title does look very inviting due to its informal font type, which indicates that the article will be fun to read.

There is a huge difference between this magazine cover and ‘Empire Magazines’ front cover, where as ’Empire’s was solely focused on one big image with small amounts of text and colours, ‘Chat’s front cover has multiple different smaller images and lots of large, bold fonts on top of multiple different shapes and colours (primary colours are used to make the magazine look happy and appealing, however when you read the headings you can see that the articles are very dark and morbid). You can tell that this is a cheap weekly magazine because of the amount of cover lines it has on it, plus the physical quality feels a lot worse than a glossy magazine such as ‘Empire’ which gets released monthly. Another factor that proves this is that the main people who buy Chat magazine tend to be of a lower class because its cheap and full of gossip, stories and people who’s lives can be quite similar to theirs.

Unlike more expensive/monthly magazines, ‘Chat’ seems to have no organised order with its sub-headings, images, and blobs and stars. This might be because there isn’t enough time or effort put into the front cover because its has to be released every week or because its done to try and attract the audience with its unique format. Of course the masthead is placed in the usual place, being the top left of the magazine, this is because that’s what we as humans are adapted to do when we read. Its also in the top left because we will be able to see the title when we are flicking through the magazine rack in the shop.

This is an example of a double page spread from ‘Chat Magazine’. One of the first things that stand out is the amount of colour on the page, the whole picture is made out of blue and red shapes, this makes it easier to read the text that is white, so it is the same concept as what ‘Empire Magazine’ did, however it does not look as professional or as well done as it does in ‘Empire Magazine’ however that is expected with it being a cheaper magazine. Another noticeable difference between the two magazines is that the ‘Chat’ article has a lot more text than it does pictures, this could be because the magazine company don’t have enough money to produce many pictures, or that the article is very informative.

As stated previously, there is a lot more text than there are pictures, even though one of the first things you see is a large image at the start of the article. Normally images in magazines like this tend to be candid photos that have been sent in from the family who are related to the story or by the public, however in this particular article the pictures seem to be taken in a studio, just like the images you’d find in more expensive magazines such as ‘Empire’.