Research

Response to the brief:

What brief have you chosen and why?:

Brief 14 - I have chosen to do brief 14, the first four pages of a regional magazine, because I wanted to do a print brief because I already did a production brief for AS so I wanted to try something different for A2. 

After completing these tasks and analysis's, I decided that I wanted to continue the A2 course with a different brief, this is for a few reasons as well as the fact that I did not enjoy the music video brief. 

During the summer, I completed detailed analysis of music videos and even created an ancillary task of a digipak. This can all be found under the micro-production tab. During this research I also created a website as another ancillary task. 

In a small group, we also completed our own music video to a song by an unsigned artist. This video can also be found with the micro-production pieces. 

Textual Analysis:

These are some textual analysis of existing media products, in this case, a regional magazine.

Active:

Leicester Link:

Cornwall Life:

Textual Analysis of Ancillary's:

Active magazine website:

Billboard:

Influential Figures:

Cohesive marketing:

This is a presentation that labels and explains all of the cohesive marketing campaigns.

I then applied these to a regional magazine as much as I could.

Textual Analysis of Student Work:

Textual analysis of student work was not a task that I was able to carry out due to the lack of regional magazine work previously completed by students. Because of this, I am unable to carry out any textual analysis. 

Codes and conventions:

Progress Report:

So far throughout my research, I have researched other regional magazines such as Active and Cornwall Life to find out about what makes a regional magazine. I have also found out how to successfully use and adapt cohesive marketing campaigns to aid the marketing of my product. Also, I have found some influential figures in the industry which has helped me to see how the professionals enter the industry and what they do to make their products successful. Up until this point, I also have looked at codes and conventions of existing regional magazines in order to aid my research and development of my own product. 

Summary of genre research:

Genre research was a section that I also was unable to complete similar to the student work analysis. The reason for this is because there are not different genres of regional magazines. There is often a variation in the themes that can be seen in regional magazines, from properties to lifestyle activities. This means that there are not set genres that can be researched because it all depends on the magazine brand and the style of content they chose to include.

Form Research:

Topic research:

In my previous tasks I have made some points as to what my magazine would include, due to the conventions of other regional magazines. However, to add more detail, below I have put together a presentation about what I shall make the theme of my magazine about. 

 

It should now be clear that my magazine will be mainly based around property, however it is subject to change.

Email a professional:

Below I have attached a screen grab of the email that I sent to a professional regarding my coursework. I decided to email the editor of the Active magazine from my textual analysis, Steve Moody. My decision to contact him was simple and easy because I figured, if I am going to have to contact a professional then it would be of more advantage to me to contact one related to a magazine that I have actually studied. In the email, I included a few questions which he could answer in order to aid my production and give me advice about how to make it a successful piece. I am now just awaiting a reply from him...

I have not received a reply from Mr. Moody yet so I doubt that i will be getting one. This means that I will have to try and answer these questions through the use of research and own knowledge. I can also use my previous research from my textual analysis to help to answer these questions. 

The questions that are about making a successful magazine an be answered by looking into other magazines and other brands and finding out what makes hem successful. 
Finding out about the successfulness of branding is also available to find through the use of other magazines and seeing how they use branding to help them achieve success.
I already have information about the forms and conventions about regional magazines and how they work to create brand identity so I will be able to answer the question about the importance of the codes and conventions. The questions about targeting a specific target audience can be answered through my target audience profiling and research with surveys and focus groups. Creating brand identity is also a topic I can complete research about and already have some knowledge of already, as I can use the media theories I have previously studied to aid me in answering this question.

Questionnaire:

To decide and develop my target audience, I have created a questionnaire that will allow me to find trends and tastes amongst certain groups of target audience. This will allow me to get an insight into trends, tastes, ages and preferences of the audience. Below I have attached the link:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/YZXXW5H

Response to answers:

For this second question, I will change the fact that there was on 'other' option which meant that people had the opportunity to skip the question by simply saying 'never' which makes my results confusing.

For this question, I could perhaps add more options to the list or even provide an 'other' option to give the audience a more wide choice of themes and allow them to make their own decision without being made to chose between just four.

For these questions I am quite happy with them and they are not ones I will change because it was simple to follow, however some people did skip the question.

Perhaps I could provide different answer options here in order to receive more detailed feedback which would allow me to adjust my questionnaire more accordingly and be more specific.

 

For this question, I could try to add images of the fonts so that it makes it easier for the audience of the questionnaire to see how each one would look, which would probably make it easier for the audience to understand and give a more definite answer rather than just picking a name that they know.

Social Networking Research:

Here, to achieve social networking audience research, I have used my phone to attach a link to my survey on my Facebook page to allow more people to view and complete the survey and allows a wider range of audience to be identified as there is a larger amount of people taking part..

By doing this, more people were able to view my survey than before, which meant that more accurate readings could be gathered, however, the use of social media normally attracts a younger audience. This means that it may not affect my responses much because the normal target audience for regional magazines is usually in the older, higher class demographic which is not the most popular demographic for social media users.

Audience Profiling:

These are some made up profiles of some examples of regional magazines target demographic. I created these in order to give a kind of example of the people that would read regional magazines.

Final Questionnaire Responses:

Below are the screen grabs of the responses to my final questionnaire which I have briefly analysed and evaluated.

The above responses suggest that the most popular name choice for my magazine was 'OnTheMarket'. However, I soon realised, through extra research, that it already exists as the name of an estate agency that is mainly based online.

 

Focus Group: