To best understand what is expected in terms of the quality, characteristics and content of my culture project, I have done some research on the client: Vice Media Group LLC

 

Who are Vice?

 

Vice is an American-Canadian digital media and broadcasting company, originally founded in 1994 as an alternative magazine. Their main focuses were lifestyle, arts, culture, news and politics, and when the founders later launched the youth media company, those topics carried across and built the basis of Vice’s modern-day success. With offices in 35 cities around the world and 1700 pieces of contents produced daily, Vice expanded primarily into youth and young adult-focused digital media.

 

“The world is ever-evolving and full of raw, untapped potential. We exist to help people navigate it all.”

 

Here are some of their channels and various topics they focus on. The most relevant one is culture, being at the top next to Vice itself and is clearly a big source for Vice’s work.

 

 

Their target audience is males ages 25 – 24 who are leaders who are quite up-to-date with modern-day events, especially things they believe in and use their devices frequently, to create, share and learn about their passions. From this, I gather that Vice’s regular viewers are a culturally woke and creative people, who like learning about the impactful subjects of today, and would like my idea about feeling connected to a culture and finding your true self through art.

 

 

The company categorise and tailor their content to specific genres and audiences through 5 key lines of business:

• Vice Media
• Vice Studios
• Vice TV
• Vice News
• Virtue

 

I go more into depth about why I have chosen which specific line of business for my idea in my Production Formats post, but here I will be looking through and comparing the different branches within Vice.

 

Vice Media

 

Vice media exists generally online as a news platform that is not typically mainstream media, touching on stereotypical subjects and news that other companies shy away from. Vice exists on platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and mainly focus on the age bracket of 20 – 35, although also handle subjects that many older teens would find relatable and interesting since they handle things in a very truthful way and do not skirt around delicate topics.

Upon clicking onto the Vice Media website, I understood that the content was aimed at younger adults and teens, at first glance.

 

 

Things like dedicating whole categories to controversial topics such as ‘drugs’, that adults would usually want their children to shy away from, and adding a section on minion memes and Pinterest-inspired quotes show that Vice understands what their audiences are interested in, and are keeping up-to-date with all the relevant happenings in the world of gen Z and gen Y.

 

 

I found myself drawn to certain posts and interested in the titles and thumbnails as I scrolled through, which would never happen on an average news website with the same formats and subjects cycled over and over again. I liked that artwork was included throughout the website and all the posts looked appealing, as well as being categorised , minimalistic and clean. It felt as if I had a platform where I could keep up-to-date, that finally understood how to make factual information interesting, and I now know, from the first-hand experience that this is part of the reason millennials are so drawn to this company.

 

 

Vice News and Vice Studios

 

Vice’s news division reports current affairs and is promoted because of its coverage of ‘under-reported affairs’. It has covered events from around the world, such as the Syrian Civil War, the protests in Turkey and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the reporters being quite young, there is an overall leftist bias and their articles are uploaded to their website and YouTube respectively. Thanks to this, other leftists are more likely to read/watch this because it stands for what they believe in, and coupled with the fact that the target audience is mainly millennials, Vice News has a very similar audience to its parent company, allowing them to work almost hand in hand. 

Vice Studios is a global tv and film production company that surrounds the development, production, financing, and distribution of multi-platform content. It is a part of vice that is dedicated to creating feature-length documentaries and films like The Mountain which was aimed for 18-34 bracket. In general, though, their audience mainly consists of males 25 – 34.

I am grouping these together because they are technically part of the above website. Vice.com works with both of these branches to put forward the entertaining and the factual, and you can go into their specific sections by selecting one of the categorical links such as ‘World News’. I like that Vice gives their viewers an option as to whether they are looking for serious updates on world events or fun articles with the latest gossip; there is a space for it all and you can direct yourself wherever you like, depending on what your interest are, through the links.

 

 

 

I also wanted to study a bit more into the way the publications in Vice News were structured and what kind of language was used. As expected, the information was presented professionally and formally, but what was pleasantly surprising was that the language was not overly complicated and quite straight-to-the-point. It was refreshing to be able to read a piece of digital media containing fact-based information that was not long without reason, boring and dull past the second paragraph.

Of course, we can’t forget about Vice Studio’s main focus: documentaries. I visited their section ‘watch’ to see some recommendations. Based on some of the descriptions and titles, I can see why they targeted males ages 25 – 34 since the subjects seem to be generally sci-fi, mental health, extreme sports and sexuality, all of which are stereotypically more male-oriented (if we judge by old gender norms, which still linger in today’s societies, documentaries targeted for women would have celebrities, gossip and fashion).

 

 

Vice TV

 

Vice TV launched in February 2016, as a channel intent of creating lifestyle-oriented documentaries and reality series aimed at millennials. It is produced by Bill Maher, uses CNN journalists as consultants and covers topics using an immersionist style of documentary filmmaking.

Personally, I do not watch TV hardly ever. I prefer to watch films and series through streaming services or find interesting videos on YouTube. Because of this, I cannot accurately judge Vice’s television branch, but by looking at their website, I can take a peek into what kind of things they broadcast.

 

 

From the trailer at the top of the page to the banner containing information for specific shows, I clearly understood that Vice TV focuses on fictional, informative and lifestyle-based shows and movies, revolving around topics that ages 25 – 35 would find particularly interesting, such as heists from a criminal perspective or celebrity hangouts and game sessions, both of which are examples from their pick of top shows. The TV shows and documentaries they show are quite intense, from the information I have gathered. For example, there is a documentary about a satanist being suspected of multiple murder, which wouldn’t appeal to younger adults and/or teenagers due to them not watching TV and the content being quite depressing and full of heated topics. For this reason, it is evident Viceland is mainly targeted at an older age of vice’s millennial target audience (late 20s-late 30s) and is more popular with adults. 

 

Virtue

 

Virtue is the line of business my group handled as a mini-research project. Here is what we collected:

 

 

I also went to their website for some more research and found that they have a good introductory paragraph and a few recent projects displayed for the viewer. I got a good sense of Virtue’s direction and focus just from their website, even without the extra knowledge I already had about them.

 

 

 

It’s hard to see because of the zoomed out screenshot, but Virtue has actually partnered up with many famous brands such as Target, Ikea and McDonalds. They aim to tackle issues by spreading awareness of new services, projects and products created by companies, and through this collaborative effort, create a space that feels less like one giant advert, and more like a doorway to the future.

 

– What did I Gather Overall? –

 

From the research that I have conducted, I have learned that my client is knowledgeable about modern issues and isn’t afraid to present things transparently to their audience. I now also know that they are geared towards culture, but also present information on creative and political subjects. This means that their field is quite large and, ignoring the averages for a moment, they most likely attract a large variety of people, who’s interests differ, and thus their level of interaction with Vice does so too. This helps me massively with my own project, as I can now determine whether my idea fits in with Vice’s agenda, which I believe it does, as it is reflective of an innate desire that I am sure many of the creative people can relate to, and also cater my work to an older age group (as I was originally planning to aim my animation for late teens to mid-twenties, whereas now I will try to include an older audience in my considerations). Through exploring their various platforms, I also got a sense of the feel and tone of their work and can alter mine to be, for example, more refined and artistic, rather than extremely colourful and in-your-face, as are their articles and news reports.