Audience Analysis For Viral Campaign Products

When producing a media text it is important to establish who your target audience are. It is common knowledge that most producers will have constructed a fully psychographic and demographic profile of a person who they will be directly constructing their media product for. Although this person is essentially fictitious it is likely that there is someone amongst the audience who fits this profile.However such people will only account for the minority of audience members. Fundamentally it is impossible to interest all members of the public to your product. As a result of this it would be fair to say that as a media producer you do rely on your experience with existing audiences from the real world in order to target your own on a wide basis. For example as a media producer on a wider basis you would be looking to attract an audience through some of either their psychographic or demographic factors. As our task is to produce a viral campaign I feel we are able to influence a vast amount of people as each different form of media is accompanied by their own target audiences. As a group we have had to explore all the different codes and conventions for all the different media forms in which we intend to produce.All in all I feel that when constructing an audience for a media text it is in effect a mixture of both a fictitious thing as well as drawing on experiences. Furthermore it must be mentioned that essentially an audience make a film and must be pre existing otherwise media producers wouldn’t know who or how to target the audience.
The magazine cover and web page which I have produced as part of a viral campaign to advertise the film ‘Locked Away’, essentially all share the same target audience as that of the film. Therefore it has been important to follow the set codes and conventions of the films genre and continue them onto the other products in order for the audience to identify what is being represented to them.
The genre of our film is horror and it is here in which as a media producer you apply codes and conventions in order to attract your audience. A typical convention of horror films is to have them age restricted. This then means that because our film is a certificate 15 that our audience members will all be in their late teens and still in an educational environment. The photograph I’ve used depicts three young people sat on a staircase to induce the idea of students. The reason for this being that our location for the film is set in a college and to fully appreciate what is being represented in the film suggests that our target audience will still be in education. Additionally another mise-en-scene convention for the genre horror is the use of dark and red colours. I have continued this convention onto my magazine cover as essentially I will be using it to promote the films genre.
The demographic features of my target audience are as follows:
· Age: 15-20years
· Location: Britain
· Career: Student
· Nationality: British
· Ethnicity: white
Many of the codes and conventions used within all of my viral campaigns products have specific connotations for my target audience. As they themselves can identify with what is being represented as they recognise themselves in the products. This fits with Foucault’s theory of the narrative of the self. People see themselves in a media product and then consume it as part of a routine to become more and more like it. On the other hand Anne Cronin’s theory of if you buy it you can become it can also be applied as she would suggest that audiences buy media products in order to become more like what is being represented.