Potential target audience for my campaign

1. Potential Target Audience for my Campaign
Age: 13-19
Gender: Male & Female
Occupation: Full Time Student/ Part time Job or unemployed
The music video I am going to produce is for a folk/indie band. I am going to, with this in mind, explain
my potential target audience for my product in terms of demographics, psychographics and
Geographic. After having my survey answered by a mainly teenage (age 13-19) audience, I am going to
make this my potential target audience age due to now having the most data for this particular age
group. Originally I wanted to aim my product at this age group as I think that the music I have chosen
and my ideas will appeal mostly to them. I want my product to be aimed at both a male and female
audience because I think that it would appeal to them both equally, and also my questionnaire was
answered by an equal amount of males and females, so now I am familiar with their preferences I can
construct my campaign in order to appeal to both genders. The occupation of my audience will be
either in full time education, and this coincides with the age of my potential audience, if they are
teenagers then they are bound to be in education. This is the group that I collected most data from, as
75% of the 20 people I asked were in full time education - this classifies them within group E. 20% of the
people I asked were also either unemployed or have part time employment. This suggests that my
audience will be in full time education with a part time job, in education with no job or in no education
with no job. This gives me an idea of the kind of audience I want to aim my products at. I think that my
audience, due to being teenagers, will be in touch with social networking sites, and the fact that 35% of
them said they used their mobile phones as a platform to watch music videos on also indicates that. Due
to this, when my audience receive my products they may react by tweeting about it, writing on
Facebook, doing a vlog on their YouTube channels, making a post on Tumblr or simply viewing the
video on YouTube. This is one of the reasons I want to aim my products at this particular audience,
because the word will get spread more easily and this will result in more popularity and sales. My typical
audience, due to watching TV and using mobile phones, would interact with streaming sites such as
YouTube, Netflix, love film, sound cloud, Spotify etc. This is because they are part of the ‘online
generation’. They may also watch TV programmes that are popular with their age group such as reality
shows like Made In Chelsea, Geordie Shore or comedy programmes such as How I Met Your Mother
and New Girl. The younger age in my potential audience spectrum would view my video and products
mainly as a form of entertainment, whereas the older teens would rather view my video and be able to
relate and identify with the people in the video as they will look similar to them and enjoy similar things,
they may be able to relate their own feelings to the video and therefore watch it and listen to the music
as a form of comfort, it could also be used as a form of escapism, if they wish that they had a
relationship or were ‘in love’ then they may watch this video and fantasize about it. The video will either
be watched as a direct consequence of searching the internet for it, or they will come across it because
it was a suggestion based upon videos they have previously viewed on their search engines. Be it
through social media sites, predominantly twitter and YouTube, I think my audience will one way or
another come across my video whilst using the internet. My audience may also decide to create
homemade parodies of my video, as it has been done for several other ones, a few famous ones being
Taylor Swift’s ‘You Belong with Me’ or Awolnation’s ‘SAIL’. These parodies have gained millions of views
and have therefore created interest in the original videos, and the same may happen with mine.

2. Especially as teenagers part within the Audience 2.0 grows rapidly, it becomes easier for teenagers to
access relatively cheap film making equipment, and this opens up new opportunities for the audience.
The geographic properties of my target audience will be British and American based. This is because I
know folk music is popular among British ‘indie’ teenagers and also because I will be filming my video in
the English countryside, however the band itself is from California therefore there will be a large
audience to target there as well, and also the band tour mainly in the US as well, making this the
predominant geographic of my target audience. I think that the social class of my audience will be
ranging from lower/working to middle class. This is because this is the average class among British and
American teenagers, and the fact that Folk music originated among the common people of a nation
also coincides with this. This leads on to the psychographics of my audience. As Andrew Goodwin
acknowledged, music videos often demonstrate genre characteristics; this means that the folk/ indie
genre will appeal to my audience throughout their media consumption, not just music videos. This
indicates that they may enjoy more quirky/ hipster films that contain music from the genre such as ‘Juno’
or ‘500 days of summer’ which are famous for their use of folk artists like ‘The mouldy peaches’ and
‘Regina Spektor’. Other products they are likely to consume are popular video games such as world of
Warcraft, COD or Pokémon. They will use several different platforms like Xbox, PS3, Wii, Nintendo etc.
The audience’s interests will include ‘hanging out’ with friends, in social situations such as parties or just
in parks or shopping centres etc. The audience may also enjoy attending concerts with their friends, for
artists or bands of a similar genre to Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes. I know this because
generally when you like a band you eventually find out about other artists similar, due to the
‘suggestions’ bar on YouTube, which displays several different suggestions based on the song you are
currently viewing. This will allow the audience to expand their
interests in the genre and be able to access music of the genre
they like. To the right is an example of the recommendations bar
which appears when I search for the song that I am making my
video for, therefore from this is can conclude other music interests
of my audience will include artists such as ‘Mumford & Sons’
‘Gotye’ and ‘Ed Sheeran’. The band adopt a very casual and
carefree style of clothing, which coincides with the themes of the
genre as a whole. My target audience may also decide to dress
similar, including causal trainers, boots, jeans and T shirts. This
band portrays a very quirky and carefree image which my target
audience may also have.

3. My audience can be defined by the ‘Uses and Gratifications model’. This is a theory that suggests that
the audience is active, and they use the text and is not USED by it. This also states that the audience uses
the text for its own gratification or pleasure. This coincides with the potential audience that I have
already moulded, I want them to be able to use my media texts as a form of escapism/ a way to relate
to the products or just a form of pure entertainment. I want my audience to be able to gain pleasure
from viewing my video, this may come from the audience being attracted to the actors and wanting to
look at them, or it may come from the audience being able to relate themselves to my actors.