Social Class & Demographic of my Product

I will be aiming my magazine at the social class group C2. I am going to due to the audience research that I carried out in order to understand my target audience. One of my questions was 'What is your annual household income?', this helped me determine the annual income of my target audience. By establishing the income, this gave me a rough idea as to the category in which each individual candidate entered. 27% of candidates stated their annual household income was between £20k and £30k. As the average annual income in Britian is £27k, I believe that this leads my target audience into the C2 social class. As I stated earlier, the majority of my target audience require jobs such as hairdressers, builders, or even personal trainers and as these jobs are not high paying jobs, more skilled and manual work, this leads me to the conclusion that my target is C2 on the demographics table.

Style/Iconography of my Product

I have created a Prezi in order to establish the style and iconographic conventions of my music magazine. I have included a font moodboard, a colour moodboard, existing artwork, inspirational images, my potential model and the positioning of my model. This research will allow me to break down the conventions that I will include on my front cover.

I have decided to choose red, black and white as my colour scheme as the majority of my candidates who answered the questionnaire stated that they felt these colours were most associated with the Classic Rock Genre.

My Reader Profile

1st draft of my own reader profile:

This is my own reader profile that I have created through the research I conducted of my genre target audience. When creating my own reader profile, I followed the conventions of an existing reader profile under my chosen genre (classic rock).  As you can see, I have included the key stats, such as the gender and age, as well as quotes that I feel are necessary in order to reinforce the idea that the magazine is effective and sellable to the audience.This is the reader profile I followed:

As you can see from this reader profile, there is the reference of statistics and facts. By including statistics and facts, this portrays a realistic representation of the audience of MOJO magazine. Information such as readership, mean age, social class (ABC1), and social media is all included on the reader profile in order to establish the key information about the audience.

Although this reader profile is effective reader profile, I believe that I need to conduct more research about my target audience that will help me produce a more effective reader profile.

I have also included the purpose of reading. As I stated earlier, I felt that pop magazines were read as they share inside gossip about celebrities whereas I want my audience to read my magazine to learn about the music under this genre, the fashion and the icons that made the classic rock genre famous.

Finally, I have included a contact list (consisting of the email, website and number) in case the audience want to communicate with the institution about the reader profile.

After serious contemplation, I chose to adapt my reader profile, therefore I carried out a survey on the website www.surveymonkey.com, which allowed me to create an effective questionnaire consisting of open and closed questions as well as psychographic and demographic questions. By including a variety of question styles, this allows me to dive into further depth of my target audience, for example, psychographic questions are questions that refer to the audiences preference whereas demographic questions refer to the social status of my target audience. This will help me determin a price for my magazine.
This is the demographics table that will allow me establish the social class of my magazine.

Question one:

My survey began with the question 'how old are you?'. This is a demographic question that allows me to understand the age range of my target audience. By deterring the age group, this allows me to design an appropriate product for the specific age range. Eleven candidates answered this question and only one candidate was between the age of 41 - 50 years old, this obviously meant that ten candidates were between the age of 0 - 20 years old. This gave me an understanding as to the target audience of my magazine and therefore I will be creating a magazine aimed at teenagers between the age of 16 - 20.

Question two:

This is my second question, 'What is your annual household income?' Again, eleven candidates answered this question however, the answers were distributed across different options, for example, two candidates answered that their household income was below £10k, one candidate answered that their household income was betweek £10k - £20k, three candidates answered that their household income was between £20k - £30k, one candidate stated that their household income was between £30k - £40k, and finally four candidates stated that their household income was between £40k and £50k+. As the majority of my target audience stated that their household income was between £20k - £30k, I feel that by pricing my magazine at a price that these candidates can afford will help my magazine become affordable and wanted by not only my target audience but also by a bigger and wider audience. As I stated earlier, my target audience is teenagers between the age of 16 - 20, and as the majority of teenagers are in full time education around this age, I am aware of the restrictions they have to make in order to live sustainably therefore an affordable price will persuade my target audience to purchase my magazine.

Question three:

My third question is 'what is your gender?' This is a demographic question that aims to find out the majority of sexes who would read my magazine. By looking at this feedback, I am aware that my target audience roughly contains more females than males. As you can see from this research, for every four males, there are seven females therefore, I will achieve the highest profit if I cater my magazine to the female gender.

Question four:

For my fourth question, I was aiming to find out the ethnic background of my target audience therefore I chose to ask 'what is your ethnic background?' Fourteen candidates answered this question and they all answered with White British therefore I will be definitely aiming my magazine at the White British culture in order to propel my profits for the institutions benefit.

Question five:

In order to establish how my audience access their music, I asked the question 'How do you access your music?' With 12 responses, the majority (91%) of my audience replied with streaming. Second, my (83%) of my audience stated that they listened to music via Youtube. Only 58% stated that they listened to music via iTunes which was a shock as I believe that iTunes was a popular form of music access due to the rapid proliferation of digital technology. 

Two candidates stated that they accessed their music via vinyls, Spotify and live shows. 

When creating my magazine, I will include logo's such as Youtube/Vevo, iTunes and Spotify in order to entice my audience to purchase this magazine.

Question six:

This is question sex. For question six, I aimed to establish the favourite artist or band within the classic rock genre. I understand to controversy with this question as the candidates asked to complete this survey may not follow the Classic Rock genre and therefore they may be completely lost as to who falls under the Classic Rock genre. Through this research, I gathered that:

Five candidates chose The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Four candidates chose Bon Jovi
Three candidates chose Led Zeppelin
Three candidates chose Nirvana
Three candidates chose Queen
Two candidates chose ACDC
Two candidates chose Black Sabbath
One candidate chose Rainbow
One candidate chose Aerosmith
One candidate chose Bryan Adams
One candidate chose Slipknot
One candidate chose The Beatles
One candidate chose Jack White
One candidate chose Flock
One candidate chose Metallica
One candidate chose Alice Cooper
One candidates chose CCR
One candidate chose Marilyn Manson
One candidate chose Kings of Leon
One candidate chose Sock
One candidate chose The Guess Who
One candidate chose Motorhead
One candidate chose Guns 'n' Roses

Overall, when creating my magazine, I will feature artists such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bon Jovi, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Queen, ACDC and finally Black Sabbath on the front cover, contents page and double page spread of my magazine. This will entice my target audience to purchase my magazine as well as reinforcing the conventions of the Classic Rock genre.

Question seven: 

This is my seventh question on my questionnaire. This establishes how often my target audience attend a live music event, I have asked this psychographic question to highlight whether my target audience prefer attending live music events or not. This will help me during the production stage of the creation of my magazine as I will be able to feature competition plugs such as 'win free concert tickets' or offers such as 'buy this magazine for free concert tickets'. This will help sell my product and make it a profit for my institution. As you can see from my research, only twelve candidates have answered this question however it was enough for me to gather an idea of whether my target audience would feel obliged to purchase this magazine as they are getting something in return. 

Question eight:

This question aimed to establish what my target audience would prefer as a freebie when buying this magazine. I found that the majority of candidates who answered this question would prefer a clothing voucher. This evidently goes to show that my target audience would purchase my magazine if it featured a free clothing voucher. However, due to the classic rock genre of my magazine, I feel this gift is not an effective technique that will help sell my product. I feel something more appropriate such as a wristband, CD or discounted ticket for a concert will be more suitable for my target audience.

Question nine:

In order to establish the colours most associated with the Classic Rock genre, I have asked candidates what three colours they most associate with the Classic Rock genre. it is evident that red is the most popular colour as seven candidates stated that this was the colour they most associated with the Classic Rock genre. Black came closely second with six candidates stating that they associate black with the Classic Rock genre. Four candidates stated that the colour white was the colour they associated the most with the Classic Rock genre. Only two candidates stated that purple was a colour they mostly associated with this genre. And finally, three people individually voted for grey, gold or silver. I will follow the response from my target audience and follow the key ideas that red, black and white are most commonly associated with the Classic Rock genre.

Question ten:

Question ten is my final question. I aimed to focus on how much my target audience spend when purchasing music annually. I have found that the majority of my target audience (46%) spent between £0 - £30. This shows that my target audience are willing to purchase a CD or merchandise for their favourite artist/band, therefore I believe it will be ideal for me to feature a free CD when purchasing this magazine as this will benefit my target audience by giving them the chance to buy a magazine and a free CD.

After completing this audience research, I have adjusted my reader profile in order to cater more to my target audience. This is my new reader profile:

As you can see, I have adapted the statistics of my reader profile in order to reference my audience in more depth.

Reader Profile Research

What does it tell you about your audience?
By answering these questions and highlighting the wants and needs of my target audience, I believe that this will make sure that I am giving my audience what they want to see and as an institution making maximum profit.

By carrying out reader profile research, this will allow me to break down and understand my audience so I can eventually produce a high standard classic rock magazine that conforms to all the conventions of my chosen genre and appeals to my target audience.

How does it allow you to make choices in terms of content and advertising?

I know that when I am producing my final product, I will stick to the key conventions of  a classic rock genre magazine, this will therefore appeal to my target audience. I know what conventions to include on my magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread that will make my product sellable to the audience and profitable for my institution.

How do they allow you to decide on a price point?

By looking at my reader profile research, I have noticed that the jobs in which my genre appeals to the most are not high earning jobs therefore when choosing a price for my magazine, I will think about the average occupations and wage of my audience so they will be able to purchase this product without having to worry about dipping into their savings.

How looking at existing reader profiles will help you when creating your product.

When looking at existing reader profiles, I analysed the key aspects that I felt helped the institution on knowing their audience. I will include these aspects as this will help me to create my own accurate reader profile that will help me understand my target audience in depth.

Genre Research

By conducting genre research, this allowed me to establish the different genres there are available on the market in modern day. Through my research, I have found that magazine institutions (NME, Q, INDIE or We Love Pop) cater each magazine issue to the trends streaming throughout their intended audience. By doing so, this appeals to their audience and persuades them to purchase that particular magazine as it features aspects that the intended audience is familiar with.

I found that it is common on a classic rock magazine to include conventions such as the colours red and black as they are contrasting colours that connotes the rock life-style to the intended audience. I noticed that within the pop genre, there is a semantic overview of excitement and exaggeration. This is portrayed to the audience through the use of colours such as yellow, pink and blue as they are bright, bubbly colours that appeal to the young target audience. This contrasts with the indie genre and the colour scheme throughout is dark, blue and grey. This creates a sense of depth, uncertainty and unreasoning which is one of the key ideas behind the indie genre; there is no explanation why.

This research has allowed me to establish the different genres that are currently present in the music market today, and has therefore reinforced my idea to study the classic rock genre as this is the genre of music I am interested in and I feel I know the most about. I feel this genre will allow me to express my ideas, through the use of mise-en-scene, editing, cinematography whilst also maintaining the original conventions of a classic rock magazine within my final edit.

An example of an indie music video is James Bay - Hold Back The River. James Bay is an indie artist. This is evident through the use of mise-en-scene such as the costumes James Bay wears: the hat in this music video is an icon of the indie genre and therefore supports the indie image.


Alice Cooper's School's Out is a great example of the classic rock genre. This genre is supported through the use of conventions such as leather trousers which is iconographic of the classic rock genre.

Summary of Conventions

This is the summary of conventions that I created. This helped me to establish the different conventions of a front cover, contents page and double page spread of a magazine. By conducting this summary, I will be able to create a clear front cover, contents page and double page spread that is a successful and professional product.

Text in orange represents the conventions of a magazine front cover, text in red represents contents page conventions in a magazine, and finally, text in green represents the conventions of a double-page spread in a magazine. The black texts represents conventions that feature on both the front cover and contents page and the front cover, contents page and the double-page spread.

I have chosen to display this research in the form of a ven-diagram as it is a clear way of representing the conventions of a front cover, a contents page and a double-page spread of a magazine as well as portraying how these conventions are maintained throughout the magazine and don't just feature once throughout the whole magazine.

Conventions Analysis Double Page Spread

This is a LIIAR analysis that I conducted in order to establish the conventions of a double page spread in an existing magazine. By analysing the language, institution, ideology, audience and representation of a front cover, contents page and double page spread, this gave me the chance to establish the key conventions and codes of a magazine as a whole.