The document discusses using focus groups to gather feedback on a media business or product. It notes that focus groups provide a grassroots way to understand perceptions of a company versus competitors. They can obtain detailed opinions and feelings from participants in a time and cost-effective way. The document then describes a focus group conducted for a music video project. The feedback was overall positive, indicating audiences understood the intended rebellious genre and cohesive elements across products. However, some technical aspects of the video were questioned but were actually intentional design choices alluding to conventions of similar past videos.

1. By Alex Harris

2.  A focus group is the most grass-roots way you
can learn about your media business. By
gathering a select group of regular people
together, you can find out how your company is
perceived versus your competition. The answers
you get can be a road map as you build your
brand.

3.  The main advantages of focus groups
are:
 They are useful to obtain detailed
information about personal and group
feelings, perceptions and opinions.
 They can save time and money
compared to individual interviews.
 They can provide a broader range of
information.
 They offer the opportunity to seek
clarification.
 They provide useful material eg quotes
for public relations publication and
presentations.
 The main disadvantages of focus
groups are:
 There can be disagreements and
irrelevant discussion which distract
from the main focus
 They can be hard to control and
manage
 They can to tricky to analyse
 They can be difficult to encourage a
range of people to participate
 Some participants may find a focus
group situation intimidating or off-
putting; participants may feel under
pressure to agree with the dominant
view
 As they are self-selecting, they may
not be representative of non-users.

4.  We had a focus group for our music video, which
we filmed and referred back to afterwards,
analyzing the key points made. This enabled us
to co-operate with the group whilst collecting
data, giving them our full attention and listen to
what they were saying, as well as communicating
with them on the matter.
 We wanted to find out if we had achieved our
goal in creating a well rounded organic artists,
and make successful products that our audiences
could enjoy, understand, and relate to.
 We also wanted to make sure that we had not
over looked any mistakes or parts of our
campaign that didn’t match eachother.

5.  Our feedback overall was a positive one. It seemed as if
the majority fully understood the genre and many
mentioned the rebellious attitude looked good in a 1950s
pastiche. This is positive as it is an example of Halls theory
of the audience decoding the text the way we intended
them to. The feedback also says that despite our band
being indie rock and new, that the music video doesn’t look
old fashioned and actually is a little humorous.
 The majority also thought
we had created a
cohesive product as they
could relate the black and
white theme to each
product created as well
as easily identifying the
bands genre and
rebellious attitude.

6.  Many participants commented on the same
issues. Many people said that during the music
video, the lead singers head is cut off, the
lighting is too bright so you cannot see the
bands faces and that the frame size for the
audience was wider than the band.
 Below you will be able to view a video we
made which explains that in fact all these
were made on purpose to match the
conventions of previous music videos similar
to ours.