My Evaluation - 4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Before I constructed my magazine I thought long and hard about who I wanted to create a magazine for. I decided to make a magazine for young girls because as I was growing up I would frequently be a consumer of ‘Smash Hits’ and ‘Top of the Pops’ but unfortunately both of these magazines have stopped. I didn’t want to create a magazine that would be in competition with anyone so therefore wanted to stay clear of any magazines that mirrored the NME.

The audience for my magazine are young girls, aged between 11 to 15. I chose this age range because in my personal opinion from the age of 15 onwards girls become ladies and although they listen to music their interests change to celebs and fashion and so they buy magazines such as OK, and More.  

I created a questionnaire on the website www.questionpro.com and uploaded it on to Facebook. Here I discovered my audience and it made it easy for me to communicate with them in order to see what they thought and expected to get from a music magazine. Through this questionnaire I found out how much the audience would spend on a magazine, how they consume music, what radio stations they listen too, and how often they buy magazines etc.   

In order to assess the results from my questionnaire I made graphs to make the results more visually friendly. My questionnaire determined many of my decisions about my magazine.

Through my questionnaire I found out that the most popular ‘girl only’ magazine that my audience consume is ‘sugar’. This is a magazine based on boys, fashion, celebrities and real life stories. Firstly this proves the point that the media have filled young girls heads into thinking that all there is to young girl life is boys. And secondly, this shows that in order to attract my magazine I have to show a similar interest to what Sugar does, clearly I will not be focusing on boys etc but like Sugar who give away additional incentives such as nail varnish I am too. Because I am promoting no photo shopping and I am not having scantily-clad young boys in the magazine I think parents would be a lot happier to buy my magazine for their children compared to magazines with inappropriate pictures of young lads and presumptuous article titles.

I found out that the majority of my audience buy magazines every other month. Although this is what the majority of my audience do I do not believe it to be realistic to release a magazine every other week. Instead I am going to release the magazine monthly. 

The majority of my audience listen to London based radio stations – as the majority of the participants of my questionnaire are based in London. The most popular radio station is Kiss FM closely followed by Capital FM. These radio stations play mainstream RnB and Pop music. These radio stations are commercialised stations, very popular in London so many people listen to these stations and less people listen to the less known stations such as Platinum radio station, this is evident as a small amount of people listen to it. This has made me realise that I have to include artists of Pop and RnB genre in order to fulfil what my audience like.

I made an audience profile which includes what I think that my audience would be interested in. Things involved in my audience profile will include the smart phone - Blackberrys. I have included Blackberrys because many young girls have Blackberrys, and they communicate with each other through Blackberry Messenger. My magazine will have its own Blackberry application. It will not have an iphone application as my demographic will not have possession of an iphone so the application would be pointless.

The second thing that I put in my audience profile was Barry M make-up. Barry M is a new make up range that is very suitable for young adults. I think this because the colours are very bright and sassy. The range consists of eye shadow, nail varnish, mascara, lip gloss, etc. I think that all of the young audience will enjoy playing with the make-up as they constantly see models wearing it. The consumers of the magazine will want to be like the models in the magazine and this make-up is perfect for that, as the small amount of make-up I used was part of the Barry M range. This is why my additional incentives are two bottles of Barry M nail varnishes.Another item that I have put in my audience profile is sweets. I have included sweets because no matter how old you are everyone loves to snack on sweets. I have chosen the sweets that are normally sold in River Island or Top Shop as I think these promote maturity to the consumers and promote some sophistication that other sweets may lack.

When I first started my magazine, the artists I added to my audience profile were Cheryl Cole, Justin Bieber, The Wanted, The Saturdays, JLS and Pixie Lott. Initially I thought that these artists were good representatives for my demographic, however after much consideration I realised that some of the artists are really not suitable for my demographic, and what they stand for is not what I want to promote within my magazine to my young girl audience. For instance, The Saturdays do not write their own music, they just get told what to do via their management, this promotes idealism in a bad way; young girls should not aspire to become skinny bimbos who wear little clothing. The Saturdays represent no strong will, no supremacy and seem to have little control on their careers. They represent everything that myself and this magazine do not believe in.

Unlike Justin Bieber who writes many of his songs himself, even though there is much controversy surrounding Justin I believe he is a true inspiration to the young girls who will read my magazine. He is only 17 and has already collaborated with many famous stars such as; Usher, Ludicrous, Sean Kingston etc. Not only does Justin get involved in all of the many things involved with his career, but many girls find him attractive as he is quite young which works well with him and my demographic.

JLS have been watched throughout their career, the public love the band and because of this they have become an extremely successful boy band. JLS have also written many of the songs that appear on their albums. This is another reason why they have been added to my audience profile.

Cheryl Cole is another artist that has controversy surrounding her. She was at one point hated by the nation due to her assault on a toilet attendant, but after being repeatedly cheated on by her husband she received a lot of sympathy by the British public, Simon Cowell snapped her up and made her into the nations sweetheart. Cheryl then started singing her own music, following a solo career and because of this there has been a lot of speculation around whether she writes her own music, or is as perfect as everyone once thought. Even though many do not see Cheryl as a suitable role model, due to her lack of clothing and bad miming skills, I still believe that she is a strong-willed character and I think that many young girls would benefit in wanting to be a strong willed character. Cheryl represents that hard work does get you somewhere, from whatever background you come from you can make something of yourself and I want my demographic to believe in this. I just hope that they don’t get to big for their own boots – like some!

The Wanted were added to my audience profile because they are new, young and innocent just like the girls of my demographic and I believe that they can relate well to each other.

I added Pixie Lott to my audience profile because I think she is a good inspirational role model for the young girls of today, she writes all her own music. Pixie has a lot of power when it comes to her career and what she likes and doesn’t like. Pixie also has an edge about her which I think is always good for the young girls. Pixie doesn’t strike me as a stereotypical ‘blonde bombshell’.

The qualitative data and primary data that have contributed to my magazine research was when I had a meeting with a small focus group. I handed the focus group different templates for my magazine and they were asked what colour schemes and templates they preferred. This has helped me shape my magazine due to the focus group; the majority of the focus group liked the purple based templates. They liked them because they thought that if the base colour was purple I could work around the different shades such as lilac, plum, violet etc. The focus/group also thought that if the base colour was purple white and black lettering and outlining would contrast well together. A criticism of my templates would be that for the double page spread I needed more than just a picture on one side of the magazine.

The quantitative data I gathered include a questionnaire that I posted on Facebook. 32 people completed my magazine questionnaire. Many of the participants that answered my questionnaire were aged between 16 and 17, and although this is not the correct age for my demographic I still took on board what the participants of the questionnaire said as some of the participants were of the correct age of my demographic. The quantitative data indicated to me how much I should sell my magazine for, what genre of music to include in my magazine, what other magazines my demographic are interested in, how often I should put my magazine on sale for, whether or not live concerts are popular, what website I should advertise my magazine etc. Most of the decisions I have made about my magazine have been formed around this questionnaire. I am selling my magazine for £2, because it was the most popular price throughout my questionnaire question.

I continually researched other magazines of my magazine genre and magazines that are aimed for my same demographic, this was part of my secondary data research. I scrutinize many different ‘Top of the Pops’ magazines, ‘Bliss’, ‘Shout’ and ‘Sugar’. The most popular magazine that my demographic consume was Sugar, this has made me examine the magazine Sugar closely to provide my demographic with something that they can relate to and something that they are willing to buy.