As Media Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
       - Prezi on previous post.

As my magazine is representing students from the ages of 16-24 I made a reader profile with the stereotypical objects a POP, mainstream artist would enjoy or own. I included Beats headphones and the guitar as these are both objects that are popular, alot of people know about and are keeping up to date with the music trend, this also works well in conjunction with my magazine title, Plugged, because if you are plugged into something the term usually means you have alot of knowledge about the newest information to come out about something. I have added an advertisement for a mobile app! This is because technology has become a rapid part of our world and will increase in popularity. The mobile app allows people on android, iPhone and blackberry to access the magazine without going to a store. This will increase my audience and buyers as they can be living or staying away from home and still receive what they want. This potentially gaining more customers for the magazine!

What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?

Due to my magazine being a music genre targeting chart lovers, a lot of younger people and teenagers are believed to be fans. My target audience is 16-20 years old, an age group associated with university and college students. With this in mind it would be appropriate to sell my magazine in stores nearby educational campuses.
Targeting mainstream audience stores such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrisons and Asda would be beneficial for distribution of the magazine as these are all easily accessible stores for the public.

If my magazine was distributed into small stores nearby educational sites I think it would get a lot of business due to students not having to travel along way to get it. If it was distributed in a large superstore like Tesco or Asda people may have to travel further to buy it however thanks to places such as universities offering free trips to these it is made available to get. I made the magazine a monthly buy due to this. An advantage on stocking the magazine in these stores is the possibility of it catching peoples eyes are they are shopping, this way intriguing more of an audience and the purchases being not so limited.  Following store research I found that Asda is a popular store currently located in almost every city. Asda having '528 stores and depots in the UK' are very well known across the region, nevertheless looking further into the research we found Tesco is the widest current branch over the UK. Gathering information from 'http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16676688' we can see that 'Asda is the UK's second biggest supermarket chain, behind Tesco'. Being the biggest supermarket chain of 2012, there is a better chance of the magazine being successful being sold where more people shop.

The table above from Wikipedia.com shows that in total as of 2012 Tesco currently have 2,975 stores across the UK, including the small express stores that they own. Choosing Tesco has more of an advantage on store sales due to the fact many locations such as towns or villages in the UK don't have a big enough population to support having such big stores such as Asda and Morrisons, therefore Tesco's will be put in place. This giving not only people in cities the advantage of buying the magazine but students in smaller locations aswell.  Asda is another good distributer of goods and has “over 18 million weekly shoppers” – your.asda.com.

Information says from the website that in 2010 ASDA has 374 stores in the UK, not including Walmart in America. Since 2010 the business has expanded and opened over 50 new stores just in the last year, these all impact on the distributions of magazines, as you have to choose the correct marketing. 

Consequently for my market genre of Pop Music, I think having a global brand such as Asda/Walmart would be more beneficial for my target audience as not only then does it make it accessible to students in the UK and members of the public but also it makes it available globally. This is a huge impact, as the artists featured in the magazine then don’t have to rely on social media to get their message out there. Universities such as Derby and Salford both make trips available to students to go shopping at Asda therefore it could apply to both the younger and older generations of my target market group.

Who would be the audience for your media product? 

Music magazines are known to target their audience according to demographics. Using this understanding of demographics I chose to do the same thing and collect information. I posted the table of classes of our society on my media blog in order to make a decision on choosing a specific class to target my product to.

The table:

 

Targeting a music magazine is key and this is needed in order to piece the magazine together. The Genre I have chosen is POP therefore from information such as chart music and MTV the public are aware of what type of people purchase pop music. Through the 2000’s iTunes itself has had a major impact on the facts and audience of music artists; they are able to calculate where their purchases are coming from around the world, giving the artist an indication not only of age but location aswell.  Since the 1990’s POP has slowly developed to become a lot more mainstream through independent record labels within music such as artists like Duran Duran. Their target audiences are based on the fan base. This consists of a lot of teenagers; we know this from things such as reader profiles in music magazines. NME has a music magazine reader profile clearly looking at the statistics of their audience using demographic research. After studying the reader profile I collected information for my magazine and targeted the group I wanted to attract to my magazine. For my music magazine I have chosen a small demographic range for students age 16-20 both male and female. This is targeting potential students and people starting to go into new jobs after leaving university, these are within band E. As I have picked 'Pop' music as my genre this has alot of versatility within the genre that I used for the magazine to appeal to both sexes.

            A reason I chose the age range I did is because Group E in the demographic table shows little income, usually people between ages 16-20 are still in education. Whether this being college, sixth form or university money is limited and not as available as it is for working class people with a constant income. With the fees of education rising there is even more need for students to be saving money therefore pricing my magazine at £2.00 an issue is a good price to maintain. As well as looking at other magazine prices I also took a small survey myself, of students in the age range 16-18 to see how much the limit would be that they would pay for a music magazine. I have chosen also to have the magazine be published once a month, therefore if they bought an issue every month that is only £24 a year which is reasonable compared to magazines such as Vogue or Elle, fashion magazines. People pay up to £50 a year for these magazines, therefore students will find this alot more acceptable for a magazine purchase. 

After looking at the demographics of the magazine industry I started creating a reader profile of my own, I created this on the target audience I would have gained. If my magazine issue was a publicised there would have been a lot of on-going research to determine what would enter my reader profile.

The reader profile I created is based on my mainstream audience. The social networking, the apple products, fashion wear and local music symbols are all part of our modern industry. The life of technology and digitalization has over took our world and people of younger generations such as my target audience will be fully aware of these appliances. Having several schools and institutions that give homework and assignments via Web 2.0 gives my target audience knowledge on technology, in my opinion this will help to attract my audience and show them what type of magazine I have produced.