Demographics/Psychographics

Demographics 

Demographics are a statistical collection of data usually in relation to population which also includes features like; age, income, education, gender, race and more. Demographics can be used by Governments, Corporations and Non-Government organizations to allow them to acquire more information about the populations characteristics for a range of different purposes, which include, policy development and economic market research. These are very important and also link into the sales of media products as the success of the majority of businesses generally depends on the understanding of the demographics for the target audience a certain product is going to be sold to. A demographic table has been created to present that demographics are broken into different bands depending on peoples social class because a product may be produced, but it may only be targeted at people who are of a higher status - meaning the pricing of the product will doubtless be higher and of better quality than something targeted at the lower classes. 

Once deciding which social class the product is going to mainly be aimed at, the marketers will then have to think about pricing, packaging, promotion and the area the product will be sold in. Again, this is because if a lower class based product had been produced then you wouldn't want to see it being sold in a upper class area because no one there would buy it, but also you will have to ensure that the price is suitable because the marketers won't want to make something really expensive if it is going to be aimed at the lower class who won't be able to afford it. The first thing that marketers have to understand to be able to create the correct product for the intended audience is that that they will need to know who the customers are with factual information about them. Such information like age, gender and education tells the marketer how likely a person is to purchase their item because of the way they live their lives. Demographics is essential because the majority of the time a large mass of things are very expensive - meaning companies won't want to be wasting money on promoting products toward people who won't buy them, so by collecting these demographics, the seller will be able to sell their products to the right target audience and this will also be more cost effective for the companies. As I have previously mentioned, there is a table available that allows companies to know what type of social class they should be aiming their products at.

Here is the demographic table:

The lower classes are commonly known as group E and the upper classes are generally known as group A; then the middle classes are in between. As previously stated, when selling products to a certain target audience you will want to ensure that you are making the product accessible for the audience because you won't want someone not being able purchase something because it is too expensive when it has been aimed at their social class. An example of when this table could be used incorrectly, or when it may not even be used at all and ruins a products sales is when a product may be constructed for a builder (for example) meaning they are probably in the middle class or something similar. Nonetheless - if this product is being sold in areas where a lot of business men/women work which puts them somewhere in the upper class or close to it, then the product won't be purchased by anyone because it is being advertised and promoted in the wrong area and this is why this demographic table is very important when it comes to selling certain products to certain audiences.  

Psychographics 

Psychographics is different to demographics in the way that this is more about the study of personality, values, opinions and interests more than the actual facts about the certain person - this is more about how the person acts and physically does things rather than factual things about the person - for example, where they live and how old they are. This sort of information is necessary for marketing purposes because it allows the marketer to know what the target audience likes and what interests them, which will help the marketers in creating products that will entice their target audience and make them want to buy the products when they are being sold. These statistics are very useful because they allow the creators of products to ensure that what they create will be appealing towards its intended target audience. For example, if there was a person who enjoyed reading and they were in the middle class (demographics), then the creator of the product would make sure their Media text has more writing in - this generally depends on the quantity of audience that want this though. This fits in with the Long Tail Theory by Chris Anderson as the producers of products won't create something that is only going to appeal to one person, they are going to create something that will appeal to a large range of people, this is why niche audiences rarely see the things that they find interesting. Similarly to demographics, there is also a table for psychographics which allows marketers to identify all the different types of personalities that they can appeal their products to. 

Here is the psychographic table:

There are a wide range of personalities that people can possess, but these are the broad few that can be selected when deciding what category a certain product should fall into. The categories range from 'Mainstreamers' which is usually the largest group and includes people who generally do whatever normally occurs in life and will do what other people do rather than what they want to do for themselves. The other end of the table includes the 'Reformers' who are the complete opposite of 'Mainstreamers' and would rather do things for themselves than doing the usual and expected that everyone else does. There are a range of other categories between these two and they are all different in their own way. This table is very important for marketers because if they were selling a product for people who are adventurous, outgoing and willing to do things on their own, than they wouldn't want to appeal to people in the 'Mainstreamers' or 'Strugglers' category and would rather want to appeal to people in the 'Explorers' and 'Reformers' categories as they are a lot more adventurous and free flowing.

Audience Research

After researching demographics and psychographics I decided to create a survey with questions which relate to demographics and psychographics so I can get to know more about people and how they feel and understand music videos, which will help me when I am creating my own music video. I have created this Survey on a website called 'Survey Monkey' where I was able to create ten questions which all relate to the demographics and psychographics of Media texts. I have also generated a video which presents how I have created this survey - the video I have constructed is just over six minutes long - however, this is shorter than the original as it used to be twelve minutes long, but I have sped the video up because I know it would be tedious to sit and watch me create a survey for twelve minutes - plus, I have added some music to keep you engaged. 

Here is the video that presents how I created my survey:

After creating my survey, I knew that I was going to have to promote it to ensure that people actually completed my survey and I actually got valid answers so this investigation would be successful. I decided to promote my survey in a range of different ways and this has been made easy nowadays because of the concept of digitalisation which allows me to promote my own work on a range of different social media's through the use of web 2.0. Firstly, I advertised my survey on my Facebook wall - asking for people to fill in this survey as part of my Media course - this would appeal to a wide range of different people as I have over 500 Facebook friends from different parts of the world, so I would be able to get a range of peoples views on music videos from different countries and ethnic groups which gives me a broader range of peoples to analyse. The next social media website I decided to advertise my survey on was Twitter - personally this was the best place for me to post and advertise my survey because I again have an array of different friends from many countries that follow me as I have over 4500 followers. This means that my survey will gain quite a large mass audience especially because people are able to retweet my tweet, which allows other users that follow the person who retweeted to see my tweet and complete my survey. Lastly, someone that had completed my survey offered to find out if other people they knew would complete this survey as well. After everyone confirmed they would do it, I was then given their email address' and was able to send them a link to the survey and this again was beneficial because it meant that more people were willing to take part in my survey and wanted to help me in understanding what different people are like both demographically and psychographically. I could have also promoted this survey on other social media's like Instagram and Snapchat - however, I rarely use these applications and if I did promote my survey on these, then I wouldn't have received many answers. By promoting my survey on social media's I will hopefully get more of a response, especially from the younger generations (teenagers and young adults) who are more likely to use social media sites and who are also going to mainly be who my music video is aimed at.

After two days I had received 56 responses on my survey and was able to look at the feedback and see how different people approached my questions. I have created a presentation where I have explained each different question that I have asked in the survey and then I have examined and looked in detail at what people have said and how this feedback may help me when creating my own music video. Here is my presentation: 

After doing some general research about music videos, I then wanted to concentrate more on the audience who enjoy the genre that I am doing for my music video, so I can understand what these fans like to see, which I am then able to input into my creation of a music video. Nonetheless, this general research will also be useful for me as I will be able to include things into my music video that people who like different genres enjoy seeing, so I can appeal to a larger target audience and entice them to watch my video and buy my products, but my main objective will be to target the people who already enjoy listening and watching music videos for this genre of music.

The first thing I did was collect all of the data from the survey where the users had said their preferred genre was Punk, as my chosen genre is Pop Punk. I then put all the answers together into a slideshow so I would be able to see the differences and similarities between each user, which will then allow me to see what fans of this genre like the most, which I am then able to include in my music video or during the process of constructing it. 

Here is the slideshow of the responses I have received:

From this feedback, I can identify that the majority of the respondents where males as there was only one female out of the 7 responses. This informs me that I will have a larger male audience than female and should try to appeal to men more than women. However, I my chosen artist it female which may change these results a bit because all of the respondents stated that their favourite artist was male - I predict that I will have more female fans than male. Nonetheless, I will be appealing to both genders so I can reach a larger target audience. As I am on the topic of artists, I am able to see that the mass bulk of the respondents said that they liked these artists because they had a big impact on them and the lyrics in their songs were meaningful and memorable, which I think is very interesting because it means that the music video created will be made memorable because it will reinforce the lyrics and I will be able to do this so people will remember my music video and want to watch it again. On top of that, the a large amount of the respondents are either teenagers or young adults, which is who my music video is going to be aimed at, so this proves my theory that the younger generation will be more likely to listen to and watch music video for this genre of music. However, I can't ignore the fact that there were some people from the older generation, but I won't desperately try to engage the older generation because I know a lot of them don't like music videos and don't watch watch them or only occasionally watch them which highlights that if I did try to entice the older generation then they may not be that interested, so I am going to keep with the younger generation.

Furthermore, as previously identified, the majority of people watch music videos on YouTube due to the revolution of digitalisation which has made this possible - meaning I will easily be able to reach my target audience once posting my music video onto YouTube. When asking if the respondents enjoyed watching music videos I received a range of responses, most of the older generation said they no longer watch music videos and are not longer interested - however, my target audience is the younger generation and a lot of them said they enjoy watching music videos because they can see the artists interpretation of the song which allows the audience to understand the real meaning behind the lyrics. They also said they are entertaining to watch as you are able to see something visually as well as listening to the song. Lastly, 4 out the the 7 responses I received stated that they like to watch an abstract video rather than a narrative which I thought would be the response I would receive because the majority of existing music videos for this genre are mainly performance based rather than narrative based and in my music video I am planning on including a narrative and performance - however, it will mainly be based on the performance as this is what the majority of Pop Punk fans enjoy seeing. 

I later decided to ask people who I personally knew liked this genre of music to fill out some questions about the genre I had written down on paper. I received four different responses as this is the amount of people I asked to fill out my form and have put them all together on a slideshow to present what all of the responses were.

Here is the slideshow with my responses on:

From this feedback you can see that all of the responses I received were from females - I did this purposely to present that there are females that do enjoy listening to this genre of music rather than just men which was highlighted in the previous survey that I had created. The majority of the people I asked to complete this form where all teenagers which again reinforces the idea that a lot of teenagers and young adults will listen to this genre of music. Even though I already knew the ages of all of the people completing this survey, I knew that there are more teenagers and young adults that like this genre of music than young children or people who are a lot older. On top of that, all of the people I asked to fill the survey out where from England, but again this was because I asked people who lived near me and who I know liked this genre of music to complete this form - however, this presents that there are quite a few people who live in England and around my area that like this genre of music, so when I try to promote my music video I will hopefully have a large range of people that will watch it. Also, most of the respondents stated that they have three bedrooms (except one) which highlights that I would be appealing towards people of the middle class as this is an average amount of bedrooms to have in a middle class house, but it also shows that there are presumably more people in the house, so the one person that is a fan of Pop Punk could be playing certain music in their room and then their siblings or parents may come in and say that they like the music being played and then more people in the family may listen to the music which would help in people watching my music video. Moreover, all of the people that completed this survey stated that they would expect to see an abandoned building and a dark/gloomy woods or forest and also dark clothing in a Pop Punk music video which highlights that people who watch music videos for this genre of music are more likely to see darker features than lighter features - demonstrating that the ideas I have had for my music videos will work and appeal toward the right target audience because I have chosen to use a woods as my location which will include dark lighting. Furthermore, the majority of the respondents said that their favourite artist was Fall Out Boy out of the list I had given them, but some others stated that they had other artists that they really liked as well, but next to their chosen selection they stated that they enjoy this style of music as it is different and unique from others and the lyrics of the song are entertaining which implies that this genre of music is unlike others, but people still like it and like to understand the lyrics even if they are about different subjects to stereotypical songs because it is what makes them unique. 

The majority of the respondents said they preferred fast edits - however, one of the the respondents said that it depends on the style and theme of the song which I think means that if a slow song was being played, then you are more likely to see slow edits, but if a fast song was being played then you are more likely to see fast edits because it goes with the beat/song just like one of Andrew Goodwin's key features states. The song I have chosen is slow but could possibly include some fast edits which will engage the audience more and keep them interested. There was a mix between who liked to see a narrative music video and who liked to see an abstract video, but one of the respondents said that it will often depend and a narrative should be used if you want to make the music video emotional and have meaning to it, but if not, then an abstract video is better for just general things like a performance, but I believe that this is the same for any genre of music. Nonetheless, I will be including both a narrative and performance, but I will have a stronger performance than narrative - however, the narrative will still create meaning and emotion for the audience. The last question I asked was about what people liked the most about music videos and the majority of the answers I received where the same as most of the respondents stated that a music video will have a story behind it and uses imagery which allows the audience to understand what the artist is feeling and trying to say through the use of their lyrics. One of the respondents said they enjoy the performance that is given in a music video and also the emotional connection you can have with the music video which is what I would like the audience to have when they watch my music video to make them feel the emotion of the artist.