CH - Audience Research Proposal

To what purpose is audience research?
Audience research is an invaluable piece of research. Using it correctly, we can conclude if our concept is feasable and would be recieved well; audience research is a method used professionally throughout the media, and without it companies would not know if their product is likely to be popular or what their product should be. For instance, if a company completed audience research on a brand of cologne targeted at 13 year old boys, and the conclusion of their audience research was that no 13 year old boy would wear this cologne, the product idea would be scrapped as there is no market for it (and the company would therefore not make any money).
Firstly, we need to assess the target audience.

Our product is a music video. Quoting directly from critical theorist Goodwin, a music video is: "A clip that responds to the pleasures of music, and in shich that music is made visual, either in new ways or ways that accelerate existing visual associations"


From research, we know there are two types of audiences for a music video; focussed and ambient. Focussed viewing is like that of a TV Programme; members of the audience who actively watch music videos as a form of entertainment and pay attention to what is being portrayed. In opposition to this, ambient viewing is the members of an audience who would listen to the music but not necessarily remember or even notice the video unless it is incredible or memorable. Music videos should aim to appeal to both audiences, as they are essentially an advert (following postmodernism in the action of both being considered an art form and an advertisement, like the Campbell Soup by pop artist Andy Warhol) and therefore are selling their product, the music.



Our target audience is likely to be 15-24 year olds, as not only are teenagers most likely to watch music videos (being part of a generation raised on a cultural saturation of postmodernism) but they are also near the age of the arists performing our song. This means that they are most likely to relate to the music, as it is written not just by people of their age but concerning people of their age. Indie music is known to appeal almost fundamentally to teenagers, as to be 'Indie' is to be against the norm, to be free and without rules; a running theme in the changing lives of teenagers.
Therefore our audience research will have to be centred around 19-24 year olds.


What style will our audience research have?
As a music video is very personal and creative, we will not be looking for quantitive data; unlike that of film research, which can be compiled on their previous choice of films or preferences thereof, music videos are relatively new and startlingly different to one another. Therefore it is difficult to make straight statistical comparisons which we could measure on say, a graph or a table. Hence we will need Qualitive data, which would be unsuited to a survey or questionnaire.
Therefore an idea for an activity for audience research would be a focus group.
This allows us to gather many ideas simaultaneously from many sources yet retaining their qualitive value; also, when not forced to record on paper, our audience research will be more creative and 'free flowing' as the participants are able to explain their ideas to us in a way we can understand and translate to usable research.

Ideas for questions

• Did you like the track? why/why not?
• Which age range would you typically associate with this song?
• What clothes do you associate with this genre?
• How would you picture the band/lead singer from an aesthetic point of view?
• Would you consider a narrative or a performance for this video?
• If performance, where and what type?
• If narrative, how many locations?
• If narrative, what sort of locations?