This is a recap of the final letter remaining out of what we have covered from MIGRAINE and is the last theory and industry lesson on that very acronym. Having done it last year and most of this year, we will now be using and applying the knowledge from our collection of studies in order to achieve the best level of research for our current brief.
The ‘A’ refers to ‘Audience’ which is a vital part of product preparation and in fact, any project with an outcome intended for a client. It is important to know how the product will fit into the market and who will want to buy it/experience it. Questionnaires, focus groups and comparisons to existing texts are all viable methods that can be used to develop a greater appreciation for the target audience, however, they do need to be organised in a clear way. Demographics offer a simple solution to understanding the audience and help with creating a meaningful and usable dataset. This can really help mainstream institutions, such as Netflix for example.
— // — // Subscription-based services want to know more about the people who are buying their products so they can devise new ways to meet their needs.
— // — // The traditional commercial sector can increase their profits by connecting advertisers to their primary target audience, and influencers need to provide lots of demographic data and engagement statistics about their followers to advertising agencies, so they are able to promise a certain amount of impressions and click-throughs for an appropriate fee.
By looking at the number of responses, advertisers can then measure the performance of the marketing strategy, which is known as direct and non-direct attribution.
For this recap, we looked at demographics and psychographic as the main target audience traits and categories, as well as some other bits and pieces – all useful information for identification and understanding. I’ll be giving a quick overview of these since most of the information can be found in my first-year blog, far more in-depth.
Demographics
These are factual and measurable pieces of information about the audience. For example, age, gender, income, marital status, nationality, ethnicity, homeownership, job, education. These are all demographic profiles, and whilst aren’t particularly nice categories, they are used in media and pre-production.
Here are some snippets from the slides that I want to include as they are good examples of how this categorisation is used.
In terms of income and class, we also looked at two scales that were covered last year. The first is the NRS social scale, which are 6 categories that were created by the national readership survey. Although rather outdated, they can still be seen in use by media publishers to identify and generalise their audiences.
Traditional British social divisions of upper, middle and working-class no longer reflect modern occupations or lifestyles and are seen as out of date in the 21st Century. This is why the BBC teamed up with sociologists from leading universities to survey more than 161,000 people and analyse how the modern British class system has changed. They came up with seven new groups.
Personally, I prefer the second set of categories the most as it is more objective and fair, and like last time, this is the one that I’ll be using in my target audience profile.
Psychographics
As can be seen above, Psychographics are more about a person’s thoughts, values, beliefs, attitudes and lifestyles and go beyond classifying people based on things like gender or race. Psychographics seeks to understand the cognitive factors that drive consumer behaviours and focus on understanding the consumer’s emotions and values, so you can market more accurately. There are five general areas that you could look into:
5 Factors of Psychographic Segmentation
1. Lifestyle
The term “lifestyle” is broad but can be crucial to major decisions. Your lifestyle is made up of things such as:
- Your relationship status
- Who you live with
- Whether or not you have kids
- Your daily routines
2. Opinions
Everyone has opinions, but marketers have to pick and choose based on relevance. For example, knowing that a person’s favourite colour is blue isn’t all that useful when it comes to consumer habits. Instead, psychographic opinions could include:
- A belief that companies should use minimal packaging
- An affinity to different spokespeople
- A bias for different kinds of comedy
- Religious beliefs
3. Interests
Your interests have an undeniable influence on what you are drawn to on the internet, what you look for, and what you buy. Interests could include:
- Favorite shows, movies, books, and music
- Activism
- Destinations
- Technology
- Fashion
4. Activities
Activities are a massive part of life, and they also factor into how we experience products, whether that be in terms of practical needs or material desires. Some activities could include:
- Hobbies
- Their line of work
- Tasks to complete at home (like a DIY project)
5. Social Status
Social status affects purchase decisions in a couple of ways, the most obvious of which is pricing.
- Value vs. luxury
- Ease of access vs. craftsmanship
The last time we looked into psychographics, we were also given a set of character traits that could place the audience into a general category. I actually found these really useful because they gave me a starting point for the more core aspects of the audience character’s personality, but I could also create a mix of the options if I wanted to be more specific.
In terms of Psychographics, we also briefly looked into generational characteristics and how they fit into the workplace. I found a great website which describes each generation up to the birth year 2000 as well as a table which nicely sums up the key information.
! The following is copied and is purely here for my benefit, as a reference for project research !
Silent Generation (born between 1928 – 1945), first called so by Time Magazine because of their conformist trait, they never questioned, they kept very quiet and worked hard. This generation grew up through the Great Depression and World War II. Children were seen and not heard. This generation is still represented in the workplace, albeit on a very small scale at around 3%. They are loyal and believe in an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.
Baby Boomers (1946 – 1964), or as it is better known the ‘Me‘ generation. This group are well established, goal-oriented, with a good proportion still holding leadership positions. This generation does not require the constant feedback that other more recent generations demand. Job title, office size, parking …position, perks and prestige are what motivates this generation. Baby Boomers still make up a significant proportion of the workplace with the youngest of this generation reaching 65 in 2029. This generation believes in hard work and is often critical of younger generations (X & Y) for a lack of work ethic and commitment to the workplace
Generation X (1965 – 1980), a smaller group than the Baby Boomers by about 25%, this generation is credited for bringing in work-life balance, they prefer an informal, fun workplace. They are self-reliant, prefer individual projects and work independently with minimal supervision. They believe opportunities should be based on merit and not rank, age or seniority.
Generation Y, Millennials or Digital Natives (1980 to 2000). A tech-savvy generation. Described as self-confident and ambitious, generally, they are not loyal and have no problem jumping from one employer to the next. They search for new challenges and have high expectations. Culture is extremely important to this generation and they demand a flexible workplace, collaboration, time off, and access to the latest technology. They are not afraid to ask questions if something is not clear.
Generation Z (2000-) just entering the workforce and is a larger generation than the BB or Millennials. They are more entrepreneurial than previous generations and according to Forbes contributor Deep Patel, they will be defined by the following key traits:
- Security
- Independence
- Competitive
- Multitask
- Face to face communication
- True digital natives
- Desire to be catered to
Most of the things we went over I had already listed and planned to use. However, I was surprised to find that I don’t remember learning much about the generations and if I used them in my work, it must have been in less detail. This is great because I can now apply the new psychographic research method and show development in my audience analysis.