Audience Research

I managed to come up with a mood board that summarised the main findings of my target audience by gathering all of the key things that a rock music lover would be sterotypicalised with. I realised the pattern of the target audience which rock/music magazines were aimed at; this being teenagers and young adults, mainly for men. I adopted this target audience for my own magazine. With this in mind, I then went on to develop a mood board consisting of a variety of things from film preferences to that type of audience's lifestyle, in order to see what I should feature in my own magazine, regarding adverts, topics, font types etc.

I have already summarised a lot of points that I had found when researching magazines, but I have looked back and found more facts referring to rock magazine appearances:

Overall:

• The audience like to have slang, such as OMG
• The language is informal
• The people in the photographs are staged, generally in a studio
• The dominating photo on each page is generally what the feature topic of that particular page is about. On the front cover, the main photo is what the magazine's most important feature is overall
• The photo of a band/singer tends to dominate each page

The Front Cover:

• The dominant colours are mostly red and black
• The mastheads, splashes, subheadings, cover lines (etc) all have a sans-serif font, which is where the letters are all rounded
• The masthead has ragged letters and is normally in bold, grimy colours, such as black
• There is at least one splasher on each front cover, but no more than three
• On the covers, these magazines often have something advertised which is free with the magazine
• There are often quotes on the front covers, made by the artists and bands
• Every front cover has a price, website, date and issue number
  

The Double Page Spreads:

• There is always a key colour on each page, which everything is based around
• On some double page spreads, some photos appear to have a rough cut-out effect

The Contents Pages:

• Subscription adverts are used on the contents pages
• A lot of the time, there is a 'THIS WEEK' title above all the topic titles
• The photos on the contents pages are sized in relevance in order of importance to how much of a feature they are in the magazine

This is my mood board:

I went around asking people about my mood board by showing them. I mainly asked teenage/young adult males, because this is my prime target audience. I asked them a set number of questions which developed from each answer, although I had a prime idea of the types of questions that I wanted to ask. I tried to film each person who I asked, for reference.

My Live Interviewing Results:

From these live interviews, I started to get a rough idea of what my target audience would like, however, I felt that if I had a written the questions for people to write the answer to, then it would be more successful, because people would have more time to think about their answers. Therefore, I decided to post my mood board onto my Facebook with a set of questions underneath, in order get as many people as possible to comment on my mood board, answering the questions. This method of audience research, I found was more of a success then live interviews.

My Facebook Results:

These following pictures are print screens of my audience research regarding my mood board on Facebook:

This is a long shot of the overall page in which I posted my mood board.

This is a more zoomed in version of the mood board on Facebook.

The many blue tags are all of the people I tagged in this image, because...

a) That way they would notice my mood board

b) I only tagged people who fitted in my target audience category, so as to get the right audience analyzing my mood board.

The following are the zoomed in screen prints of the answers that my target audience answered to the questions that I gave them. These questions were:

1) What type of font attracts you the most?

2) Would you like to see anything about unsigned bands in the magazine? Or just famous ones?

3) Would you like to see any features about any of the TV programmes? Such as Skins or Scrubs? Or just MTV etc?

4) What types of things would you like to see advertised in the magazine?

5) Would you like information about festivals such as Download?

6) Is there anything else you would like to see in the magazine?

7) Do you think that this mood board appeals to both guys and girls? Or just guys?

From this information from the answers which my target audience has given me, I have found the following results:

*The numbers are the amounts of people who said the particular thing.

1) What type of font attracts you the most?

-Scrubs = 1
-Rolling Stones = 10
-Q = 1
-Kerrang = 2
-Camp America = 3
-Quick Silver = 1
-Virgin = 1
-Element = 1

I particularly liked the comment:

"modern clean crisp fonts.. no italics! punchy and easy to read!"

2) Would you like to see anything about unsigned bands in the magazine? Or just famous ones?

-Unsigned = 0
-Famous only = 1
-Unsigned and Famous = 17

3) Would you like to see any features about any of the TV programmes? Such as Skins or Scrubs? Or just MTV etc?

-Yes = 11
-No = 6

Some of the comments that I particularly liked were:

"I'd like to read about both, but probably more the music side. Like the music in Skins :D 'cause that's awesome aha."

"Yepp make magazine more than just music :)"

"Mostly music but a section at the back for t.v"

"More music videos not many shows"

4) What types of things would you like to see advertised in the magazine?

-Gigs = 13
-Festivals = 6
-Movies/DVDs = 4
-HMV sales = 1
-New album sales = 8
-TV = 1
-Alcohol = 2
-KFC = 1
-Tour dates = 2
-Merchandise = 1
-Local area unsigned info = 1

I particularly liked the comment:

"def list of gigs.. new talent too. and a vox box (the consumers opinions) people like to be heard!"

5) Would you like information about festivals such as Download?

-Yes = 20

-No = 0

I particularly liked the comment:

"Yeah, also maybe like an offer or something for people that buy the magazine. like something free at the festival because everything is so expensive there."

6) Is there anything else you would like to see in the magazine?

-No more ideas = 0

-Crosswords = 1

-Fashion = 2

-Competitions = 2

-Interviews with bands = 5

-Where artists buy their clothes = 1

-Shops no one has heard of = 1

I particularly liked the comment:

"what about fashion..targeted to music followers.. would also increase the chances of getting companies to advertise their merchandise!n more revenue for the magazine.. would increse the yeild!"

7) Do you think that this mood board appeals to both guys and girls? Or just guys?

-Mainly guys = 3

-Mainly for guys, but also for girls = 17