05 AUDIENCE PRODUCTION

 I will be conducting audience research in order to make more accurate decisions during the course of my planning, in relation to how my target audience will react and respond to my magazines. I have contacted a sample of 10 people to act as representatives of my target age range (including 5 Males ages 16, 17, 20, 22 and 24, as well as 5 Females ages 18, 18, 21, 22 and 25). My sample is also racially diverse and represents a range of different sexualities. They have agreed to email me with comments and feedback on my questions in relation to my planning and production which I will use during this process.

Focus group meeting 1: front cover

I asked my focus group to look at a range of front covers I had found during my research and asked them to comment

7 respondents though the covers were too busy with images and stories. They suggested few key stories with strong but simple images to support them in order to have my audience respond more positively. They also suggested some stories would work without an image at all and have some articles just be a block of text and have the language be short and simple to match the simple look of the coloured box it would be in. A younger audience would be more likely to respond to this, considering the popularity of social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat where people post large images with a caption to go with it or Twitter where people post short, simple comments. 

All respondents felt that it would be a good idea to keep a model on the cover, in keeping with the research I presented them: a smiling face and the direct mode of address made the cover seem more welcoming and friendly, encouraging readers to look at the magazine. However, they felt this would work better with varied sexes used on the cover in order to be more inclusive and representative. For this same reason they suggested I used ordinary people rather than models. They also felt I should have them dressed in a more business-like way as this would be familiar with my target audience, most of whom would still be in school (at the bottom of my age range) or beginning white collar jobs (at the top of the age range)