How we improved our magazine cover based on audience feedback.

1. HOWWE IMPROVED OUR
MAGAZINE COVER BASED ON
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
By Jamie Robinson

2. FIRST
DRAFT
(LEFT)
FINAL
DRAFT
(RIGHT)

3. Qualitative Research
■ My group and I decided the best way to gather constructive feedback on our Sight and
Sound magazine cover was through qualitative feedback.This involves asking open
questions and allowing the interviewee to give honest feedback.
■ Snap Surveys defined qualitative research as: Qualitative Research is primarily
exploratory research. It is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions,
and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or
hypotheses for potential quantitative research.
■ The dictionary definition of qualitative is ‘relating to, measuring, or measured by the
quality of something rather than its quantity’.
■ The benefit of qualitative research is that it allows for in-depth specific feedback meaning
areas to improve are obviously highlighted.
■ We decided one way to collect qualitative feedback was through a Padlet. I sent out an e-
mail asking a number of members of our target audience to look at the first draft of our
Sight and Sound magazine cover and highlight one thing they liked and one which needed
improving. In total we had 10 responses, which gave us plenty of improvements to go
about making.

4. Who Are OurTargetAudience?
■ Before I sent this Padlet off to members of our target audience, we first had to identify and define our
target audience.This is where the role of media theory became useful. My detailed understanding of the
concept of audience, due to the exam side of my A2 course, meant I knew that target audience is more
than just male or female, or young or old, it is much more complex than that.
■ First of all, I had to highlight our demographic, which refers to population factors such as age, gender,
religion, race, sexuality and social class.Our demographic was a male audience between the ages 18-30
and we tried to target our multi-media marketing package to people across all religions, sexualities and
social classes. However, the primary social classes we targeted were B (middle class) and C1 (lower-middle
class).This was because our characters fit into these social classes, thus the narrative is more applicable to
these kinds of people.
■ Next the group had to establish the psychographic of our target audience. I found an effective way of
applying such factors to theTwo Minds target audience was through theYoung and Rubicam cross cultural
consumer characterization model.This focus more on personality traits of individual members of an
audience who respond to things differently, which ties into Blumler and Katz uses and gratifications theory.
TheYoung and Rubicam model highlights numerous personality types, however I identified that the aspirer
and the succeeder should be key personality types within our primary target audience.These are people
who are motivated and driven to succeed, but are also heavily effected by what people think of them.This
is the personality of our protagonist DetectiveWells who is desperate to succeed but is driven insane by
bad press and personal attacks byVanessa Warren.

5. ■ Once I had agreed on a specific and
detailed target audience with my group, I
took it upon myself to create a Padlet page
on my own account (robij271) and then
send an e-mail out to a range of people who
I believed fitted into our demographic. It
was much harder to identify if people fit
into our target psychographic because a
psychographic is a person’s internal aims
and personality.
■ Once the e-mail had been sent, it was a
case of waiting and hoping I would get a
decent number of replies. In total I received
9 replies, through a combination of this e-
mail and asking people directly.
■ I found that 9 responses were more than
enough as we received a good range of
suggestions, which gave Rory, Matt and I
plenty to do and definitely improved the
quality of our Sight and Sound magazine
cover.

7. ■ Once the Padlet began filling up, I drew a few general conclusions based on what our audience had
recommended we change on the cover, which the group used as an plan of action.The plan read as
follows:
■ - Add a border
■ - Add barcode, date and issue number
■ - Ensure the black line down the middle is central
■ - Find a higher quality Sight and Sound logo
■ - Add some colour to the text to make the poster stand out more
■ These are all fairly simple things to improve, however without collecting qualitative research on the
Padlet I made, I doubt we would have identified these issues and made the changes. The fact our
audience identified issues that we, as media students, failed to notice, suggests the idea that
audiences are passive and simply absorb messages in media texts without knowing or challenging
them is rubbish.The audience members I sent the Padlet link to had to look at our magazine cover
and challenge every element of it in order to suggest an improvement that could be made.Thus,
from this piece of qualitative audience research, I learnt that our audience is not passive as the likes
of Packard and the hypodermic needle would suggest, but are active and will take a negotiated or
oppositional decoding position (Morley) when identifying messages inTwo Minds.This was a
principle I kept in mind when representing characters in the trailer and poster and also when
suggesting messages in the trailer.

8. Sight and Sound Logo is Poor
Quality
■ This was one of my responsibilities and something I promised
my group I would address. I spent hours looking through the
internet as well as other modalities, which is an example of
how I used transmedia navigation (Jenkins) in the post-
production phase of the construction ofTwo Minds. I would
find a Sight and Sound logo, save it to my desktop and then
import it intoAbode Photoshop, scaled it to size and see how
it looked.
■ Alternatively, I would use the lasso and crop tools on
Photoshop to appropriate (Jenkins) the Sight and Sound logo
from existing magazine covers.
■ However, I simply could not find a higher quality logo.
■ Therefore, this was unfortunately an issue I could not address
and I had to settle for the logo we used in the first draft.
■ This highlights one weakness of qualitative research. The fact
that it is idealistic and that producers, especially those who
are independent or amateur, are held to very high standards
by their audience and sometimes it is not possible to meet
these expectations. However, this does not change my
opinion that qualitative research is generally as very positive
way of gathering feedback and that on the whole it was
invaluable to my group as a tool to aid us in improving our
practical work.

9. Add a Border
As you can see, the final draft (left) does have a border, whereas the first draft does not.This was not something we would have noticed without the
use of qualitative feedback, as we were more concerned with the colours and how to get the black line down the middle in the center. All Sight and
Sound magazines have this white border and it goes a long way in ensuring our magazine cover matches the Sight and Sound conventions and looks
professional.This was something that was highlighted a few times and is something I am glad we addressed, by using our groups strong collective
knowledge of Abode Photoshop to use an inverted crop to select the border which then simply inserted into the composition containing the
magazine cover and was placed around the perimeter of the cover.
When I saw that so many people had said we needed to add a
border, I was curious. I knew that the people I had sent the Padlet
to were not loyal Sight and Sound magazine readers, so how did
they all know a border needed to be added?As it turned out, Luke,
was the first person to make this comment. Luke studies film at AS
level and as a result had access to numerous Sight and Sound
magazine covers, meaning he was familiar with the layout. At this
point, I believe, Lazarsfeld’s two-step flow model came into effect.
The two-step flow suggests that media texts do not flow
unmediated from the text to the minds of the audience, but
through more active ‘opinion leaders’. Luke played the role of an
‘opinion leader’ and a lot of ‘less active’ people who saw the Padlet
after him simply reflected his comment as they knew he was
knowledgeable.This perhaps suggests that our audience are more
passive and take a dominant decoding position (Morley, reception
theory), meaning they simply accept information presented to
them without challenging it, as was seen when they took Luke’s
opinion to be true without challenging it.

10. Line Down the Middle is Not Central
■ As I was the one who actually created and distributed the
Padlet and Matt had done the same for the poster feedback,
the group decided that the most time-consuming task from
the audience feedback should be addressed by Rory.
■ After a lot of play (Jenkins), experimentation andYouTube
tutorials (collective intelligence, Jenkins) Rory did eventually
manage to succeed in placing the line centrally on the cover.
This was done on Adobe Photoshop by shifting all the text
slightly to the left and inserting a border to cover the rough
edges.
■ This was not an issue that any of our production group noticed
until it was highlighted by members of our target audience
through our qualitative research. Again, this highlights the
benefit of undertaking qualitative research, as it allows people
complete freedom in issues and improvements they identify,
which allows for specific feedback which we (the production
team) can then address.
■ First draft (bottom). Final draft (top)

11. Improve Barcode and add
Issue Number and Date
■ This was not an issue that any of our production group noticed until it was
highlighted by members of our target audience through our qualitative
research. However, we then looked through existing Sight and Sound
covers and it became evident our audience were correct and we needed to
bring the barcode lower and make it longer.
■ This was done on Adobe Photoshop by importing a different Sight and
Sound magazine cover and using the crop tool to select and isolate the
barcode.We did this on a separate composition and then just dragged the
barcode into the main composition.You can see how we improved the
barcode from the 1st draft (bottom) to the final draft (top).
■ The qualitative research also highlighted that our cover was missing an
issue number and date in the top-right corner, which feature on all Sight
and Sound covers.You can see on slide two how we addressed this
problem.
■ This taught me just how observant an audience can be and also how
conventions stick in the minds of audience members.The audience are
used to seeing barcodes and issue numbers of magazine covers, the fact
they did not see these elements on our first draft rang alarm bells and
they identified this was something that needed addressing.This once
more, point to my belief that audiences are active and consist of a number
of different individuals who all react to texts differently.

12. Overall
■ Qualitative research was crucial in ensuring our Sight and Sound cover matched
typical conventions of existing magazine covers and looked professional.The fact we
were not asking our audience specific questions, but instead giving them free reign to
give whatever feedback they saw fit allowed the audience to pick up on improvements
that needed to be made, which we would never have identified without the use of
qualitative audience research.
■ From using Padlet to collect qualitative feedback from members of our target
audience I learnt that, the audience is remarkably observant and when a typical
convection of a magazine cover is not present, they are quick to notice.This also ties
into the importance of conventions as if when a member of the audience is decoding
(‘the moment of reception or consumption by the audience’ – Stuart Hall) the
magazine cover, and notices a typical convention of a magazine such as a barcode or
issue number, is not present, they will question the media text.