A SWOT analysis is a way of laying out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a project before starting it. It is crucial for analysing a brief and planning a media product because you can plan out if the project will be worth it, how successful the project might be, what you need to take into consideration before starting it, and whether the threats are too likely to even go ahead with the project.
Interpreting a brief - keywords
Implicit- these will be inferred from the brief; you will have to interpret.
Open- There is some freedom for you to make decisions about how to best create a successful product.
Constraints – These are boundaries that the project must work within, e.g. legal, ethical, time and cost.
Explicit – These are clearly stated and must be met when producing the product
Task 2
Wednesday Cover Work
Target Audience
What is a target audience? A group of people or demographic that a media product is aimed at. The media product will keep their target audience in mind when making decisions about their product as they want the product to sell best with the people they have in mind to buy it.
Demographics video
demographics: statistics about a group of people that are quantifiable (can be put into charts and graphs)
socio-economic grouping: classified by job & income, ABC1 and C2DE
media producers and advertisers are linked, a media product brings an audience to advertisers for that demographic
quantitative data is easy to gather, it is also a quick analysis of a wide range of data
however quantitative data lacks depth and detail
Demographics video
psychographic analysis: classifying people according to their interests, values, opinions and beliefs
qualitative data so it is difficult to count, but more detailed and more in depth
psychographic categories: resigned, struggler, mainstreamer, aspirer, succeeder, explorer and reformer
pros: good at defining the aspects of the audience, more precise at analysing behaviours of viewers & consumers
cons: based on data that cannot be turned into charts and graphs easily
How does categorising audiences help in media products and services?
Categorising audiences is very useful when creating a media product as it helps you to decide features of a product. Deciding things as simple as colours, fonts and layouts all depends on your target audience, so if you can put your audience in a category then you can follow the conventions of that category. Categorisation also helps you to narrow down your target audience and decide the specific type of person you want to make your product for. Having a target audience in mind makes creating a media product a lot easier than if you just chose features you like best, and it also makes your product more successful.
Which audience type suits which type of media product?
Media products like Jeremy Kyle are suited to the struggler and a D/E target audience. Tatler is suited to the aspirer but an A/B audience. The Inbetweeners is suited to the reformer and an E target audience as the target audience are students.