Understanding Our Target Audience

‘Audience’ is a key concept in media, because all media texts are produced with an audience in mind – that is to say a group of people who will receive the text and make some sort of sense out of it. A media text is planned with a particular audience in mind. A media producer has to know who is the potential audience, and as much about them as possible.

Basic Categories for Audience

·         Age

·         Gender

·         Race

·         Religious Beliefs

·         Income/Status

·         Geographical Location

Audience Research

Audience research is a major element for any media producer. It is important that a media producer understands its target audience in order to tailor the media text to fit the needs of the specific audience.

1)      Demographics:

A common and traditional method of audience research is known as demographics. This defines the adult

population largely by the work that they do. It breaks the population down into 6 groups and labels them by

using a letter code to describe the income and status of the members in each group.

Producers need to know the demographics of their potential audience so that they can shape their text or product to appeal to a group with known vieing habits. In the case of our product it is difficult to say one demographic is the target for our advert. Energy drinks are consumed by a wide range of people. It is likely that category E aren't our main customers as an energy drink is not an essential product and this category is unlikely to have vast amounts of disposable income, however we cannot disclude them as we have no evidence to support this.

2)  Psycographics:

This is a way of describing an audience by looking at the behaviour and personality traits of its members. Psycographics labels a particular type of person and makes an assessment about their viewing and spending habits.

An energy drink is a mass market. We therefore want to aim our advert mainly at mainstreamers because they are the largest group with the most potential customers. We considered aspirers when designing our product label in order to attract such a group. We also wanted to emphasize quality in our advertisement campaign to appeal to succeeders and reformers. With an energy drink not a likely product of choice for strugglers we decided that targeting this group would not be neccessary.