AS2 Task 1 Market And Target Audience Research

I have conducted some research recently to help find out more information on our target audience when we come round to making our advert.

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With the first question of my survey i asked if people owned a smartphone, although this is irrelevant to our advert or the target audience it is still useful to know that the majority of people that we asked did own a smartphone.

In the second question we asked how old people where to find out the age groups that we should aim our advert towards and we found out that most people where in the age of 16 to 24 which shows that the younger generation would be most interested in modern day smartphones.

The third question that we asked was how old they were when they got their first phone and looking at the results it shows that most people were quite young when they got their first phone.

When we asked people what the brand was of their first phone we got the results of Nokia and Samsung been the most popular which helps as we can look back at those phones and adverts to see what attracted those people or the parents to get the phones for themselves or for their children.

Although this question is irrelevant to what we are going to do or for our target audience it is still nice to know what their network is and we found out that EE and 3 where the two most popular network providers.

This question is also irrelevant but in some ways this question shows how popular smartphones are and we found out that the majority only owned 1 smartphone.

With this question it gave us an indication of how much money were willing to spend on getting a smartphone and the two most popular answers where over £200 and others where only willing to spend less than £100.

This question is helpful to us because we are able to mention about the battery length because most people that answered this question said that they use their phone all the time.

This question also does not help us with our research but most people say that their smartphone is on a contract.

When we asked if they had ever thought of getting a new phone most people said that they had thought of getting a new one.

With all the research that i had conducted i had found out that it is usually the younger generation that has the smartphones and they are usually always on their phones so we can do an advert that appeals to the younger generation and also point out that the phone has a longer battery life than other phones.

The advert above for the iPhone 6 is a typical example of a smartphone advertisement. The advert uses repetition very effectively as the actors in the advert are continuously going dun dun dun dun dun. This is a really effective way to make the advertisement memorable as on one hand it is rather annoying to watch. Like all good repetitive adverts the fact that it is annoying makes it stick in the audiences mind. The main body of the advert is centered around comparing the key features of the new phone with the old phone. The advert demonstrates the fact that the screen has gotten bigger and that there are 2 different phones that you could get and the camera functions of the smartphone and it also shows that you are able to work on the go doing presentations. This is another very effective way of advertising a smartphone as the audience can clearly see all of the different features that you could have if you had the phone. The advert uses sound effectively as well, in the advert you can hear 2 people making noises but they have got 2 people that are able to keep in tune so at first it sounds catchy. Overall all I think this is a very effective way of advertising a smartphone.

The advert above is a typical advert for a smartphone and the phone that is been advertised above is the Samsung galaxy S5. The advert uses realism to make the advert seem really effective, This is a really effective way to make an advertisement memorable as on one hand it is easy for people to understand what is going on in the advert but on the other hand people may not notice the writing at the bottom that says what it is it's trying to say what feature it is and it would also allow people to imagine themselves actually doing the things he is doing and going to the place that he is at. like all realistic adverts, the fact that it keeps it simple means that people from different backgrounds and skill sets can understand what is going on in the advert which could allow people to understand it a lot easier. The key feature of the advert is to say what new features they have added to the phone. The advert demonstrates the fact that the camera is able to focus on people or things a lot faster than before and the fact that they have now added in a water proof function in the phone. This is another effective way of advertising a smartphone as the audience can clearly see all of the different features that you could have if you had that phone. the advert uses sounds effectively as well, in the advert they have added a background song that mixes really well with what is happening in the advert. overall i think that this is a really effective way to advertise a smartphone.


Focus group questions

1.  What do you look for in a smartphone?

2. Do you go for a specific brand of phone? Why?

3. How much would you expect to pay to buy a phone?

4. Do you prefer to have a phone with a large screen?

5. Would you like to have a phone with a large battery life? Why?

6.  Give 3 suggestions for what you would use your phone for

7. Do you get any support with your current phone?

8. Do you like your current phone? Why?

9. What features do you like about your phone? Why?

10. What do you think of these two adverts? Please state your personal preference.

What i learnt from doing the focus group is for each of the questions, the majority either said the same or they had different opinions to one another. When we asked them what it is they look for in a smartphone they all said similar things to what others might say, bigger screen, longer battery life etc. Also when we asked them if they go for a specific brand of phone they said that they do because they know what that phone is like and they know whether they can trust that phone company or not and not everyone agreed on a price of a phone as some prefer to pay for the phone on contract where as others like to get a phone on contract so their answers where varied on the price that they was willing to pay. When we showed them the adverts i think that some of them didn't really know what they should say but those who had a iPhone tired to be faithful and say that the iPhone ad was better but in my opinion it doesn't really tell you what the feature they are trying to talk about is where as on the Samsung advert it is written on the screen what it is.

Blog 9

·      “Advertising Standards Authority”: http://www.asa.org.uk/

  "Viewing data”:  Broadcasters Audience Research Board  http://www.barb.co.uk/ www.barb.co.uk/viewing

 j  ·      “Advertising | How to Advertise  on Channel 4 and its platforms”: http://www.channel4sales.com/advertising.

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ8Zyljf_t0&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&feature=player_embedded

    

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421914688&v=Bt4Mmu6iXZA&x-yt-cl=84503534&feature=player_embedded

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421914688&v=W4-UfcfMwRU&x-yt-cl=84503534&feature=player_embedded

       

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iYBmAVuBns&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&feature=player_embedded

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8QxZJZfU5Q&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&feature=player_embedded

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421914688&v=EndGB7DWMDc&x-yt-cl=84503534&feature=player_embedded

Blog 8

The way that clients and agencies gather the information about viewers before starting an advertising campaign is that BARB do all of the research into the viewers and when they have gathered the information over a period of time they release all of the figures for the public to be able to see, this is useful to them because they get to see how many people watch a certain programme and at what time so that they can decide what they can advertise and what channel to put it on.

You are able to find all of the television ratings by going onto the BARB website where they would have released all of the figures and this is useful because companies are able to find out what channels people prefer to watch and then they can advertise on that channel.
A programme profile is a breakdown of the viewers that might be watching the programme, for example the age of the gender of the person so this would be useful to a advertiser because it would allow them to put up an advert when the programme is on a break, for example downton abbey is something that elder women might watch so they would advertise their product aiming it towards them.
A rate card is a document that contains all the prices and descriptions for all the various ad placement options that are available from a media outlet so this would be useful to an advertiser because this would give them the prices and documents of what it would cost them to place their ad on a channel.
Some of the information that is given to you from the advertisers is that they give you all of the percentage so that if you did want to advertise on that channel you are able to know when people are watching TV the most and during what TV programme.

Blog 7

I think that it is important for advertisers to study Audiences because that way they get to know what they watch some of the products that may be appropriate for them to advertise at which times. Advertisers would separate who they advertise to is target audiences, some of the more expensive items would be aimed towards people who are of a higher "class" than others and these people generally have more money than the all of the average people who are called "working class", they would also make sure that the things that they are showing do not offend the people who are watching it so that it does not change what they think about that company. Some of the other things that would make advertisers divide who they advertise to would also be where the people live such as the country and it would also go on the age of the person that they aim to get to see the advertisement and also the gender of the person because they wouldn't advertise something for a girl towards a man.

I think that it is important to be able to identify certain sections of audiences because then the advertisers can decide what to advertise and also make sure that the channel that they are getting it advertised on is appropriate for that advertisement to be seen by people watching that particular channel. The way that the BARB measure the audience and the channels that they watch is that all of the viewers that are participating in the research would have a box on their TV which would track the programmes that they watch, and the role of the BARB is that they have 3 different companies work for them and they are RSMB, MORI and kantar media. RSMB is responsible for all of the survey design, quality control and the calculation methodology, the MORI is to survey all of the characteristics of the television owning population which includes an element of direct recruitment to the viewing panel and kantar media is responsible for establishing and maintaining all of the new BARB viewing panel. The Audience measurement measures how many people are in the audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership but also in relation to the newspaper and magazine readership.

Blog 6

The advertising regulation is important because companies are advertising their products to the public so if they say something about the product then they have to make sure that it is correct so that the buyers know what it is that they are buying and it doesn't mislead them about what the product.

The role of the ASA is to be able to make sure that all forms of advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful and if the adverts do not meet these four criteria used then the advert will be amended or it would be withdrawn.
The role of Ofcom is to make sure that the people that are going to be listening or watching the adverts that are been shown to them, some of the ways that they do this is by promoting competition and protecting the public from what might be considered harmful or offensive material and some of the main areas that Ofcom presides over are licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and also protecting the radio spectrum from abuse.
There are two questions that the ASA would ask about a particular advert and that is 1. Is the advert inaccurate or misleading? and 2. might it cause offence to people seeing it or could it cause harm to anyone especially to children. The ASA would question the company trying to advertise their product to see if it is misleading or inaccurate because they want to make sure that all of the people that see or hear this advert get the right information about it and that the product actually does what they say it does and they may also ask if advertising this product harm the people that see it because there could be something about the advert that might offend the people that are watching it and they want to protect them from it especially the children that might see it.
The way that the ASA decides whether or not an advertisement is appropriate or not all goes down on if it is legal, there cannot be anything in the advertisement that is promoting illegal products. It has to be decent enough for people to see, for example there cannot be naked people running around and swearing because there could be kids watching it. It also has to be honest and truthful, they do this because if someone sees the advert and like the products details then they are buying that product because of those details that was given to them and they don't want people been lied to and wasting their money on a product that does not do what it says it does.

The issues that this advert had was that people said that this advert was too violent to be shown on TV before 9 PM. I think that these people was in their right to say this because there is a lot of violence in this and young children may see this and it may encourage them to do it themselves.

The issue that this advert had was that parents complained that this advert would encourage bad manners towards their children and i agree with this because young children will see that there are adults doing this so they would think that it would be alright if they did it as well.

The issue with this advert is that people said that this advert may offend blind people and it could also promote animal cruelty, i do not agree with this because i can see that they was just trying to put a bit of humour into the advert and you can tell that the cat was was not actually hurt.

Blog 5

It is important to conduct research before you plan a new advertising campaign because if you start to plan it and just show it at any time then you do not know if people watching it at that time will be interested in actually buying it as it may not be for them because it could be for a boy but it is a girl watching it at that time.

Audience research is when an advertiser is researching when people people are watching a programme and if they are a going to be male or female, Market research is when the advertiser is researching ways on how they will be able to sell their products to people and what age they will be and production research is when the advertiser looks at what people are going to be interested in and if they would actually buy that product so they try to make the product look good and sound really good when they are describing it.

Primary research is when the advertiser does research that no one else has done before, some of the pros of doing this is that people may be more interested to see what that product is going to be like so it may attract more customers and some cons of this is that you may end up spending more money on the research than what you might actually get back from sales.
Secondary research is when you use products that people have already put research into, this is useful because you may be able to improve the work that they have done and get more sales but a con is that you may ruin the product and you may not be able to sell it so you might spend more money on improving it.
Quantitative research is when an advertiser try to find out how old all of the audiences that may be interested in the product that you are trying to sell to them, a pro of this is that you may be able to find more customers that want to buy your product but a con is that you may spend money on advertising but you are not able to get any more customers.
Qualitative research is when an advertiser tries to find out what the public is thinking, a pro of this would be that you can find a way of improving your product and you may get more customers but a con would be that you may not be able to do anything about the publics comment.

Blog 4

I think that this advert is one of the most effective because it plays on the emotions of the viewers and it could just make them think more carefully about what they are doing when they are driving, it also creates a place of fear that they might hit someone one day if they continue to speed.
This advert does not use any celebrities in this because this is the type of advert that doesn't need to have a famous face placed into it and a advert like this is aimed at anyone who is at the age where they can drive.