For my product, learning more about my target audience I felt was crucial. By learning there needs wants, and their opinions on certain features, helped me construct my product, influencing what features and conventions to include or not.
Researching into existing products, I noticed not many features were appealing for a teenager audience, which influenced my decision to appeal to them more for my product. To investigate what teenagers wanted from a local newspaper, I used social media networking site Facebook. This web 2.0 site is utilised mainly by teenagers on a daily basis, so making a group and putting a questionnaire online was more suitable and convienent for my target audience. With a lot of the teenage culture having smart and android phones, they can access Facebook via them again meaning this questionnaire method is more accessible. When selecting who to ask, I made sure I asked a fair representation of teenagers, asking both male and female. I also asked those with different tastes in music meaning I would get a range of answers.
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This was the first question I asked. I intended to find out if this section of my target audience was genuinely interested in Local Newspapers and basically see what their general thoughts were. 4 people responded, all showing interest. First and foremost, this showed me my product does have the potential to appeal to a teenage audience, I just need to discover conventions that will ultimately appeal to them and persuade them ot purchase the product.
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I then wanted to discover how devoted my teenage target audience are to reading the local newspaper, specifically analysing purchasing methods. Again all my response should that none would purposely buy the product. here I felt I learnt a lot abou tthis particular section of my target audience. Althuogh they are willing to read a paper, they are not intrigued enough to go out and purchase on ehtemselves, telling me they don't feel anything ultimately appeals to them in the product. Here this made me work hard to introduce conventions and features to Local Newspapers that would encourage teenagers to go out and purchase my product. This question also got me thinking about my ancillary tasks, and helped me chose to construct an online website. As lots of youth use laptops and internet connection daily, reading my product online would be much more accessible and convienient for them.
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I then asked my target audience 'What attracts them most to a local newspaper', by getting an answer to this I would be able to focus on these conventions in making them appeal to a teenage target audience to increase the amount of teenagers reading my product, therefore maximising the potential audience of my product. The most popular answer was 'The main article and headline'. when looking at a Local Newspaper, the editor constructs it so that the most newsworthy exciting story is the main article, to attract an audience and reflecting the newspaper as a good read. As my research showed me that teenagers are most attracted by the main article and headline, I made sure the story I chose would appeal to them. This research fundamentally helped me to decide which article I should use as the main one.
Firstly I decided I would use the Marathon one, based on a 17 year old girl who ran the Sunderland 10k dressed as a pencil. I felt having a teenager in the main article would help teenagers reflect and relate to the article and therefore the paper. Seeing teenagers appealed in a positive light for a change, this would of again appealed to a teenage audience who would like to read on.
However after constructing my highland Cow article, I felt this was a more humorous, light hearted story that would appeal to other audiences as well as teenagers.
The option 'masthead' was also selected as an attractment ot the local newspaper, therefore when constructing my masthead I kept the teenage audience in mind.
Seeing this response, I then went onto create anothr questionnaire asking my target audience to choose which name they liked best for my product.
The vast majority of my research showed that my audience preffered the name 'Sunderland Life'
I selected 'Sunderland Life'. Sunderland cements the location to the audience and tells the audience the city in which the news will be about.
LIFE- I decided to choose life as it is a youthful word, reflecting this on the newspaper. Life also sounds enthusiastic, engaging and exciting again reflecting this on the newspaper so teenagers will register the product as a fun read. As news an be branded as boring and something that would not usually appeal to teenagers, the word Life makes the product seem more exhilarating as if it is literally packed with Life.
i felt it was very imporant to constinetly get audience feedback through the construction of my product. There criticism would be constructive and I would learn how to better appeal to my target audience. To make sure I am asking a fair representation of my target audience, I this time asked a 67 year old man to see his opinions on my product.
What this has taught me:
- My articles are appealing correctly to the vast majority of the target audience.
- I need to work harder to appeal to an older audience.
After making amendments, I then went on to asking a different member of audience what they thought on my second page.
I asked a 46 year old lady and she commented;
Throughout the construction of my product I felt it was important to show my audience my product, to see if I was appealing correctly to them. I asked a teenager their thoughts and opinions on my poster and main product.
please click here to see this link
From this video I learnt I was correctly attrcting my target audience, the features I had included to appeal to teenagers had worked effectively. The student in the video also comments on aspecs of the product that would appeal to other audience members, for example she mentions the subsription would appeal to her nana.
Image selection- For my images that I used for my products, I found it important to get audience feedback to make sure these would appeal to them and make them want to purchase the product.
click here to see the link for my audience research
My pitch presentation-
I presented a pitch to my class with basic information about my product; what it would be about, who it was targeted too and how it would be distributed. I engaged with my audience throughout my presentation and asked them for feedback. The feedback they have me was very useful especially as it was in the pre production stage of my product. They commented on things that they liked about the product I would make and said that they thought it was a good dead to create a local newspaper where teenagers were more involved.
Where is your pitch presentation and feedback??
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