Audience

1. WHAT HAVE I LEARNT FROM MY
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
By Ilana Dekel

2. GATHERING DATA
We gathered our data by conducting a focus group with our target
audience of 15 to 17 year old females. There were also males of a similar
age in the focus group and it was important for us to hear an opinion of a
slightly different audience too. We showed them our music campaign
which consists of a digipak, a website and a music video. This allowed us to
receive qualitative feedback from our focus group, as we prepared a list of
open questions. We filmed and wrote down their feedback and then made
graphs based on what they said, which made it more clear for us what
exactly our target audience would like us to change about our music
campaign so that it is more appealing to them.

3. DEMOGRAPHIC AND PSYCHOGRAPHIC
PROFILE
We noticed that those who fit under the VALS psychographic
segmentation of trendies and groupies responded in a different way to our
music campaign products than those who fit under rebels and drop-outs.
Trendies and groupies had a more positive feedback towards our products
than rebels and drop-outs, whose feedback was more critical. Moreover,
since we only used a young demographic, who are more likely to enjoy
Alternative Indie genre of our products than for example an audience of 50
to 70 year old people.

4. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF
OUR RESEARCH
One of the advantages of our research is that we received a very detailed
feedback which we found very helpful for improving our products. The
changes were made to suit our target audience making our music
campaign more appealing to them.
One of the disadvantages of our research is that our focus group was only
out of around 10 people, which is a very small sample, which is a limitation
of using qualitative data.

5. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE
MUSIC CAMPAIGN
Based on our target audience feedback, our music video is the strongest out of
all the products in our music campaign. Our focus group said that they found
the music video to be very engaging and at no point boring. Even though they
found the music video to be the best, they still thought that all three products
link in very well with each other and that it is clear that our music campaign is
in Alternative Indie genre.
One of the weaknesses was that at first our digipak’s capital letters ‘MK’ looked
like Michael Kors’ brand logo, but thanks to the feedback we changed it and
separated letters M and K. Another weakness is that some parts in our music
video were not perfectly synced, so we had to go back to the editing to
address that matter.

6. ENCODING AND DECODING – STUART
HALL
According to Stuart Halls’ Reception theory, it was clear to us that our
audience perfectly decoded the intended meanings of our encoding.
For example, we encoded the relationship between females and males
through character positioning and facial expression. The interaction
between a male and females is not particularly pleasant. Even though the
models give the guy their attention, they are not smiling at him and are
looking down on him through the grid when he is underground with the
band. Our audience decoded that women are now also gaining power and
control and no longer want to pretend like they are enjoying being around
some men when they are not.

7. USE AND GRATIFICATION - LAZARSFELD,
BLUMLER AND KATZ
We as a group noticed that our audience found our three products and
especially the music video as diversion and personal identity.
Our music video acted as a diversion to our target audience, as it allowed
them to be entertained by the beautiful models in the music video, their
relationship to the lead singer, allowing the audience to escape from their
mundane existence by watching a piece of entertainment. The music video
also acted as personal identity to the target audience because some
women could perhaps see themselves in the models, who are gradually
taking their power they deserve, which is making sense to the target
audience’s own life and views.

8. PREFERRED, NEGOTIATE, OPPOSITIONAL
READINGS
The majority of the readings which we received was preferred, because our
audience agreed with the ideas which we presented to them. They also did
not challenge anything in our music campaign and seemed to be very
happy with it in general.
Nevertheless, there were two people who had some readings which they
tried to negotiate with our three products, especially the digipak, because
they felt like there had to be more to it, they did not like the minimalistic
look of our digipak too much.

9. CONCLUSION
The received feedback was very useful for improving the three products of
our music campaign. The feedback gave us more ideas which we included
to all of our products and especially the digipak. The qualitative results
were helpful because it allowed us to address our target audience directly
and receive very valid data for our music campaign.