What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
Question 3

Why use audience feedback?
 During our time producing our A2 coursework we collected
various forms of audience feedback such as interviews,
questionnaires and focus groups with professionals. We did this
because we wanted to know how we could construct our final
product so that it appealed to our target audience. In
contemporary media markets it is important for a product to
appeal to its target audience so that it is successful and sells well.
To accomplish this, we needed to gather as much information as
possible about our target demographic to make sure that our final
product appealed to them if it were launched into the mainstream
media market.

Our target audience:
 Our primary target audience was that of males aged 16-
25 who listen to rock music, and our secondary audience
was that of any older males and any females. The reason
why young males are our primary audience is because of
the aggressive and rebellious attitudes associated with
rock music that are reciprocated in teens. In regards to
our secondary audience, older males would likely have
listened to rock music when it first became apparent or
when they were younger. With females, they too would
likely experience similar aggressive/rebellious attitudes
but are fewer in number than males due to rock being
largely male-dominated. Our primary target audience
are digital natives, suggesting a high usage of Web 2.0. As
such we realised that we would need to make our
product as accessible to our target audience as possible
via the use of social media andWeb 2.0.

Developing the promotional package
 Whilst developing the design of our package, we aimed it mostly
at our primary target audience because they would be most likely
to purchase it and interact with it. The narrative and performance
of our video is largely humorous and shows the artist as not taking
themselves too seriously, and as such appeals to the wacky and
youthful attitudes of our target audience. Because our primary
target audience has a high disposable income and would see more
bands live than our secondary audience, we incorporated
performance of the artist into the video to appeal to the target
audience further as they would be attracted to seeing what the
artist is like when they perform.

Using Survey Monkey
 We initially used SurveyMonkey.com to create an audience
questionnaire to find out what our target audience think of rock
music with questions such as “Who is the most crucial member
of the band” and “What would attract you to a band’s digipak” so
that we could use the results to influence the design and
effectiveness of our product. The results we got however were
not very conclusive and mainly offered vague or ambiguous
answers from only younger members of our target audience
rather than older ones.

Initial stages of feedback Most of the information we got was still useful however. We found that
over 60% of our target audience think that the singer is the most
important member of the band so we made sure to make them
prominent throughout the music video and ancillary products. We also
found out that features such as social media integration, an online shop
and band information appealed to the target audience because they felt
like they were more able to interact with the band due to the increase in
access. Our primary target audience was that of males aged 16-25 who
listen to rock music, and our secondary audience was that of any older
males and any females. Our primary target audience are digital natives,
suggesting a high usage of web 2.0. As such it was deemed necessary to
take away the idea of significant integration of social media for our
product. We also find out that 77% of our target audience thought that
reds, whites and blacks were representative of the rock genre due to their
associations with the darker themes of rock music such as rebellion and
anger. Finally, we also found out that 63% of our target audience wanted
a video with performance and narrative in it, and as such we made sure
to incorporate this in our music video.

Interviewing audience members
To expand on our existing feedback, we conducted interviews with
members of our primary and secondary audience. We asked more
open-ended questions to yield more variable and representative
results. We found out that members of our primary target audience
generally think that rock musicians are seen as being rebellious and
aggressive, so represent the nature of the music and genre well as
such. We also found out that they don’t mind if the video isn’t
explicit of the genre, but prefer if it is entertaining and relates to the
lyrics in some way. We also found that audience members generally
prefer a smaller budget video as it makes the band members more
identifiable as it doesn’t present them as being much different to
audience members. This worked well in our favour as it meant that
we didn’t have to use complicated special effects to make our video
appealing, and as such were able to stick to a relatively low budget.

Interviewing audience members cont.
 We also learnt that audience members prefer it
when a CD stands out to them regardless of
the genre, and would be more likely to buy it if
it caught their attention and was a break from
traditional convention. In regards to the
website, they felt that the more professional a
website looks, the more important and thus
better the band looks. As such we made sure to
employ conventions of real bands that are
successful such as embedding social media
widgets and links to an online store. Overall
this aspect of audience research was successful
as it gave us specific pointers for what to use
throughout our products

Pitching our idea to media experts
 After finalising the planning of our products we pitched our final
idea to a class of around 20 media professionals who fell into the
category of secondary primary audience for us. We did this to see
what they thought of our ideas and if they could offer any
improvements. Furthermore it also allowed them to critique
whether our ideas were achievable. We were also critiqued on how
well we established brand identity throughout our products.
 We got some mixed results but most of them were positive
towards our products. We learnt they liked the intertextual
references throughout our product we gave us an idea as to how
appealing they would be to our target audience. We also learned
that they liked our use of an extended introduction because it
separated our video from existing products and as such made it
look more cinematic. However they were concerned with how
achievable the use of references would be in regards to costume
and design. To combat this, we made sure to plan and spend time
working on achievable costumes rather than wasting time on one
single scene of our video.

Pitching our idea to media experts
cont.
 With our ancillary products, the use of a bull
was favoured because it related to the song’s
lyrics , but it was felt that we needed more
images of our artists to increase interactivity
with our target audience. With our first draft,
we missed out on this opportunity and as such
it affected the strength of our product.
Similarly with our music video and website, we
didn’t use expert advice as much as we
should’ve done and as such it impacted the
strength of our music video. We made sure to
follow more mainstream conventions for the
rest of the production of our products.

Construction feedback
 Whilst constructing our products, we
made sure to get feedback on various
aspects of it. For instance when deciding
on the main narrative of our video initially,
we used an audience questionnaire that
detailed 3 ideas, and we had members of
our target audience vote for their
favourite. The most well received was the
idea of using intertextual references to
connote the idea of B-movies, so we chose
to use this idea as it rebelled against
traditional videos so would appeal to the
rebellious nature of our target audience.

Construction feedback cont.
 We also used typeface feedback to
decide which typeface to use.We
printed off a sample sheet and
similarly had audience members vote
for their favourite.The preferred the
typeface‘DeathrattleBB’ due to its
edgy look, and we used it as such
due to its appeal to the edgy and
aggressive nature of our target
audience.We use the typeface
throughout all of our designs for our
ancillary products.

Most important piece of feedback
 In my opinion the most important piece of feedback we got
was the feedback we got from our teacher and members of
our target audience. Our teacher was able to help us in
creating solid brand identity, and this was consolidated by the
feedback of our target audience in regards to which aspects
of our design they liked. We created several drafts and
repeated this process several times in order to get consistent
and relevant feedback from members of our primary and
secondary target audience.

Issues with the products
 Initial problems with our products
was the lack of brand identity. We
failed to pick up on this because we
ignored some earlier feedback from
media experts. To combat this we
changed the design of our ancillary
products to match the theme of the
music video as opposed to the other
way around. We also learned that
some of the lip-syncing was out so we
reshot some footage to fix this and
make the video look more
professional.

Issues with the products cont.
 We filmed a second section for the
performance of our video to fill the void
where our teacher thought there should’ve
been shots where there weren’t. We changed
the background image and colour scheme of
our website so that it increased access
between our band and members of our
target audience. We gained good amounts of
help from this feedback because it made our
final products look more professional to the
point where they looked like real-world
products.

Conclusion
 In conclusion, I think that audience feedback has been one of
the most crucial aspects of our coursework. This is because
without it we would not have known what conventions were
most wanted or appealing to our target audience. We would
not have been able to create a professional product if we had
not been open to constructive criticisms from professionals
and audience members alike.