The focus group was unsuccessful because the magazine team did not clearly establish their concept or potential story ideas. They provided vague information to the focus group and did not explain their ideas in enough detail. As a result, the focus group was unable to provide useful feedback on what they liked or disliked. One successful question asked focus group members to rate potential magazine names, which provided insight into preferences. However, most questions failed to get clear answers because the magazine concept was not well defined. For future focus groups, the team needs to have a clear concept and present their ideas in more detail to get meaningful feedback.

1. Amy Poole
Focus group feedback
Our overall focus group was disappointing as we were unavailable to clearly establish our specific
stories and content we wanted to cover within our magazine so we couldn’t get feedback from our
class. We should have clearly highlighted our potential ideas through a rating system which would
have given us an idea that what stories our target audience wanted, instead we gave vague
information to the audience suchas through the content of potential stories i.estudent stories which
wasn’t useful or helpful for the focus group as we didn’t explain in more detail what the stories
would be therefore we they couldn’t give precise feedback wherever they liked them or not . So for
next time we needed to have a clear idea and concept when structuring our focus group questions
and questionnaire to have successful and productive answers to analyse from our target audience.
Unsuccessful answers/questions:
What did you like and what don’t like our ideas
We wanted to ask this question because to find out what our audience thought about our concept
of our magazine.However, this question couldn’t be answered due to the fact that both our tutor
and focus were unable to clearly understand what our concept was as we as group didn’t clearly give
a enough explanation or clearly highlight and debate some of our ideas on the slides in more detail.
There was a taster of our ideas on our slides which didn’t get explored by our group or the focus
group in more detail such as on brainstorm highlightedpotential pictures and themes of Christmas
which we could of asked whether the focus group preferred this or not by giving alternative choice
getting them involved and share the opinions of what they did like or not. Insteadthis wasn’t
discussed and was picked upon by tutor who said we should have clearly had a concept before
presenting to our focus group which would have been more effective than the one we were giving
which was vague and not effective. Therefore she reminded us to rethink our options and make sure
we have a clear concept when making our questionnaires to fully be able to get the people’s
opinions on this serious issues we want to raise within our question.
Successful questions /answers
Which name do you think is the best name for our magazine rate from 1-5 with 1 being the lowest
and 5 being the favourite explain why?
As the focus group went on we did in get some feedback from the target audience through this
question “Which name do you think is the best name for our magazine rate from 1-5 with 1 being
the lowest and 5 being the favourite explain why?” This was productive as we were giving the
audience a chance to get involved and rate which name they liked best because we wanted to able
to understand which names stood to our audience as we would be needing to establish and finalise
the name for the magazine. What we found out from doing this was that there were a mixture of
results such as the most popular results were original names such as “Inbox” and “Student
Newsfeed” with comments from students within the class i.e. Shannon and Dan who both said that
“Inbox sounds interactive and very much social media” Although this was positive feedback for the
potential name inbox it was clear that the other names we had also showcased were poor i.e. The
hotlist with getting the lowest ranking with comments saying this is irrelevant as is not showcasing it
is student magazine being created for Solihull sixth form college. This is understandable as when

2. Amy Poole
looking back the name it was irrelevant to the genre of the magazine along with further names such
as Know How and the drop zone which is hard pronounce and understand the meaning of the title
which was picked upon when our target audience gave feedback on our ideas. We also had tutor
feedback which she stated we could have tried to come up with a name that both had link with the
college and more of feel to genre of the magazine i.e students in creative way rather than a
simplistic ideas we came up with. So within the questionnaire we will need to both inject our ideas
I.e more names to establish above the group ideas we have come up with to find out the best name
for the magazine. The reason why this question worked because the focus group where able to
choose the favourite title which gave us an insight of how they operated.
What features / events would you like to see in your student’s magazine rate popularity from 5
being the popular choice and 1 being the least popular?
The reason why I wanted to find out this information was because we as a group wanted to know
what the audience though the best ideas were for our stories so we highlighted them. However
when delivering this question to the focus group our ideas weren’t clearly highlighted in enough
detail therefore the focus group weren’t able to have a clear idea what stories the students wanted.
This was partly down to the fact we as a group had a breakdown in communication as we didn’t
ourselves have an all of our brainstorms to be able to showcase the stories we wanted to highlight
because some people weren’t in .We did previously highlight on the first slide some ideas of stories
we wanted to feature within the magazine such as themes likes Christmas and types of coverlinesi.e
Christmas time pictures of Christmas tree and students we wanted which the tutor picked up on
and said we should have highlighted this among the focus group to find out is the direction of the
magazine they want. What our tutor also picked upon was that there wasn’t a clear concept of the
magazine for the focus group to grasp which shouldn’t really be there when delivering to a focus
group as we as group are pitching our ideas to the target audience who was then supposed to give
us initial feedback what we can improve on to make our product even more effective to meet the
needs.. An example where our tutor picked up mistakes was when we said that we would feature a
story highlighting student stories which the tutor had got us to expand on more to find out what it
meant because it was too vague of story for the focus group to understand and voice their opinions
about whether they liked it or not to be featured within the student magazine such as i.e what
pictures and colour scheme did they prefer from the Christmas theme to another in order to
establish which the target audience liked the most . There was some positivefeedback from the
students such as they mostlyliked the idea of having discounts fun event and latest entertainment
news being covered within the magazine be we as a group should have pushed for more detail into
what in particular fun stories and discounts they wanted and why they wanted them in order to
build up a picture what target audience needs where.
Do any of you read student magazines if not what would attract you to into getting a student
magazine from what you have seen from our initial ideas?
The reason why we wanted this question to be asked was that we needed to understand how our
target audience operates and what would draw them to student magazines if they had or hadn’t
read a student magazine. What we found out was that Shannon doesn’t read them due to the fact
they don’t interest her but if it did have a bright colour scheme and a catchy name and original
pictures which stood out from others magazine then that would her attention. This question was

3. Amy Poole
effective as we were now finally getting to the point of the focus group in which the focus group
were giving their say on what magazines features that would interest them if they were to look at
student magazine and we could as group potentially take on board their ideas.What we also found
out was that the remainder of the focus group though there should be discounts,stories showcasing
personal stories regarding students daily lives around college to intrigue the audience whilst also
focusing on import sections on hobbies and interest around college through the latest sports and
music news which will further go into detail within our questionnaire to explore a variety of ideas to
see which the target audience preffers. So what we have learnt doing the focus group was that we
should have pressed for more explaination from the target audience and more clarity in how we
present our ideas so that the target audience can understand our ideas and concept for our
magazine rather than be confused which doesn’t provide us with interesting results for our focus
group.