My Target Audience

In this blog entry, I shall focus on the type of media product that I am making and the style of which that I have selected. I shall also touch on why I have chosen certain conventions and ideas and how they help me appeal to my target audience.

What Type of Media Product am I Making?

The type of media product that I am to produce, is a documentary and specifically, an expository/participatory documentary, focused on the local and smaller efforts at making a difference in the world of sustainability in our community. This will include looking at local organisations in the area, even as nearby as my college, as well as participating in certain activities myself. Such a documentary however, requires focus and attention to detail in the hope of making said documentary appeal to my desired audience, my target audience. This is what I shall touch on in this essay.

My Target Demographic

My target demographic is targeted at those who are conscious of their carbon footprint and individuals who are passionate about seeing a difference in the world, particularly in the world of sustainability and who realise the danger of climate change and want to see efforts from people who in the grand scheme of things, lack any real authority.

I mention this, because I want my documentary to showcase the accessibility of joining or initiating a cause which can make a difference, to display how much say that "ordinary people" can have. There are a multitude of local organisations in my area who certainly have made developments that they wanted to see for their cause and this is what I want to highlight to my audience.

To be more specific, when looking at the age range I would like to appeal to, I would suggest individuals between the ages of 24 and 40, people who feel qualified to consider themselves adults, who one could argue have the most responsibility and potential out of everyone. Generally, it is either young people around student age or older people around retirement age who tend to be involved in sustainable organisations. Thus, I would like to try and bridge the gap between the two and appeal to the young to moderately aged adults of my current generation. Gender for me is irrelevant to this media product, I believe that like anything, no media product should be confined to any particular gender. I want to appeal to people who feel like they fit in and that they are "normal", people who have jobs that don't pay particularly high salaries, maybe even people that feel as though they have no power in stimulating change and no authority in the world that they live in.

If people feel suffocated by the seemingly unfair nature that politicians and governments alike handle such affairs as climate change, which could certainly evoke a sense of pessimism within people who care, I want these people, my audience, to know that there are certainly things that they can do. I want to drill home how accessible and how easy it is to be sustainable and more to the point, what's out there and how people can get involved.

Audience Classification

When touching on where I believe my audience to stand in terms of audience categorisation and classification, then I would consider them to be the following;

In terms of the socio-economic group that I would consider my audience to be in, then I would say that my target audience are within the realms of C1 down to D. I want to appeal to people who feel as though they are not in the extremes of society, thus I am staying away from the "elite" as well as the "deprived" as I want to take a very down-the-middle approach to finding my target audience, going for the everyday people of our society, who are also not too young nor too old.

When applying the BBC's method of socio-economic audience classification, then I would consider my target audience to be the "new-affluent workers", generally, those that fit into this category are young adults who are curious, open-minded and eager to be more informed about different views and perspectives. I would not be very surprised if those who were under this category were interested in subjects like sociology, which is generally, a sociological study of our world and people in general, which I can see appealing to the open-minded and versatile, yet fairly conformist and easy-going nature of adults between the ages of 24 and 40 who are in careers which involve them in creative work, most likely in the world of media.

When looking at the "4 C's" method of audience classification, I would consider two of the audience types to be those within the realms of my target audience, with those being the "mainstreamer" and the "reformer".

First we should look at the "mainstreamer" and while it is not outrageous to believe that a topic such as climate change and sustainability would not quite hit the radar of someone in said audience category, that is exactly why I wish to target their interest, to try and get this subject into the world of people who consider themselves as conformist and passive, as the "4 C's" model describes the typical "mainstreamer" to be. I would really like to see the world of sustainability in the limelight and I believe that most people in the world fall under this category. If a subject such as sustainability could be brought to the masses, then the potential for the influence that the media product could have is very promising indeed.

Then we come to the "reformer" which is the audience category that I expect my documentary to appeal to. Those who are classified under this audience category are considered rebellious, non-conformist and hungry for change and are likely to be conscious of the environment and climate change, due to their humanitarian and benevolent attitudes to the world around them. To give more of an explanation on the "reformers" they are the complete opposite to the "resigned", with completely polar views. I would expect a member of the "resigned" to be interested in coal and oil mining, considering the profits that it has made the world for many years and considering renewable energy sources a loss above all and a threat to the economy. On the other hand, I believe that the "reformer" would look at renewable energy sources, as well as local sustainability organisations, (the focus of my documentary) and feel positively about the prospect of such a switch and feel enthusiasm about the kinder, more ethical and of course, more sustainable alternative to powering our planet.

The Earth's natural resources need to be carefully harnessed, it is a topic such as this where these two audience types (the "reformer" and the "resigned") would clash and completely disagree.

Media Consumed by my Target Audience

When it comes to the typical "mainstreamer", they are considered to view media that is generally approved of by most people. Popular TV shows will appeal to them and they tend to be very agreeable and easy-going, perhaps lacking substance in their opinions, being fairly impartial to most things and rarely looking at anything negatively. I can image that they would consume media (assuming that they are a UK resident) such as 'Doctor Who', 'Peaky Blinders' and 'The Great British Bake-Off'. These are all British television shows which have very high approval-ratings and are generally adored by the British public. They most likely listen to pop music and watch TV channels like BBC One, BBC Two and ITV. Blue Planet II, which was released in 2017, is considered one of the most popular documentaries ever from the BBC. Blue Planet was the successor to the original Blue Planet (2001), which was presented by, like in Blue Planet II, Sir David Attenborough. The BBC are the most popular and notable broadcasting company of the United Kingdom, thus this documentary would certainly have gotten plenty of exposure, which it indeed did.

I see individuals who are considered to fall into this audience category as passive, which perhaps implies that they do not make a lot of decisions for themselves on what they watch, they strike me as people who do not really take risks and only want to immerse themselves in something that is proven and generally understood by most people. This is why I believe that popular television programmes would appeal to the "mainstreamer", they are safe bets and as generally agreeable people, I believe that they would certainly enjoy a television show that they could bond with most people over, being I would assume, fairly extroverted and agreeable, as well as easy-going and without any strong opinions.

As for the "reformer", I would believe their taste to be more on the fringes of media, relatively untouched by the majority of the British public. The "reformer" is considered to be rebellious in nature and rejects social and societal norms, especially when it comes to their media consumption. I would consider them to potentially even stay away from terrestrial television altogether, opting instead for streaming services like YouTube and Netflix, where they can watch content which has less "constrictions" such as the guidelines for TV-friendly content which television channels have. I would assume a "reformer" to watch expository documentaries, to showcase burning topics which they are interested in and more to the point, interested in seeing a difference in. Such documentaries could include 'Seaspiracy' and 'Cowspiracy' and YouTube channels like 'Earthling Ed' and 'CUT' could also appeal to the interest of the "reformer".

The "reformer" most likely wants a media product which exposes something that they are highly critical of, for example, a fan of the documentary 'Seaspiracy' would be highly critical of the fishing industry, opposing the exploitative nature of fishing, which not only drives ocean-life to extinction, but also pollutes our ocean and makes the environment for ocean-life less habitable. This is something that I believe the ethically-driven reformer would want to be cannoned into the limelight of media, which 'Seaspiracy' was upon release, which altered many people's (potentially "mainstreamer's") viewpoints on eating fish and fishing as a whole. I believe that this media product would generally, appeal more to the "reformer", however I want to target the "mainstreamer" so that I can alter some perspectives on how easy it is to be sustainable and as stated before, bridge the gap between the older and younger generations on being enthusiastic about sustainability and creating a broader audience for such media products.

Documentary Styles my Target Audience Consume

When looking at the aforementioned documentary styles, one notices that the documentaries I have listed are observatory and expository, delving deeper into a subject and showcasing a topic from the outside looking in. Blue Planet II, looks at our ocean, how fascinating and vast it is and how much mystery there is to all of the undiscovered life and sights in our ocean, which 'Blue Planet II' does its best to touch on. Blue Planet II, is more on the observatory side, as we are introduced to the enigmatic world of our ocean.

On the more expository side, 'Seaspiracy' focuses on the fishing industry and how many problems arise once you look into the negative impacts of fishing on our planet, the ocean and life on Earth itself. With my target audience being "mainstreamers" and more "reformers", I would like to implement the style of both observatory and expository documentaries into my documentary. Taking a look at local efforts at sustainability is essentially, venturing into the ideas of other people and taking a look at what it is that they do, their thoughts and opinions and how they go about working towards their goals. With taking a look into their work in mind, fans of observatory documentaries could certainly be intrigued with finding out about a small organisation's work and if they are a "reformer" they will more than likely be interested in remedying the climate emergency and so, local efforts at sustainability could certainly be a topic that they would find interesting.

On the topic of the "reformer", I have found that given their typical attitudes to world affairs, with their interest honed in on ethical and humanitarian practice throughout our society, without fear of ruffling a few feathers on their conquest for developmental change, expository documentaries work very well for this audience type which is who I am hoping to appeal to. One could say that the "reformer" wants to see a problem and wants to find something to frown upon that they wish to assist in rectifying. For example, a critic of factory-farming would be outraged by a documentary like 'Cowspiracy', a documentary focused on the unethical and environmentally harmful aspects of the intensive farming of animals, thus the "reformer", should they not already be informed on the matter, would most likely have strong feelings towards these unethical acts and wish to see change and would hope that such a documentary would stimulate some sort of change. Perhaps with benevolence in mind, the "reformer" wants a documentary which will alter perspectives for the better and aid people in making the more ethically-conscious decisions to improve the world that we live in, especially considering the fact that the typical "reformer" is generally perceived to be a progressivist and maybe even to an extent, revolutionary.