AuDiEnCe pRoFiLiNg

Definition of Audience Profiling -

The relationship between text, institution and audience is important simply because media companies do not create a text such as adverts unless a target audience is being aimed at. For example targetting Lynx body spray towards a male audience, so it has to be crafted in a way that would appeal to a male audience. There are ways of profiling audiences, which are done in two basic ways demographic and psychographic profiling.

Demographic profiling:

- Grouping an audience in terms of their age.

- Another way this can be categorised is age, class, gender, geographical area, class, economic status and religion.

- This way can have its downfalls though because it suggests that the people within this categories all have the same beliefs and attitudes.

My demographic profile...

Age - 17 years of age

Gender - Male

Geographical area - London, Greenford

Class - Working/Middle

Religion - Hindu Guju!

The other way of profiling audiences is:

Psychographic Profiling:

- This particular way moves away from the group profiiles and refers to the needs and motivation.

- The emotional equity or loyalty a brand holds today is gaining importance as the market gets cluttered with brands, which are not well differentiated in terms of physical attributes such as different brands of trainers.

Four C's

--- Cross --- Cultural --- Consumer --- Characteristics ---

Mainstreamers - Largest group, where they are concerned with stability and security buying well recongised brands.

Aspirers - They seek to improve themselives. They tend to define themselves by the high status brand names, which they own and consume.

Succeeders - People who feel secure and in control. They are mainly in positions of power, although they may not be. They buy brands which reinforce their feelings of control and power.

Reformers - Actively consumer eco friendly products and buy brands which are environmenally friendly. "Caring and responsible"

Individuals - Highly media literate, expects high production advertising, buys product image, where they require high profile and sophisticated compaigns.

5 brands I consume:

Nike

Colgate

Nando's

Shockwaves Gel

Fast and the Furious

Looking at these 5 brands I consider myself to come under mainstream, but looking at other aspects of the four C's I feel that I am media literate and expects high production of advertising. So it is quite difficult to categories audiences, because they could come into many different options.

LifeStyle Marketing -

Nicknames:

YUPPIES - Young Upwardly Mobile Proffesionals

DINKYS - Double Income No Kids Yet

The uses of audience profiling

The main reasons for audienc profiling is that the consumers elaborate market research to profile an audience in great depth because it helps them to construct a specific ideology and image for a product directly relating to the attitudes, values and beliefs of that target group.

JoBs AxEd wITh AmErIcAn FHM!

FHM, a magazine for men that like looking at women. 40 Emap staff will lose their jobs because FHM are closing their US Edition. I find this barbaric due to the men needing to conform to their male gaze. The total number of staff that will be affected is 47, where some of them will be used to help run the US FHM, website, to fulfil consumer’s needs.

The first FHM magazine was published and launched in 1999, by a determined and self motivated team led by an executive publisher Dana Fields, where there enter a competitive market to establish a well known position making high profits.

The US FHM magazine sells 1.25 million copies a month, where other magazines such as Maxim and Stuff targeted at men have suffered a decline in sales over these months. In the 12 months to October 2006, the three men's titles lost 11% of ad volume, the equivalent of 300 pages a month. FHM’s US edition is also the biggest selling of any of the other 30 versions around the world.

The UK and other versions will still remain, where the circulation of 420,688 in the first half of the year 2006 was 24.9.

"With conditions in the US worsening, we have decided to suspend publication to focus resources elsewhere on faster-growth platforms."

The last edition of this fantastic magazine will be in March, which will be on sale in the New Year.

My views to this are men turning gay? I hope not! Are they getting tired of seeing semi-naked women in magazines? I also hope not! Looking at women in magazines are a norm for the male audience, as women are being seen as passive characters when being captured in this light, and are wanted to be seen by the male gaze. Other versions of FHM are still around in different countries including the UK. My views to this also are that because of technology becoming very upcoming as we are living in the 21st century the targeted audience of this magazine may view images and images on the website:
http://www.fhm.com
This could be one of the reasons for the downfall in sales in the US, as also the website is still running.