Maslow and Audience Needs

In the 1970s, researcher Abraham Maslow, suggested that human behaviour is focused on satisfying basic human needs. You could use some ideas from this theory to explore how magazines appeal to certain audiences. How do magazines satisfy the basic needs Marlow defined in his research?

Maslow's Needs

Need to survive: used by advertisements for food, drink, housing for example.

Need to feel safe: advertisements for insurance, loans and banks promise security and freedom from threats.

Need for affiliation or friendship: advertisements that focus on lifestyle choices like diet and fashion use people's desire to be popular. They may also threaten them with the failure to be liked or to fit in.

Need to nurture or care for something: advertising which shows cute animals and small children brings this out in the viewer.

Need to achieve: advertisements that are linked with winning, often promoted by sports personalities, tap into the need to succeed at difficult tasks.

Need for attention: advertisements for beauty products often play on the need to be noticed and admired.

Need for prominence: advertisements for expensive furniture and jewellery may use people's needs to be respected and to have high social status.

Need to dominate: advertisements for products like fast cars offer the possibility of being in control through the product.

Need to find meaning in life: advertisements for travel or music may appeal to people's need for fulfilment.

Lifestyle Categories

As consumers have become more sophisticated, advertisers have continued to develop the ways of trying to 'pigeon hole' audiences. Look at these categories below which are sometimes used to define the 16-34 age audience's outlook on life.

Cowboys: People who want to make money quickly and easily.

Cynics: People who always have something to complain about.

Drifters: People who aren't at all sure what they want.

Drop-outs: People who do not want to get committed in any way.

Egotists: People who are mainly concerned to get the most pleasure for themselves out of life.

Groupies: People who want to be accepted by those around them.

Innovators: People who want to make their mark on the world.

Puritans: People who want to feel they have done their duty.

Rebels: People who want the world to fit in with their idea of how it should be.

Traditionalists: People who want everything to remain the same. 

Trendies: People who are desperate to have the admiration of their peer group. 

Utopians: People who want to make the world a better place.

Some of these categories seem outdated in comparison to the UK Tribes you have looked at in class, but you can see how lifestyle is important to media industries who are trying to appeal to certain groups of people.

Task: How could Maslow's theory apply to how magazines are being sold directly to target audiences? How could lifestyle categories by useful for magazine publishers?

You need to look at the following two texts and write a paragraph explaining how each one is designed to appeal to their target audience, using some of the terms above in your analysis paragraph. 

Challenge Question: Both are for young girls, but it is clear that the target audiences are different. Can you compare the audiences for both?

Finished? Find yourself a different text that would appeal to a completely different target audience and analyse it in the same way.