Similarly to my fantasy brief, and to make the most relevant and useful work for the client, I will talk about the audience that I want to target and why.
A target audience is a specific group of people with shared characteristics who will most likely be interested in a product or service. It is important to identify and cater to a target audience because it is impossible to reach everyone at once, so narrowing your focus to a core group helps with crafting a marketing strategy that appeals directly to the type of consumers who are most likely to be converted into customers. It saves time, resources and therefore money, which is what every company and client want. Here is the information that I have gathered in order to identify my target audience:
Based on these details, I can see that this audience is best suited for my media product because of their preferences and personal taste. For example, their love of travel, cultural discussions and finding meanings in the art, all point towards an interest in the message behind my project. The fact they are quite drawn to the elegant, Parisienne lifestyle and like to go to museums means that they will like my aesthetic, and definitely creates an opportunity for me to further reinforce the idea that without art and culture, life and our perception of ourselves would be dull and void. The ability to hone down on this message comes from a base interest in the audience, but even if they don’t have this as strongly as culture enthusiasts, I still aim to impact and influence them, it will simply be easier if they already like those sorts of things. As for challenges and possible setbacks, I put that they aren’t the type to usually watch an animation, and it would have to be quite specific for them to do so (has to have a deeper meaning and more mature themes – not for kids), so I have to consider what sort of thumbnail I want, and how best to make them watch via my poster, illustration(s) and other means of advertisement. For Vice, my goal is to pull in an audience that doesn’t use social media a lot and consume very specific content for them, a.k.a people who travel a lot, are very focused on self-improvement and don’t have time for random entertainment. I believe that they would still use tech often, just not in the same way as most users do.
Since my main media product is animation, I did some research on animated films and clips and who they are generally aimed for. Most are considered to be children’s films and can be watched by the whole family because animation has a visual appeal for kids and the characters and plots are often simplified so that they can follow along and enjoy. However, there is often a serious meaning under all the visuals and humour, which is why a lot of these films do cater for adults and parents as well. Animations are therefore quite versatile as they try to please all audiences but target children and make a film the parents can enjoy as well.
Despite this, I cannot target my work for children as Vice’s audiences are quite different. I went to ‘Vice Media Kit’ to do some research on their categorical target audiences. Since my idea is about French Culture and Art, I think that it fits either in Lifestyle and/or art and design. The audience that tends to prefer lifestyle based media are mostly 25 – 34 and male, and they seek knowledge, fight for positive change and influence others. To me, this audience seems quite mature and would only enjoy an animated video if it was based on a current world problem and carried a complex message. After learning about these traits, I want to focus more on the Art and Design category, who are, like lifestyle, 25 – 34 and male. They experience art and culture and are very creative people, which is exactly the type of audience I would like to push my product towards. However, because Vice has a very male-dominated audience, feel that it would be beneficial for them to increase the female percentage, so I chose to target a mainly female audience instead.
Another aspect of my targeted audience that I looked into was lifestyle and personality-based segmentation. Namely, what sort of life do they lead and how does this affect their likelihood to be interested in my media product. After doing some research, I found a statistic illustrating the share of users of selected social networking platforms in the United Kingdom (UK), by geographic area. The survey shows that for all social media sites, there was more activity in urban areas than rural, which makes sense, as there are more companies and famous brands based in cities, meaning there would be a direct impact on the people who live nearest to them, whereas their reach wouldn’t be as strong further out, where there are fewer billboard advertisements and less pressure to consume media constantly and always be aware of what is happening.
For this reason, my target audience is mainly urban dwelling and employed, as that would be most likely for their age group. In terms of employment, I went back to the BBC scaling system which I used for my previous project and understood very well. Looking through all of the results of their model, I think my targeted audience would most likely be emergent service workers because of their high scores for social and cultural factors, which would mean platforms like Vice would appeal to them. This class clashes in parts with my depiction of my targeted audience, but out of all of the options, they fit best because of age group and location. Being the youngest of the class groups means that they would be most influenced by, and understanding of the themes that I want to portray with my products. Their affirmation to emerging culture also means that they will be appreciative of the abstract idea in my animation, and will be most likely to find it as they use social media quite often. Since my target audience profile depicts that they use technology in a specific way to them, not necessarily less or more than the average person, I feel that they would fit into this class. In addition to this, they also live in urban areas, so they would be most affected by media brands and companies, such as Vice.
However, their low cores for savings and house values, as well as the overall inexpensive locations clashes with my goal to also target culture enthusiasts. Whilst this group may feel the positive change most, they wouldn’t be as likely to continue watching or be extremely interested in my project as those who love highbrow cultures, such as theatre and classical music would. Therefore, I also think that a portion of my target audience may fit into the established middle class. The fact that they enjoy a diverse range of cultural activities means that they will relate more to the character in my animation, who represents people who are inspired by art, and their high population percentage works in my favour to attract a large audience for Vice. However, factors like their average age and location don’t fit into my targets, so for this reason, I believe I would only reach a small facet of this class, and most of my audience will be emergent service workers.
Moving on to the final aspect of my target audience, the psycho segments which they best fit into, which are are aspirers, and reformers.
Aspirers: Seeks status. Materialistic, acquisitive, orientated to image and appearance, persona and fashion. Typically younger people.
Reformers: Seeks enlightenment. Freedom of restrictions and personal growth. Social awareness and independent judgment. Anti-materialistic but aware of good taste, socially aware & not influenced by brand/status, self-improvement.
These two segments juxtapose each other, but despite this, I believe a combination of both will make up my audience because there are aspects that I feel are quite essential to understand my message. The image-oriented younger group would probably use platforms such as youtube frequently, as well as trying to integrate into the high-class culture because of their materialism and status goals making them more likely to become established middle-class citizens and relate to fine cultural activities. On the other hand, reformers, who are aware of good taste and seek enlightenment and personal growth, embody the very themes that I am basing my project around. In my opinion, they would understand and appreciate my animation best, because of their ability to relate to the character and idea. This does make them the greater fraction of my audience, but not necessarily the most important one because my goal is to inspire those who do not fully understand the importance of art and culture, as that would mean the message of their value would have meaning and be spread. So, aspirers are also needed, so that they understand their indulgence in materialistic aspects of life is thanks to artists and different ways of life.