Target Audiences: Audience Profile

Media products are created to make a profit however they are created with the understanding that they can be sold or promoted to an audience.  All of these products are created with a specific target audience in mind.

The media use several different ways of creating an audience profile. They use things such as social grading, quantitative information and qualitative information to gauge an understanding of who will be interested in their products and whether they are worth publishing out into the wide network of media products.

Social Grading System:
Some media products are aimed at people that fit into the following categories:

Companies may also look at demographic information. This is factual information that can be used for creating products. This includes things such as

• age group
• gender
• ethnicity
• location
• education 
• class

They may also consider physcographic information which is information that is personal to you and is made up of opinions and preferences. This could be:

• politics
• self-image
• religion
• interests
• likes/dislikes.

Everything that you watch on the television has a target audience.

An example is The X-Factor.
It is an entertainment programme that is aimed at young people, or housewives with children. People audition in order to win a record contract with leading record label SyCo.

The social grade that the X-Factor target audience satisfies is Grade DE.

 Using this and several other pieces of information, an audience profile can be created.

The typical audience profile for The X Factor:

Age: 26

Gender: Female

Ethnicity: British

Location: Essex

Education: GCSEs and a levels. 

Occupation: Housewife

Likes: fashion, celeb gossip, cosmetics, stereotypical girly things.

Dislikes: football, dirt, politics.

Religion: no religion.

This is a typical person that the producers would aim their show and content at and they assume if she likes it then most other people in the same category will too. 

Fashion Magazines

Fashion Magazines are types of consumer magazines and vary largely in price. There are many different fashion magazines that come from many different countries but below is a list of the top ten best sellers in the UK.*

Top 10 Fashion Magazines:

1.  Glamour
2. Cosmopolitan
3. Look
4. Marie Claire
5. Grazia
6. Vouge
7. Elle
8. Instyle
9. More!
10. GQ Style

*information taken from http://www.cision.com/uk/social-media-index/fashion-magazines-uk-top-10/

All fashion magazines have similar conventions that run throughout all of them they include the following:

• feminine colours - aimed at the target audience of women.
• a female as the main and only picture - suggesting that she is the most important feature of the magazine.
• all women on the front covers are very glamorous - suggesting that women are and deserved to be beautiful at all times which is relatable to the target audience.
• Vary texts around the perimeter of the magazine- including features of the magazines.
• varying sizes of text to represent what is most important in the magazine - larger fonts catch the eye better so are the first things to be read.
• all names of the magazines are large and central - clearly displayed.
• most have some sort of number in quite large and bold font on the cover.
• all have big named celebrities on the front which could lead people to read about the celebrity as well as the fashion content.

 

 

 

 

 

The Magazine Industry

Magazines line the shelves of local news agents, supermarkets and stores alike. They are found on coffee tables, trains and in the work place. But how often are they bought? And more importantly how often are they read?

 

There are six types of magazines:

1.     Consumer Magazines: these are the ones you will find sold in newsagents. They come in many different types e.g. gossip, fashion and gardening.

2.      B2B: are magazines that can be found in the workplace. they are often released to inform staff of things and events that are taking/have taken place within the workplace.

3.      Customer Publishing:  these are produced for organisations to give their customers as a form of marketing. For example magazines that are often found for free at the checkouts.

4.      Part Works: Magazines that have pieces attached to the front and you collect them in order to end up with a whole collection/a final product. e.g. model skeleton pieces.

5.      Newspaper supplements: The magazines you get free in newspapers.

6.      Academic Journals: Magazines aimed at certain group of people in education often written to a university degree standard.

The 6 variations are what make up the magazine industry and the circulation of magazines is always expressed in copies per issue. This is to make the results recorded most accurate and it makes it easier to see which types of magazine sell best.

The total circulation for  the first six months in 2014 was 21.2million copies per issue on average. However this had fallen 10% from the previous six months. This could be due to the increased popularity of the internet. People are now able to log on and with a few clicks find all the information they were looking for, for free, meaning they don't have to wait for the copy of the magazine to be published containing the desired content. It is usually quicker and more convenient so therefore not as many magazines are being sold.

 Although magazine circulation* is decreasing magazine readership** is still healthy. On average 1.4 people read a copy of the magazine. They can be found in doctors surgeries and other waiting rooms and although the reader hasn't bought the magazine they are still reading it.

*Magazine circulation is when people buy copies.

**Magazine readership is when people read magazines without necessarily buying them.

 Although magazine sales are falling some genres are doing better than others:

Lads magazines, pop magazines and gossip magazine sales are dropping, whilst Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair and other lifestyle magazines sales are rising.

 
Despite this the most popular magazine in the UK is the TV Choice magazine. It has a circulation of 1,282,276 per issue due to its large target audience. Its content is common and of interest to a lot of people. These sales figures bring in £549,976 per issue and the producers earn a hefty £300,000 from advertising alone per week. This leads to them making a profit of £879,000 per issue.

 

So despite the drop in circulation numbers the industry is still thriving and producers of the magazines are still earning megabucks.

Should celebrities have the right to privacy, without media invasion?

Being in the limelight and having the ‘celebrity’ title comes at a price. Although life seems to the prying eye to be all glitz and glamour, behind the scenes and in reality it’s not all it’s made out to be.

Actors, singers, politicians, presenters, authors and even the royal family experience a breach of human privacy. Some people say ‘oh its what they signed up for’ and ‘they enjoy publishing their lives’ and yes in some cases this is true, however in others it couldn’t be more different. 

Undeniably, journalists do have a difficult job, challenging their morals of people’s seclusion with fulfilling their job role. But are there clear limits as to how much of celebrity’s lives the media can publish? Obviously not, because each and every aspect of a celebrity’s life is consumed by an article, headline or photograph, raising questions such as is it ethically right to sit outside a child’s nursery and take pictures of them with long distance lenses through the windows just because their parents are in a high profile job?



Above: Poster promoting the protection of celebs

76% of the public that participated in a survey on the topic agree that people living in the spotlight have to right to a private life and freedom in their own surroundings.  Some say ‘paparazzi have no right to interfere in what people do outside of their work.’  This statement sums up the reason that it’s wrong for a-listers to have to experience the harassment and intrusion that the press cause in their lives. What they do to earn money, whether it be acting or singing, is a job, and just like every other human being they should be able to leave their metaphorical ‘office’ and return home and back to their personal lives without it being displayed all over the glossy pages of a magazine or on the front page of the newspaper. Just like the next person they should be able to make mistakes and learn from them without the fear of it jeopardising their whole career.

 Furthermore, although a lot of the blame of the invasion of privacy is on the press, behind that lay an army of consumers for whom the stories are being created. Some people strive on reading about others lives, the misfortunes and the amazing opportunities but when does it all become too much for the victims of the brutal industry? Would it affect your quality of life if everything you wanted to keep secret and personal was exploited for the world to see?

In conclusion, with fame comes a certain amount of attention, and celebrities understand that they become role models and have to set good examples but as well as this, all consumers and fans of these high profile people should understand that they are still human and have emotions. They still need space and time to themselves as much as the rest of us and so the should be granted that because at the end of the day, think how you would feel if you had your every move scrutinised and judged by the rest of the world and think how it would feel to have the truth twisted and lies written about you and the things you care about.

Media presentation1 from annie_coe