media coursework

1. Who would be the
audience for your
media product?
Evaluation question 4

2. The target audience for my magazine is 20-30 year old females, who were alive and
indulged in the 90’s pop culture. Primarily, these women would be interested in
fashion, nostalgia and entertainment. The reader profile as follows - Jessica is 25
and grew up with 90’s and the noughties defining her childhood. She enjoys new
music but also loves those nostalgic tunes that bring her right back to her
childhood. She has a low disposable income (ABC1) as she left university with a
huge debt, and moved into a flat she is renting. Her sister, Sarah also enjoys
reading ‘poser’ as there’s not all that girly, gossip stuff that she doesn’t like but she
is still interested in the 90’s style.

3. Before creating my final magazine, I carried out audience research in the form of a
survey on ‘Survey Monkey’. This showed me that price and quality were the main
factors that my audience would consider when buying my magazine, this develops
the idea and supports the fact that my target audience would have a low disposable
income and be more likely to buy it due to quality and not quantity. This helped me
create a magazine that I believe would sell well in my market.

4. My audience is predominantly women however, some men may want to read this
as I did make a lot of my decisions based on my audience research which surveyed
12 women and 7 men and therefore will show mixed answers and develop a
product mainly focused at women but with aspects for men too. I have kept a lot of
the pages quite simple and easy to read as to appeal to males who do often go for
this type of magazine, however, the bright colours may deter them from wanting to
read my magazine as they might find it too girly. Furthermore, women are shown
to be the main target audience because women are featured in all the images. There
aren’t any men within my magazine and I chose to do this because the 90’s was a
huge time of female empowerment. Singers like Madonna created songs about
inequalities and the fight for equality. The divorce rates increased as women
realized they didn’t need to depend on men, women took control of their sexuality
in songs from TLC and others alike. All this contributes to illustrating the target
audience.

5. Within my magazine, I believe that it is very clear who it is targeted at. One way
this is shown is through the colour scheme. In my magazine I use the colour
scheme of dark red, light blue, grey and black. These together create a very
feminine looking cover. This is especially prominent at the top with the crayon
scribble overlay. This is a consistent feature on all my pages and I believe that it
does show women are my TA within this. The mixture of bright blue and darker
purple creates the feminine vibe. Whilst blue is traditionally a boy colour, it’s a
pastel blue which is a colour featured by many items of women’s clothing.

6. The writing style too is very indicative to the target audience, whilst a large amount
of the lexis is informal, there’s still a level of sophistication as to connect with the
older audience. In addition to this, the informality feels very friendly and as if
you’re talking to one of your friends. Which signifies that the audience is women,
who stereotypically talk in an extremely over-feminised way and often with over-
friendly tendencies.

7. My audience are also shown in the focuses of my magazine. Whilst this is primarily
a music magazine, there’s also frequent references to fashion and especially in my
interview article, romantic details. All these factors are very good signifiers that this
magazine is aimed at women. More specifically, whilst love life gossip is indicative
of magazines for young girls, as my references are very rare, it creates the idea that
this is for an older audience who are slightly more matured but still enjoy a little
gossip. The fashion focus shows my target audience as women are more likely to be
viewed as materialistic and therefore interested in the fashion aspects. However,
this is not only fashion but it is ‘period fashion’ or a throwback/walk down memory
lane. As this is not high fashion editorial stuff, it’s more likely to show that this is
targeted at those who like 90’s fashion and perhaps those who were teens in the
90’s.

8. Overall, I believe that my audience is shown in many ways within my magazine
and will easily attract my audience in similar ways.