Tuesday, 24 November 2015

Generic research: Reader Profiles

Reader Profile - Kerrang!

The average reader of Kerrang! is aged between 16 to 24 years old. 60% of the audience are male, while 40% are female. The reader enjoys going to rock gigs and live events during their spare time. They are typically of modern youth and are media-savvy, regularly digesting information from various sources of media such as television and radio. As they are mostly contemporary they are active computer game consumers, as well as top-notch fashion and media, which they find significant to themselves. Approximately 31 albums are bought every year by them. Since they are a compelling target audience, the brands that use their style of language in an effort to communicate with them are granted enormous loyalty in return.

I looked at this readership profile for possible ideas that I can use for my own reader profile for Insurgence music magazine. The average age of Kerrang! Magazine is between 16 to 24 years old, which suits my choice of target demographic (young, avid music magazine readers and rock fans). As they match a contemporary audience theme - "modern youth" - and are "media-savvy", these ideas can be brought into mind for my reader demographic. The fact that they are regularly hooked to media factors such as the television and radio for latest music news and entertainment intrigues me, so to fit my description of my target audience. Apart from that, I found out that they are video game geeks, not just enthusiastic music fans, to promote diversity in the demographic, indicating that they are not just fixated on the rock music genre. I appreciate the fact that their choice of language code (preferably the one where urban slang and explicit terms are used, in an informal way) is suitable for Kerrang! to use, in order to appeal to the target demographic themselves. These ideas, in turn, are a strong influence on what I will produce for my reader profile.

 Reader profile - NME
The information listed here is as follows:
The average reader of the NME music magazine is aged 24 years old. 69% are male readers, while the remaining 31% make up the female consumers of the magazine. 52% of the audience are working full-time, whereas 7% merely work part-time. The remainder (29%) are still in education. ABC1 make up 65% of the consumer audience.
Circulation: 40,948
Readership: 369,000

From the information that I have researched on this readership profile, I am merely focusing on both genders that make up my target audience - I am choosing to have a balanced gender stereotype for the profile once written. The aim of my music magazine is to generate mass circulation, which the NME reader profile illustrates: "369,000" readers. Similar to the Kerrang! readership profile, typical readers are fixated upon the latest sales of fashion, gaming and shoes (preferably makes such as Converse and all the like). This fact provides me with an acceptable idea that the reader of Insurgence magazine will be similar in terms of hobbies, likes and favourite music genre.
Even if these statistics (see above) are deemed irrelevant by possible magazine critics, I will still incorporate the idea of the percentages of readers in education. This would be an interesting idea as there is a diverse range of features that will be available to read in my reader profile.

No comments:

Post a Comment