I have decided that due to the fact that my magazine is going to be published and given away in school, my main target audience should be students at the college aged between 11 and 19. This is because this is the age range between the students at the college.
By taking in research gathered from SurveyMonkey, I will create my cover and contents page accordingly to what my primary target audience say - this will represent their needs and attract them to my product.
I will do this through main stories and images on the cover and by appealing information and relevant stories on the contents page - this will allow me to appeal to the mass audience of the college students (who all have different interests). My magazine will also have to appeal to parents of the students, however as this group falls into the category of the secondary target audience. I will primarily represent students, however I will consider parents/teachers in so far as I will make sure the language can be access by the older generation. My magazine will represent the secondary target audience through using proper English and no slang language - this will allow me to appeal to them at the best of my ability.
Moreover, my magazine will appeal to both genders due to it being a mixed sex college - my stories will be relevant to the time of publishing and will be in the readers' interest. I will incorporate information regarding changes in the schooling system, in particular Bodmin College, and I will inform the reader on 'what's going on' in terms of funding. Another major aspect of my magazine is that the stories will appeal to the students - the stories will interest them because either them or their friends may be in the images or concerned in the stories. The stories will also be relevant in terms of content - it will be relevant, concise as well as appealing to the audience. My secondary target audience, parents of the students, will be within the audience demographic of C1 - E. Due to students taking the magazine home, their parents will naturally want to know what's going on with their school life and also what's happening with the school in general. When creating my cover and contents pages I will look at this because the secondary target audience will be more interested in the school in general, how it's changing and how it will effect their students rather than school trips for example.
My graph shows that only females took my survey which colour possibly give bias results and information. This is due to females having different interests to males as well as females possibly having different opinions of what look attractive and what's relevant. If my information seems to edge toward being bias, I will ensure that it still appeals to the correct target audience.
My results show that the main age of the students who took my survey is within the age bracket of 14-16 years old - this is imperative for me to succeed in this task as I now know that my results are relevant to the target audience. I interviewed only sixth formers during this task - which may be a slight limitation in terms of trying to appeal to the whole school. However, I do not feel that the sixth former's views are that different from that of the students in the rest of the school. Moreover, I will now be able to see what older students (students who notoriously known for not being interested in the magazine) think and feel about the college magazine. This will help me to understand and work out the problems that the magazine faces.
From looking at this graph I can see that none of the students interviewed actually read the college magazine - this backs up my earlier point that sixth form students aren't interested in the magazine. This, in turn, shows me that I need to focus on sixth form students predominantly when I create my magazine cover and contents pages - without forgetting the younger students. When creating my contents page I will have to ensure that I include stories regarding the sixth form as well as the rest of the school. I will now be able to deter from the rest of this questionnaire what the older students at the college like and dislike with the current college magazine - allowing me to know where there's room for improvement.
This information tells me that my target audience - and in particular my secondary target audience - come from a reasonably high earning background. This also tells me that perhaps in the future my audience may be prepared to pay for the magazine - which would be a huge plus for the college. However, I do not feel that this accurately represents the whole school so I would need to undergo further research before I even began to make any decisions regarding price.
My next question, 'what is your ethnic group?' allows me to understand the audience's views and whether I can relate that to their interests and desires from a magazine. In this case, my target audience seems to only represent the white British section - this shows me that the views of my target audience will be be based mainly towards that of the typical white British citizen. My magazine will represent the white British ethnic group which will allow it to correctly represent my target audience and flourish in the market place.
By looking at my results from this question, I have come to the conclusion that my target audience have major qualms with the current target audience. They think that the layout, colour, text and magazine header needs improving which tells me that the magazine needs completely redesigning. The fact that nobody who took the questionnaire ticked the box entitled 'nothing' shows me that the magazine has serious flaws which need addressing. This information shows me that I need to incorporate coherent colours, appealing images, relevant text and an attractive looking header - this, hopefully, will fit my audience's needs and desires.
My audience has shown me that the current magazine cover doesn't fit their needs and desires. I have come to the conclusion that my target audience expect a higher standard of magazine from the school, both in terms of layout as well as images, text and colour. I now understand that I need to work on specific aspects to make the magazine fit the target audience and relate to them through stories and attractive images.
By looking at the results from my question, I can deter that my audience feels more images are required - to create a more attractive layout - more text is needed - which I can understand also means more relevant text - a better font is needed as well as bette quality of images. My target audience's needs are required to be met if my magazine will cover appeal to the audience.
My question regarding the name of the magazine has triggered and overwhelming response from my target audience. I can clearly see that from my three example magazine names 'Skool's Out' represents the target audience out of the best of them. The name will be key to the success of my magazine so it is key that I focused a question on it and gained response from my target audience. Hopefully, the magazine will be known in the future by my chosen name, rather than 'the college magazine'. This will help to build a brand as well selling the magazine.
None of my audience felt that they would be prepared to pay for the current college magazine - this tells me that the magazine doesn't possess the correct conventions that allows it to succeed in terms of popularity. I will incorporate and understand the needs of my target audience and hopefully in the future the magazine will become a desired object that more students would be prepared to pay for.
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