Unit 2 Media Awareness and Products
The aim of this unit is to encourage learners to think about the construction of media products. Learners will develop their understanding of how the media industries think about their audiences, how these industries create products for specific audiences and how they themselves, as members of an audience, understand media products.
Learning outcomes
Assessment criteria
1 Know how a media industry identifies audiences for its products
1.1 outline ways in which a media industry identifies audiences for its products
Every product is made with someone with mind, this while a wild and grand statement is (arguably) true, without someone to aim towards while making your product, said product is useless. So in the media industry where profit and consumption is key to the success of the industry and your chances of staying in that industry (as nobody likes an "Uwe Boll") Identifying your audience is essential.
There are several ways media companies can go about getting feedback and opinions on their latest product but for the ease of use, we shall identify how the Film industry would identify its audience.
Surveys - A simple survey is always a good start at identifying what the public would need and what they want, say you are working for a mobile phone firm and are trying to find out who would want (the audience) your new 4 screen mobile phone (you just wait, its gonna happen!)
you'd go out take say 100 names (or stage it online giving you access to hundreds of potential survey...ors?), add their ages, response and perhaps if your survey is detailed enough the occupation / relationship status of people who responded positively to your survey. This would give you your first indication of who your target audience is for your product and will allow you to fine-tune your product to their recommendations.
Test Screenings - Whether you have a Pilot or a 5 minute minute animatic to hand you can give a presentation / test screening to audiences of critics and the general public. Afterwards you can hold Q&A sessions, Surveys even Interviews to ascertain the response of those who have enjoyed your proposed idea for a new show or game show.
General Research - Slightly longer to do, but always rewarding is the trawl through the Internet, books and archives of past products and papers identifying the areas in which audience consumption can be maximised. Looking at the market and finding the gaps and seeing how their competitors
Following Trends - While you could argue more and more that this could be included in research i feel the recent surge in social networking gives it its own entry. of course I'm talking about the mega-media sites that Twitter and Blogger have now become with "trends" (subjects that reoccur in tweets, blogs can be linked to a title that will trend the more people post that title in their comments etc) Now the Media industry seems to use the social rantings of people either on twitter as the opinion of the entire world and uses them to constantly sound as if they are in the know with the audiences wants and needs.
http://www.spinproject.org/downloads/TargetAudience.pdf <--- Some good reading on Target Audience that have inspired this and the rest of the unit.
2 Understand how media products are constructed for specific audiences
2.1 outline ways in which a media product is constructed for a specific audience
Seeing who wants your new Idea is great, but often you can look over your shoulder and see someone who has established an empire off of a franchise or an idea and think to yourself. "I could make that, if not that something damned near it and then it shall be me sitting upon the throne of money!". Perhaps that is a bit dramatic but in the media industry and business beyond that situation happens a lot more than you think.
You only have to cast your mind back to the recent Tablet boom to see "ways in which a media product is constructed for a specific audience" no one could have contemplated that the I-pads idea of simple web browsing and light entertainment would boom so massively. Soon you had a plethora pretenders to the tablet throne to capitalise on the scramble for ease of use. Soon you had the Android Tablet, the Samsung GalaxyTab, The Dell Streak 7 and thousands more coming out of the woodwork to give us apps and touch screens to whittle away the hours.
http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-brief/48287-there-are-products-that-hope-to-beat-the-ipad
These movies were aimed at the fans of already arguably cheesy slasher/horror films, those who enjoyed the works of Leslie Neilson and the "American pie" audience.
So quickly we had the box office filled with the blatant copies Meet the Spartans, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie and plenty, plenty more were released to latch onto the fans and public that enjoyed the first iterations of these types of movies, they were targeting the fans of the first franchise, pulling out low budget films like the ones I've just listed and still creating a profit off of the reputation of the originals.
3 Understand how audiences can respond to media products.
3.1 outline ways in which a media product might be understood by an audience.
Often in the industry excellent media products fly by undetected while those that are undeserving of their acclaim. This is usually how products are viewed or understood by the consumer. There are many ways of making a customer come round to your way of thinking you only have to cast your mind back to the Apple advertising campaign of "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" which while a blatant attack on their bitter rival windows, they created the understanding that having a Mac product was the key product to own to the student/arty "cool" individual who has no time for boring spreadsheets and wants to spend their time making video of themselves and uploading to Facebook.
Here the advertising campaign is giving the understanding to the audience that if they want to have the image of "cool" and not be boring as the PC user in the advert they need to buy the Apple product. This advertising campaign was very widely received and definitely helped in the sales by creating the stereotype that the mac was the cooler home based product while the PC was strictly a business tool, something that their biggest rival Windows were quite rightly peeved by. Thus the "I'm a PC' advertising campaign which showed users and famous faces of the windows system rebuffing how they can do all the things they need to and how the system has helped them achieve their goals over in all kinds of fields of work, and play. giving the understanding that perhaps the Apple adverts were a bit one-sided and that owners are proud of their innovative system.
Often in the industry excellent media products fly by undetected while those that are undeserving of their acclaim. This is usually how products are viewed or understood by the consumer. There are many ways of making a customer come round to your way of thinking you only have to cast your mind back to the Apple advertising campaign of "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" which while a blatant attack on their bitter rival windows, they created the understanding that having a Mac product was the key product to own to the student/arty "cool" individual who has no time for boring spreadsheets and wants to spend their time making video of themselves and uploading to Facebook.
There was some people who thought that the campaign itself was in bad taste and slightly mean spirited in making the PC vs MAC a full blown marketing war, perfectly (in my opinion) illustrated by this quote from Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker commenting on the English versions of the Mac Vs PC adverts that starred Peep Show actors David Mitchell and Robert Webb: "(In Peepshow) Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur... So when you see the ads, you think, 'PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers".
Here the advertising campaign is giving the understanding to the audience that if they want to have the image of "cool" and not be boring as the PC user in the advert they need to buy the Apple product. This advertising campaign was very widely received and definitely helped in the sales by creating the stereotype that the mac was the cooler home based product while the PC was strictly a business tool, something that their biggest rival Windows were quite rightly peeved by. Thus the "I'm a PC' advertising campaign which showed users and famous faces of the windows system rebuffing how they can do all the things they need to and how the system has helped them achieve their goals over in all kinds of fields of work, and play. giving the understanding that perhaps the Apple adverts were a bit one-sided and that owners are proud of their innovative system.
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