Q3 (Evalaution):

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In terms of the demographics of my primary target audience they are predominantly aged between 15-25 and mainly consist of females. Additionally the majority of them will range between students and first time workers thus are often from lower social classes such as D and E. Though my primary audience will be female my secondary audience will consist of males aged between 15-25. In terms of psychographics my target audience could be best described as aspirers or ‘realists’. Because the vast proportion of my primary audience are young and therefore have their whole life ahead of them many could be identified as aspirers, however unlike the TA of r and b music videos my TA will aspire less for vast material, wealth and the kind of life connected to this (this being utilized and played upon in the majority of and r and b videos) but may instead aspire for popularity and friendships (specifically the younger part of the TA) or successful relationships, something I’ve directly taken on board where I’ve communicated these concepts to my audience through sign use. While some of my audience can be identified as aspirers others can be seen as ‘realists’ where they are much more down to earth and grounded than for example the TA of a stereotypical hip hop music video and therefore it was vital as an audience they connected to artist rather than aspiring to be him.
In order for any product to be successful it’s critical a complete understanding of the target audience is gauged at each stage in it’s production, by identifying and understanding a target audience it overall allows for a suitable product to be created which is as successful and appealing as possible in terms of meeting their requirements. Throughout all stages of my pre-production gauging an understanding of my audience was vital in terms of considering both their likes and dislikes and their overall demographics as well as how they ‘used’ products in the real world and identified with them as part of the uses and gratifications theory, by understanding this it allowed me to develop a product which was shaped around their needs and specific purposes as well as lived up to their expectations. For example I reinforced themes of love and romance throughout my video in order to appeal to predominant female portion of my TA while through costume use and using ordinary people to feature within my video I managed to connect to my audience, the main theme of the song itself in terms of a celebration of simple things such as love can be seen as doing this too.
I got feedback throughout my production stages for example after drafting my designs. I made sure that I asked people that were previous fans of the genre and fitted in with the demographics of my target audience and therefore would be interested in using and engaging with my product in the real world. Because the predominant part of my primary target audience would be female a lot of the feedback I gained was of females however I made sure I did ask some males too in order to ensure I didn’t neglect my secondary audience. I asked people from within my media class to give me feedback as they could help me with improving the technical aspects of my music video and ancillary tasks however I made sure I also asked people outside of my class as it gave me a fresh perspective on my products and also widened the amount of people I was gaining feedback of, ensuring they were not all from the same place.
In terms of actually gaining the feedback I handed out forms which were specific to the product I wanted to be looked at. These were really useful in allowing me to pin-point exact changes I needed to make to improve the product. I also created polls on my blog which enabled me to understand important information about my target audience which would affect their consumption of the product for example where they usually watch videos and what on the whole they consider to be the most important/entertaining aspect of a video and how they interact with the music industry in terms of where they get their music from. I think creating polls on my blog was really effective in that it was much easier for audiences to click a button then filling in a sheet. I filmed a lot of the feedback I gained and in some of the video’s I created I prepared questions to ask my audience, questions such as whether they felt following a narrative in a music video was important or if the use of a green screen was effective. By asking my audience questions it gave me the opportunity to understand precise details about the audience and things I was personally unsure about like whether not completely using location shoots would appeal to them.
My audience feedback forms were really important in the drafting process of some of my products such as in my digipack designs. I found this feedback particularly helpful because it helped me to see where I had gone wrong on my initial designs and subsequently how I could improve on my final ones as well as allowing me to understand aspects of my drafts they liked so far, aspects I could work on and improve furthermore. After creating my draft designs I asked 5 people to give me feedback on their improvements. The most useful feedback I got was in changing the font I had used on my album covers as this wasn’t particularly eye catching, this being a necessary component in any album cover. After gaining this feedback I changed my text to a bolder, more eye catching one which was bright red as well as putting effects on it like a drop shadow to make it stand out further. Other feedback I got was that I need to include something more on my first digipack because there was a lot of white space and it looked quite plain and therefore I changed the design by making the image of the artist take up more space as well as making the text larger and including an additional puzzle piece beside the profile shot of the artist. I also put a filter effect on the image which made it appear darker and as if it had been smudged. This overall made the album cover more quirky and unique; something my TA had picked on my polls as making a digipack successful.