Audience Essay

The audience of any media product is extremely important as the audience is essentially responsible for the success of any media product. In our case, the media product I will be analysing is my music video which formed a large part of my Advanced Portfolio in Media this year. Whilst filming and editing our music video we made sure to be very conscious of our target audience and the way in which are target audience would consume our product so that we could ensure we were appealing to the appropriate demographic for our artist, Ivory.

The first stage of ensuring we had our target audience’s needs and uses in mind was to analyse the genre of the music video, which in our case was Indie/Pop/Electro-Pop. We chose the song Gasoline by the artist Halsey because it has not got a music video and, at the time, Halsey was relatively unknown and so this was a good choice for our group. We realised very early on that the performance and setting of our music video would be two of the biggest ‘pull’ factors for our target audience of teenagers and young adults between the ages of 18 and 30. This was because the song and lyrics could easily be interpreted as angry or unhinged and so we instantly began to orientate our performance around this idea thus conforming to the preconceived idea of our song. This crazy and unpredictable music video would appeal to teenagers and young adults who listen to this genre of music because it is a similar idea to that of other artists from the same genre.

When analysing the target audience further we used psycho graphic categorisation and looked into the socio economic background of our audience which was typically C1, C2 and D. These were very useful tools as they allowed us to further understand our audience and how they would consume, use and get gratification from our music video and product as a whole. We found that our target audience was comprised of predominantly college and university students who enjoy the Indie/Pop/Electro-Pop genre and who don’t really follow the masses and mainstream ideals. They will be typically female as our artist is female but she also appeals to men.

Looking at Blumler and Katz’ Uses and Gratifications theory whilst filming and editing allowed us to understand our audience’s wants and needs. Their theories of diversion and escapism were provided to our audience through our music video because Ivory’s wild, crazy life acted as a form of escapism for our audience as it explored mental health and the perils of the human mind. Furthermore, our music video provided our audience with a form of diversion as we were able to combine our music video, digipak and website to allow our audience to follow the life of another person and divert their attention away from their own lives to someone else’s. The website which included the news, gallery and merchandise pages was an ancillary task which formed a part of our final cross-media task for Media A-Level. The News page on the website also conformed to Blumler and Katz’ theory of information because we provided Ivory’s target audience with regular updates and news headlines involving her so they can keep up to date and stay ‘informed’ about all things Ivory. This is a similar idea which we explored through our social media pages on popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Social media was crucial for attracting our target audience of teenagers and young adults as these are the people who most use sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and so these were great platforms to attract new fans as well as inform our artist’s original fan base. For our social media sites we kept in mind the Cultivation theory as we wanted to make sure that by constantly updating our Twitter feeds and Facebook page we were increasing our artist’s fan base as well as still attracting her original target audience. This proved to be very effective as we attracted a wide and diverse audience which we would not have been able to access had we not had access to these social sites. The cultivation theory improved our understanding of our target audience as it helped us to realise that social media sites were extremely useful and successful for appealing to that key demographic of teenagers and young adults between the ages of 18-30.

Similarly, we used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to ensure we were able to provide certain levels to our target audience thus increasing their love of our artist which would translate into them consistently buying her music. Through our website, digipak, music video and social media sites we were able to provide love and belonging because every element of our cross-media task allowed our audience to be a part of her fan club and feel like they belonged somewhere. As well as this, Ivory consistently promoted love and acceptance through her social media sites and through the positive news stories and messages she posts on her website. We were also able to provide esteem because Ivory is a strong, independent woman who teenage girls and young adults can model themselves thus improving and boosting their self-esteem.

In conclusion, audience feedback and understanding our target audience played a huge part in the creation and promotion of our Advanced Media Portfolio. Through psychographic categorisation, analysing socioeconomic backgrounds and implementing key audience theories such as the Cultivation, Uses and Gratifications and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs we were able to correctly identify our target audience, ensure we had their needs and uses in mind and provide our audience with some of these key ideals and ways of using, consuming and gaining pleasure from our Indie artist’s music video, digipak and website.