AC2: Target Audience

Introduction

in this blog post, I am presenting what I have learned about target audiences – as well as creating my own target audience. The target audience is a group of people that a product is marketed to in order for the product’s creators to make the most money from that product.

For example, people that enjoyed a film director’s earlier movies are likely to watch any new movies that a director makes because of that director’s artistic style. This is that director’s target audience and will be taken into consideration when creating and marketing their next film.

What information do we need to know about the target audience?

– Age

– Interests

– Location

– Popular trends

– Income

Demographics vs Psychographics

Demographics are the statistics about a person – age, location, income and such. Psychographics are the interests, activities and opinions of a person – such as beliefs, hobbies, religion, likes and dislikes etc.

Analysing a Target Audience

As part of this blog post, I have analysed the target audience from an existing piece of fantasy media – I have included a link to this below, as well as a screenshot.

The piece of media I analysed was Banjo Kazooie – A 1998 video game for the N64 games console. It contains many themes and conventions of the fantasy genre, such as anthropomorphism (where animal characters act and talk in a similar way to humans), magic, an adventure storyline and a damsel in distress.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1R10ib_jZaX5l2JG6p6j8UZADnB38yHMxawXttiqygIM/edit#slide=id.g10093b6891d_0_147

 

MIGRAINE

migraine is an acronym for key media concepts.

• Media language (camera, editing, lighting, sound, MES)​
• Institution (the companies associated/producing the text)​
• Genre​
• Representation​
• Audience​
• Ideology​
• Narrative​
• Economics, social and political​

These concepts are important to keep in mind when considering the target audience of a piece of media such as a movie or TV show – and so they will be useful when considering my own target audience for my fantasy show concept.

My Target Audience​

The target audience for my fantasy tv show is teenagers and young adults around the ages of 15-25. This is because it’s a similar age range to my own age, and the fantasy media that my tv show is inspired by has a very similar target age range. The majority of my target audience would be unmarried, because of their younger age.

I don’t think that the location of my target audience is relevant, as Netflix is available in many countries – and so as long as the viewer was in a country where they could access Netflix (or use a VPN to access Netflix) then they could watch my show.

I also don’t think that gender or race is relevant in any way to my target audience. It would be unethical for me to categorize people in a way that prioritizes them over others because of something so personal about their identity. It’s just used for marketing and to make the most money – Netflix would do most of that marketing anyway, so ultimately it would be their decision if they wanted to market my show to a particular race or gender. Ideally, my TV show would be marketed to people regardless of their gender or race.

As for income, I also think that is irrelevant. If the viewer had the disposable income for a Netflix subscription, or was able to use someone else’s subscription then they would be able to watch my show. Despite this, I doubt the show would be marketed specifically towards the most elite, richest people in society – or the poorest people in society. It just exists as a piece of media for a broad range of incomes, locations, ages, races and genders to watch as they please – as is the case with most other tv shows on Netflix in the same style as my own.

As for the psychographics of my target audience, I think that their interests would be similar to my own – as my show takes inspiration from TV shows, movies and video games that I am personally interested in.

This includes movies like: Howl’s Moving Castle, The Matrix and Blade Runner.

TV shows like: Bigtop Burger (a web-series), JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Adventure Time.

and video games like: Hollow Knight, Undertale and Castlevania.

As for the activities of my target audience, I would think that they share hobbies like – playing Dungeons & Dragons (or similar tabletop RPGs), Warhammer or building Gundam figures. This is because many pieces of fantasy media share the same audiences with the same activities and interests – hence, there are shops like Forbidden Planet and conventions like Comic-Con that sell things related to pieces of pop culture and capitalize on people’s shared interest in fictional media.

The opinions of my target audience are largely irrelevant to the creation of my fantasy show – things like religious beliefs, music tastes, sports teams that they support, opinions on other pieces of media. These are not relevant to the story or characters of my fantasy tv show, because I aim to create a show that is inclusive of everyone and that everyone can enjoy, regardless of who they are. Because of this idea of inclusivity and representation of different groups of people, the audience of my tv show is not at all welcome to people whose beliefs are harmful to others (specifically members of the near or far right wing). I just wouldn’t want such a hateful group of people who want to destroy my friends and family to be part of something I created (especially a tv show that promotes representation and inclusivity.)

Conclusion.

Overall, I think that analysing the target audience of a piece of fantasy media has helped me to create my own target audience. Also, in my AC1 blog post – Client and Audience Research – I analysed Netflix’s Target audience as a whole, which also helped me to create my target audience in this blog post, considering the users of the streaming service that my show would be on.

Considering my target audience helps me to create ideas for my tv show intro overall, as I can take inspiration from the fantasy media that my audience already enjoys.