Focus group transcript

Focus group

https://soundcloud.com/kyra-mai-green/focus-group-a2

Analysing final questionnaire

I reused some of the questions that were in the pilot questionnaire as it was only a sample of the real one anyway and I wanted to see if some of them worked before diving straight into a full blown questionnaire that people may not possibly answer. This is a repeated question and as before, there was only one man that took part in my questionnaire proving my theory of a female based audience for a wedding magazine.

Surprisingly, the majority of people that answered my questionnaire were of the age 40 or above, this could be due to airing the link on my mums Facebook page in which meet this age range. Despite this, there were still 15-35 year olds that answered my questionnaire proving that my target audience is pitched right, with the exceptions of older women also.

Another surprising result was most of the people that answered my questionnaire are already married. This instigates to me that they clicked on answering the questionnaire because they have had experience in reading wedding magazines in the past where as people that aren't yet married maybe don't quite have the desire yet to research into weddings just yet.

As expected; the main purpose people would purchase a wedding magazine for the reason of wanting inspiration for their own wedding. This tells me that my focus within my website and magazine needs to be on branding outfits, seeing venues and giving the information to the target audience to be able to plan their own wedding.

This question proves that my age theory that the 40 year olds taking part in my survey had previously read them, which from this question indicates it was in their 20's as this is when they thought women would start reading wedding magazines. This could be down to a lot of women getting engaged during their 20's as the average age for women to get married is 29.

From the responses I gathered in the questionnaire, women are prepared to pay between £2.50-£3.50 for a wedding magazine proving it to be needing a sophisticated approach to be worth its money and make up its value. This would suggest reaching out to middle class readers.

As anticipated, the target audience are mainly female but want to look into both male and female parts of the wedding, this could be due to women wanting to take control of aspects of the wedding as women are normally perceived weak and not decision makers by media platforms, this allows them to explore into their own choices abit more.

Again, as anticipated the target audience would want to see inspiration for their own weddings with information to back it al up; for example where to buy the item from etc. This makes he magazine both informative and an appealing media platform for my target audience to view and browse, a sense of the hypodermic needle theory takes place here as the information is being imported into the target audiences brains so they feel like they must have it.

This question was quite interesting to me as I was considering breaking out of the stereotype of a middle class wedding but after seeing these results, I think I have decided against it as I simply believe the magazine would not sell as well as if it did keep to the conventions of wedding magazines.

Just as I thought, the target audience would want to see a majority of images with text to back it all up and give information on the products etc that are included within the images. This would make it easier for the target audience to understand and explore themselves being visually informative and helpful to planning their own weddings which my target audience said would be the reason for them reading the magazine.

I already asked this question in my pilot questionnaire where one man answered that where as here all women did with no males, this just proves that the target audience is mainly women and should be focused towards women really. This can mean that male influence is within the magazine and doesn't limit it towards just women.

There was a varied number of answers to this in which first I was shocked at but then I realised that the answer would be purely based on the sexuality the reader is, as none were gay there wouldn't be a reason for this audience to read about gay marriages although the majority said they wouldn't mind reading about both.

As the main target audience is female, the slight majority would want to see a more feminine magazine although quite a lot said that a magazine that appealed to both sexes wouldn't put them off proving that I can alleviate slightly away from the strict girly approach.

This question has confirmed to me the important of images on a website as well as in a magazine and focusing an image or video at the top of my website pages will make it much more attractive to my target audience.

My impression when writing this question is that people would want to see the social media links clearly so that they could follow the sites but the outcome was that viewers feel like they would be able to research further into the brand with just the name, the likely hood is that this will lead them to the social media sites but the initial thought is the name; meaning I need to have a memorable brand. 

Final questionnaire

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CZYZXYD https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/JKSVTFF

Analysing pilot questionnaire

When analysing my pilot questionnaire in which I only used a sample of my questions to gather an understanding of who I need to be sending the main questionnaire out to, I realised there was a pattern of people that would read wedding magazines or even fill out my wedding survey. Out of all the people that answered my survey, only one was male proving that I was correct, my target audience being women, with the very off chance that a male would read them once in a blue moon.

The results for this question were just as I expected, with needing inspiration for your own wedding being the main purpose for the audience to read the magazine. This has allowed me to understand what sort of articles and pages to include in my website and magazine that captures the target audiences interest.

I  wanted to make sure I was pitching my wedding magazines and sites to the right age band, I first considered this to be 25-35 but from the results I've gathered women in their 20's are most likely to read a wedding magazine. This means that I may have to alter my target audience to being slightly younger than expected.

I noticed that most wedding magazines were aimed at the middle class budgets and so considered breaking these stereotypes to slightly lower budgeted weddings to suit the needs of people living in my East midland Leicester area but it seems that the target audience would want to read about middle class budgeted weddings, proving me wrong to break the stereotypes.

I didn't have any expectations for this question but simply wanted to know where I'd pitch my magazine quality and price. I now know what price to advertise my magazine at.

Pilot questionnaire

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/XZ5DMZW

Audience Profiling

Mind Map created by Kyra-Mai Green with GoConqr

Technical research

After studying the Photoshop tutorial, it has opened my eyes to using it this time round as I used Fireworks last time and came across some barriers such as figuring out how to use it as it wasn't very popular. This made it very long winded but now after understanding the Photoshop tutorial I can use these skills and progress further in another software. I want to use the lighting techniques in the tutorial as I like the effect the blur spots have on an image. I will more than likely be using some of the other techniques they use too, but haven't realised due to not having my images yet. I will also use photoshop for my billboard as I feel it will be the easiest to edit my image and then overlay text onto it giving it the most professional look I can. I looked at previous students methods for creating their websites and the most popular and professional looking website software is 'Wix'. Fromthis, I watched another tutorial on how to produce this and to my surprise it seems much easier than photoshop. This tutorial takes you step by step through the process of making the site and gives really clear instructions on how to produce each page which I would have spent hours doing if not. It also has the wedding theme so gives me inspiration for how I want to lay mine out. I like the way some of the layouts are already and so will make my life much easier when producing the site.

Ancillary form research 1

After researching into the different types of ancillary forms, they can be displayed in different ways. Websites are always going to be online but can be viewed through the web search or apps such as 'Readly' that you pay a monthly prescription to read thousands of magazines. This is something I want to aim for, as the company has to think your magazine is worthy enough to reach their app so that in mind, I'd like my magazine to aim that high. 

Billboards are seen in person as well as online sometimes and so opens up the target audience to those you do not have access to the internet. This was beneficial when researching billboards as it opened up who I considered to be the target audience and mood boards are very similar- as shown in the image. These mood boards give ideas to future brides and grooms with the same effect as a billboard which are also found online, in bus stop posters, on the side of buses and in magazine/books.

Topic research

Theoretical research

Theoretical research from _kyramai

Conventions summary

Emailing a professional

Form research

Form topic from _kyramai

Progress Report

I'm writing a progress report as I am now working on my own. This is because Chloe has left to go to another college to study media full time. This means from now on I will be proceeding with my coursework on my own so work load will be increased but I can control it myself a bit better.

Genre research

Progress report

After doing my initial research, I have discovered the patterns and trends that are conventional to the wedding genre and its media approaches. My ideas have been inspired and altered from looking into professional and non professional magazines, websites and billboards which has allowed me to get a real flavour of what the regional wedding genre is like. From this I think I have also discovered what colour schemes, text type and language I would like to use as well as layout although I feel like I  need to do more research into this. I feel I have done well in researching into the genre as it is a hard one to analyse, especially with it being regional but I would like to succeed in this and do the best job I can.

Textual analysis of student work

Analysing front page student from _kyramai

Cohesive Marketing

Influential figures

Textual analysis- billboard 2

Textual analysis- website 2

Textual analysis 2 website from _kyramai

Textual analysis- magazine 2

Textual analysis- First billboard

Textual analysis- 'I do' wedding website

Textual analysis of ‘i do’ wedding page from _kyramai

Textual analysis- magazine 1

Subgenres with in the wedding theme

Mind Map created by Kyra-Mai Green with GoConqr

Response to the brief

I have decided to work with Chloe Mullahy as we both have a passion for photography and style and so the brief that best suited us was the regional magazine. Our decision was made easier because neither of us felt best equipped to proceed with the film briefs as we lack editing and acting skills. I have learnt many skills of photography and software to do with print last year such as Word and Fireworks which will help me proceed into A2.

My strengths from last years production include my photography and my imagination as well as being analytical on all aspects of the coursework. I got an A in last years coursework and was proud of the progress I had made with my journey throughout coursework and how I had taken it all on without studying media before. Weaknesses included my time scale for the work as sometimes deadlines were not met so this year I have a plan to stick to for each week.

From this, themes were discussed which included; make-up, fashion, food, leisure, lifestyle and weddings. After some discussion we narrowed it down to fashion and weddings but felt that fashion was very limited being a regional magazine. We gathered that weddings would be our theme as it has much more opportunity. We discussed subgenres that we could look into within the wedding theme. Our initial ideas of the colour scheme are pastel colours as this is the most feminine approach we believe because wedding magazines reach out to women much more. We also decided our target audience would be from the 25-35 age range as this is when most people decide to get married; plus this is close to our age range so we can relate to it more. We will be doing the two ancillary products of the billboard and the two hyperlinked web pages as linked products which we are both doing together because it will have a better impact having more minds to input. We aren't experienced in website creating so this will take further research and learning.