Audience Profiling

AUDIENCE PROFILING

Before I begin to plan my music magazine I first need to work out who the primary target audience will be because as Hall & Holmes said; 

“Any media text is created for a particular audience and will usually appeal most to this particular target audience” (Hall and Holmes, 1998). 

In order to be able to profile my audience successfully it is vital that I know them thoroughly, if I don’t do this correctly they won’t be drawn to my product and therefore the magazine will not be successful.

There are different ways of categorizing an audience; I will consider representation theory, social class and the Uses and Gratification theory.

Magazine institutions/creators pitch to two main types of audiences a mass audience or a niche audience.

MASS AUDIENCE: Mass audience are mainstream audiences that consume the mainstream and popular culture magazine (Marxist would say that this audience is mainly made up of ‘working class’) such as Top of the Pops and Q magazine.

High culture in contrast is associated with broadsheets, opera, ballet, classical music and BBC 4, so music magazines that would cater for this audience would include Classical FM magazine and Opera magazine.

NICHE AUDIENCE: A niche audience is a lot smaller than a mass audience but usually highly influential e.g. Marxist would define upper class/middle class who controlled the media may wish to see ‘high culture’ programs leading the release of BBC Four for those people that wish to hear/see artistic high culture programs. Niche audience don’t have to be this group however, they can be any small dedicated group who advertisers feel are worth targeting/marketing products for. Examples being; NME, Kerrang (Heavy metal) and Source magazine (hip hop).

Audience Profiling

Before magazine institutions create their magazine they must first profile their audience and take in to account AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHICS (class/age/gender/economic status and geographical location) along with their viewing preference/needs:

 Meaning they have to think about the following before developing a magazine…

  

    1) What social class will the primary target audience fall under?

2) What gender is the primary target audience?

3) What age will the primary target audience be?

4) What nationality will the primary target audience be?

5) What values do the primary target audiences have?

6) Audience appeal - what will the primary target audience be looking for in a magazine?

7) What music/fashion/lifestyle will they be looking for?

Magazine institutions have to think about how they can represent their primary target audience the best through media language e.g. star vehicles, lexis, iconography, shot types, mise-en-scene, mastheads, colours, typography etc.

KEY REPRESENTATION THEORY

 All of the following theories are taken in to account when profiling, representing and pitching to the audience.

Class:

A way of identifying a target audience is the social-economic model which is one of the most common methods. The model being used by NRS (National Readership Survey Ltd) for a long time it is still a very useful way of identifying an audience and deconstructing a text.

National Readership Survey (NRS) demographic categories

Social Class	Social Status	Occupation
A	Upper middle class	Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	Middle Class	Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	Lower-Middle Class	Supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	Skilled Working Class	Skilled manual workers
D	Working Class	Semi and unskilled manual workers
E	Those at the lowest level of subsistence	State pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers

 One of the most common ways of identifying a target audience is the social-economic model. Even though this model, used by the NRS (National Readership Survey Ltd), has been used for a long time, it is still useful way of identifying an audience and deconstructing a text. 

Why are age ratings put in place?

EFFECTS THEORY

The ‘Frankfurt School’ is the term that is given to a group of social scientists who were originally based as the Institute for Social Research Frankfurt, these social scientists conducted research in to the power the mass media has potentially got over audiences.

The way that media could be used as a tool of fascist propaganda is what the social scientists are concerned with. The founders of the ‘Frankfurt School’ were left-wing (Marxist) they criticized the capitalist system controlling the mass media for creating a mass culture that eliminated oppositional or alternatives.

This group was responsible for the ‘HYPODEMIC NEEDLE MODEL’ this is the idea that a mass audience are passive and are simply ‘injected’ with messages and views created by the media producers. Critics still believe that there is some truth behind this model (explaining why there are age restrictions on things and how some things are banned completely) other believes that the model simplifies the situation. For example, David Morley did a nationwide ‘Reception Theory’ study in 1980 to determine how different audiences view the same text (he showed them all the same edition of Nationwide – a local news program shown after BBC One’s main evening news bulletin). He found that the way audiences interpreted a text generally fell under one of the following:

•                A preferred reading of the text most likely to be received by the intended target audience who share the same ideologies (people read it as the creators intended – this is the closest to the hypodermic needle).

•                An oppositional reading, generally by people who are not in the intended target audience (they reject the meaning intended and receive an alternative meaning).

•                 A negotiated reading (basically accepts the meaning but interpret it to suit their own position/ideologies.

Overall the this shows the majority of the consumers are not passive and their reading of a text is influenced and effected by their own ideologies- a product simply cannot ‘brainwash all people’ like a drug. However, some are susceptible and easily influenced (especially children who have yet to complete the early years of the socialization process), hence age ratings etc. 

Nationality/values:

IDEOLOGY: Ideology is important when considering the factors when creating a product because you have the ideology your target audience wishes to see. Ideology refers to the system of beliefs that is constructed and presented by a media product. As Marx claims, the dominant ideologies are those that already underpin society. This can differ country to country, for example a soap made for UK viewers would be different to a soap for a US audience, Spain or Iran (the same can be said for social realist programs like Shameless, music and comedy). 

THE FOUR C’S (cross-cultural consumer characteristics): This is one of the earliest, but still most popular, ways of profiling audiences. It profiles the audience in terms of wants and needs, not simply demographic. The categories are as follows:

•   Mainstreamers (this is the largest group. They are concerned with stability, mainly buying well-known brands and consuming mainstream texts).

•   Aspirers (they are seeking to improve themselves. They tend to define themselves by high status brands, absorbing the ideologies associated with the products and believing their status alters as a result)

•   Succeeders (people who feel secure and in control – generally they are in positions of power. They buy brands which reinforce their feelings of control and power).

•   Reformers (idealists who actively consume eco-friendly products and buy brands which are environmentally supportive and healthy. They also buy products which establish this ‘caring and responsible’ ideology).

Individuals (highly media literate, expects high-production advertising and buys product image not product, requires high-profiling sophisticated advertising campaigns).

My Audience

In relation to my own audience, the age range will be between 16 and 30 as this is the main audience for the indie genre. The class band is from B to D and the ethnic origin is mainly white British with other ethnicity's in the minority. The audience is not gender specific.