The document summarizes the results of research conducted to understand audience reception of a music video. Focus groups and online surveys were used to collect feedback. The results showed the audience was primarily young girls who responded positively to the simple, girly visuals featuring a lead singer and dancers. While most girls engaged well with the intended meanings of the video, some boys felt it was too feminine. The research demonstrated how audience demographics and individual perspectives can influence reactions to media.

1. By Etienne Ben-Okagbue

2.  I conducted a focus group as well as sending
out a questionnaire to different sets of people
 I also looked at the statistics from the video on
you tube as well as looking at the comments

3.  The demographic profile of my audience
affected some of the responses, for example in
the focus group one of the boys said he didn’t
like the girly scenery.
 However one girl said she liked how it was
simple so she could also focus on the dancers
as well as enjoying the scenery
 This goes to show that the readings would be
based on the type of person giving the
feedback

4.  Using focus groups you can a lot of data at
once, making the feedback easy to aquire as
well as being fast.
 It is also cheap

5.  People may be influenced by each other. For
instance in my focus group, normally the first
person to speak was usually what the other
people in the group would say

6.  With the statistics I could identify where my
audience was
 Also whether they were Boys or girls
 However it didn’t tell me whether they liked it
or not
 Was also in small quantities

7.  The feedback let me know that our target
audience was correct, in the focus group most
of the people that said they liked it were girls
 Also people got the concepts I was trying to
show in the video, one girl mentioned how she
thought the pink balloons were trying to show
her girlish side
 The video was simple to understand as there
wasn’t too much going , a simple combination
of a lead singer and dancers

8.  Most people said they would pay for the
product as a result of the music video
 It didn’t appeal to many of the male secondary
audience, the guys in my focus group didn’t
like it and neither did my teacher Jason.

9.  The Encoding model(how we produced it) was
making it it Indie pop by making it really girly
with the pink and purple colours and a few
baloons
 The Decoding model (how people read it) was
the same as the Decoding model as the audience
read it exactly how we wanted them to

10.  Blumler and Katz say that auidences are for
from passive in their approach to the media;
rather they actively choose and consume the
media to satisfy particular needs and
gratifications which they exhibit. This was true
for our piece because from the audience
feedback we say that it was mainly people of a
feminine nature who liked the video the most.
This was because of the Indie Pop setting.

11.  I have learnt that when creating a music
campaign for an artist it would make sense to
link all the products (e.g. the digipak, the
website and the music video) in the campaign
together so that people get familiar with the
image. This would make it more popular and
receivable by the audience

12.  I feel that the audience also too something from
this. I also recognise that my audience has
engaged with the meanings in my music video
in different ways, bringing their own contexts
to the reading of the star image – what Hall
argues is reception theory. I can understand
how my audience can either reinforce or
challenge intended meanings in the text.