James Kay learnt several important lessons from receiving audience feedback on his media product. He used surveys and feedback from classmates to identify his target demographic as young adults interested in entertainment and nightlife in Sheffield. Small changes suggested in feedback, such as tweaking his billboard advertisement, significantly improved the work. For future projects, James would incorporate more frequent feedback throughout the production process rather than relying mainly on last-minute feedback.

1. Question 3 –
What have you learnt from
audience feedback?
James Kay

2. Introduction
 Audience feedback is a key part in the production of any product
which is consumed by consumers. By receiving feedback changes
and amendments can be made to work in order to improve it
before it is submitted as a final product. Because of the
importance of audience feedback it is key that I used it within the
production of my own work.Throughout my time collecting
feedback there are a multitude of different things that I have
learnt.Within this presentation I will be highlighting the different
ways in which I used audience feedback throughout my work and
how it has assisted the production of my media product.

3. Why is
audience
feedback
important?
 Audience feedback is important for many different reasons as
mentioned in the previous slide with making amendments to pieces
before they are submitted however audiences as a whole are a very
important aspect of a media piece.The uses and gratifications theory
is a key example of the importance of audiences as a whole.The
theory focuses on the idea that power lies within the audience and not
the producers, producers will shape their media products to meet the
need of the target audience which they are trying to appeal to.The
uses and gratifications theory also discusses the idea that audiences
use media products to gratify their set of needs such as the following:
Diversion, Escapism, pleasure, information, pleasure and many more.
The uses and gratifications theory is something I referred back to
when receiving my audience feedback.When receiving audience
feedback I often considered the different uses that an individual has
and how my media product can be used to fulfil these needs. For
example a key use of my product will be for the information aspect as
my magazine gives information on night life and other aspects of
Sheffield, however it could also be seen as meeting escapism needs as
it shows different aspects of Sheffield which people could dive into.
When receiving feedback I made sure that I was at least meeting
some users needs as if I wasn’t I’d feel like my product was ineffective
as it doesn’t meet what it has set out to achieve.

4. My target
audience
 Before collecting any audience feedback data it was important for me
to identify what my target audience would consist of and the type of
demographic which may be included within.When I was planning my
product I already had ideas on what type of people that I’d like to
appeal to. After doing research and analysis on Active8, Gossip and
Exposed I felt that I would be better suited to create a magazine
which built upon the ideas of Exposed rather than sayActive8 and
Gossip. I believe the reasoning behind this was the fact that both
Active8 and Gossip were typically both very conventional magazines
whereas Exposed slightly drifted from conventions, it was like a mix of
both a regional magazine and both and entertainment magazine, this
was the type of product I’d like to take ideas from. A lot of aspects of
Exposed can be seen emulated within my work however my magazine
is not a direct copy, it is different in many ways. However I believe my
target audience is very much like the one which Exposed appeals to.
 The age bracket for my magazines target audience would be in the
range of 18-30.They would be individuals who would be interested in
entertainment and night life.They will also obviously live in the area
of Sheffield, otherwise they wouldn’t understand all the referential
codes within my work such as the images and places.

5. How I gained
audience
feedback
 To gain audience feedback I used a few different methods.The initial first
feedback I received wasn’t regarding my actual magazine but rather the
content that would be included.This was so that I could find out my target
market and what to expect. I created this feedback in the form of a
questionnaire survey on the survey website surveymonkey.com . Results from
this were as expected with many responses regarding the content to be
entertainment based and also stressed the need of use of things such as social
media and a dedicated online website for the magazine. My audience
feedback from my work was given in the form of feedback from both my
media teacher and also other students within my class. By asking my students
I believe it was a rather accurate representation of my target market as most
people were around the age of 17-18 which meant they met my target age
bracket that I suggested in previous slides.

6. Examples of
feedback given
 One of the ways in which I recorded some of my feedback was to
ask people within my class via Facebook. By using the social
media’s messaging service it was easy to take screen captures of
the responses so that I could collect them and use them as
pointers for areas that I can improve regarding my media
products. Below are some examples of the feedback that I
received:

7. What I learnt
from the
feedback I
received
 The feedback I received helped massively in the production of my
work.When producing anything feedback can be a huge help as when
you’re creating something yourself you may believe it is better than it
actually is.Also by showing it to members of your target audience you
can see if it actually appeals to them, if it turns out it doesn’t appeal to
them then you’re product isn’t really successful as it isn’t achieving
one of its main purposes. By giving feedback to a range of different
people they all may have different aspects which they notice which
can be made to improve my magazine, I don’t read too many
magazines therefore giving to individuals who read more magazines
helped a lot as they could distinguish the conventional magazines of a
magazine that I may have missed however with me completing my
analysis I already had an extensive knowledge. I learnt the importance
of small changes to my work, much of the feedback I received wasn’t
stressing that I had a lot of extensive changes to make, they were
often small subtle ones, however it is these small changes that make a
big impact on the way my media products are the way they are. A key
example of this would be my billboard advertisement, from my
audience feedback suggestions I ended up creating 3 different
versions until I finally reached the final version.This shows the amount
of time it can take for a product to finally reach its end product
successfully.

8. In the future I
would…
 If I decided to create another media product I would probably give
myself more time for the user feedback as looking back many of
the changes can be seen as last-minute. I would set out different
times that I would gather feedback so that I had a more constant
stream of feedback from users that I could use throughout the
production of my work not near the end like I had done this time.