4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The general consensus is that my audience will be young, white males who have a great deal of passion for rock music. They will probably be slightly rebellious and trendy and looking for a source of escapism by reading 'Awake'. Also, this audience are likely to be going to concerts regularly and are the type to always have their headphones in no matter where they are. They are probably up to date with fashion yet would still wear their own thing and do their own thing in order to be considered unique and apart from the majority of their friends who are probably very mainstream in comparison. Regarding the ABC1 demographic my audience would probably fit into the C1 category which are compromised of skilled workers such as engineers, plumbers etc. Even though my audience would not be working their parents would which is where most of their money would come from. Most advertising is aimed at the A, C and C1 category as these are the type of people who would thus have enough money to spend on things like magazines, etc. However, this model has now become outdated as barriers in society are not as rigid anymore. There is a new system now in place called 'Consumer Profiling'. This is where the audience are categorised by their personalities rather than their earnings. The main groups I will be targeting are aspirers, and explorers. Teenagers and young people are generally aspirers as they have no power/control they aspire to be powerful. This group normally have an icon that they want to be like and always want to be better than who they are. Explorers are similar to aspirers yet they are more adventurous, willing to try new things and keener to break away from the norms of society (which fits in well with the uniqueness of my demographic).

The results from my quantitative audience survey helped to give me a clear understanding and idea of who my demographic would be. As I was already thinking of constructing a magazine centred around rock music, I thought that it would be best to aim my magazine at young, white males as these are the types of people who would usually listen to rock music. The age range I chose for my magazine was 16-23 year olds. This meant I would have to use colloquial language to appeal to this audience and that I would be competing with other magazines such as The NME and Kerrang as these are two very successful rock magazines being published at the moment. With my survey the majority of participants selected RnB as their preferred type of music meaning that I would have to be careful when interpreting the data as a lot of it would be specific to fans of RnB. Thus by going with less popular answers for most of my questions I would be targeting a niche audience and going against what is thought to be mainstream. Although at the time of analysing my audience survey I had chosen to go with a green, purple and black colour scheme, when it came to constructing my pages I found that the colours may be different and quirky but they did not look very appealing when put together. So instead I decided to go with blue, red and black. These colours seemed to work better together and made my magazine look more professional. The rock artists that were favoured by my participants have me a good indication as to what type of bands needed to be mentioned in my pages. By using these artists I would ensure that out of loyalty to these bands, fans would buy my magazine simply for having specific artists names on the cover. Also, it meant I could use bands of a similar sounds to achieve the same effect. Now with secondary data, I used www.nrs.co.uk to find some figures that could help me to establish my magazine's demographic. I found that people aged mainly between 15-34 buy Kerrang and The NME which means that as I want my magazine to be of similar stature to these two I have chosen a wise age range. Also, it is quite blatant that a bigger proportion of men compared to women buy these texts, which again means that by attempting to appeal to males I am targeting a wider demographic which will definitely improve my sales.

The data I collected from my qualitative research was invaluable when it came to the actual construction of my pages. By having people from my demographic around to talk to and probe with questions helped a lot as I was able to gather more than just answers ticked from a list. I was able to understand why certain things appealed to them and why other things would not be much desired in my magazine. I received a lot of constructive criticism and fresh ideas that helped a lot in creating my magazine and in deciding how best to entice my demographic. So by conducting questionnaires and doing research into secondary sources I have been able to form a strong idea of my demographic and what they expect out of a rock magazine. A lot of this can be seen in my audience profile in which I give a vivid description of a typical person buying my magazine as well as images that capture the particular lifestyles I am attempting to draw in or offer to those looking for escape buy reading my media text.