Using Ideology to create appeal.

Look at these contents pages which analyse layout conventions accurately. To make this even better, the student could have commented on the ideology of the magazine and how it appeals to the target audience. Pick your own contents page and look at the subject matter of the articles listed, the language register and the mise-en-scene in the images. How is representation being used to sell to the audience?

Task: Write your own analysis to include in your research and planning section of your magazine coursework. Using a music magazine would be a good idea, as this will help inform your own planning for your magazine production work.

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.

 

Using Ideology to create audience appeal

UK Tribes was born in 2005, when Channel 4 commissioned Crowd DNA (then called Ramp Industry) to run a project called TV Glue, which looked to measure how TV could remain relevant in the face of media fragmentation (audiences looking elsewhere for their media consumption).

The project looked at youth culture and offered a tribal breakdown based on the social glues (music, sport, fashion, technology etc) around which young people gather. Whenever presented to media and marketing people, this section proved a big hit; a real conversation starter.

UK Tribes was born, with a brief to extend this research; to explore youth in honest terms and as described to us by young people themselves; to acknowledge that whereas once it was about monolithic youth tribes that stomped on all before them (punk, rock 'n' roll, acid house etc) now it's more about fluidity, a menu of options.

The findings of this research is available for you to use as part of your pre-production research and planning for your own magazine. In today's lesson, you can look at the different groups categorised by the researchers and think about what kind of magazines would appeal to them.

Click on the image at the top of this post to find the UK Tribes website and then complete the tasks below:

1. Watch the clip at the website and read through the different descriptions of 'groups' of young people. 
2. Consider who you might identify with, based on your own interests. Create a moodboard of images that illustrate your own tribe, linked to the music, sport, fashion and technology that appeals to people like you.
3. Download the handout here to organise your notes. Match the magazine title with a group and explain why you think this tribe may consume this product. This can be part of your research work for your Making Media portfolio so include as much explanation as possible. 

Who reads Magazines?

You are part of the powerful 14-18-year-old audience, and media producers are keen to know what you like and what you want. Can you think why your age group is so powerful? The main reason is that, even though you don't usually earn large sums of money, what you do earn is virtually all disposable income - there is only you to spend it on. Producers also want readers with spending power to attract advertisers who subsidies the cost of production. The money advertisers pay for space in print-texts is used to reduce the selling price. Without subsidy, print-based texts would cost too much.

Why do people consumer media texts?

Some media theorists have suggested that media audiences make active choices about what to consume in order to meet certain needs (Uses and Gratification Theory).

Task: The X-Box magazine above is a specialist computer games magazine aimed at 16-35-year-old males. Look at the conventions on the front cover and how they might appeal to the target audience. Can you explain how the cover has been designed to appeal to its target audience, using media terminology? Working in pairs, discuss your ideas and label your copy of the image.

Here is an example of students work. They were asked to do the same task based on a different magazine.

Values and Lifestyle.

Values and Lifestyle - sometimes called ideology - are terms for the way people think about themselves, about others and about the world in which they live. Ideology is a system of values, beliefs and ideas that is common to a specific group of people.
Magazines reflect the values and ideology of their readers because they want readers to feel they can identify with the magazine.
Understanding ideology is helpful when it comes to investigated the ways in which magazines and other media texts are constructed to appeal to their target audiences, by offering them material that they will enjoy, understand and aspire to.

Here are two descriptions of the target readers of two lifestyle magazines as presented on the magazines' websites:

The Elle reader is spirited, stylish and intelligent; she expects to be successful at everything she does. She takes the lead and breaks the rules. Click on the image of the website to take a look.

The Sight and Sound reader is a film buff who expects to be given intelligent information on all film releases, not just Hollywood mainstream movies. Click on the image of the website to take a look.

Task: Look at the two front covers of these magazines and consider the following:

• typography (choice of font style, colour, placement)
• use of images
• how the page is laid out to attract the eye
• the use of language - look out for special words that the reader will understand, use of informal address 'you'
• promises connected to values, ideology and/or pleasure

Make notes in your book. Use each bullet point as a sub-heading.

Target Audience

Who would watch your film?

Media products are designed carefully to appeal to specific, carefully chosen groups of people (target audience). Knowing your audience well is vital to making your product a success in terms of profit, so production companies spend lots of money and time getting it right.

Task 1: Create your own version of an audience profile for your new film.

Use the following bullet points to help you:

• Demographics - age, gender, occupation. UK Tribes will be useful here.
• Lifestyle - how do your audience spend their time and money? Where do they live and who do they share their lives with?
• Aspirations - what do they dream of doing with their lives? What inspires them?
• Likes and dislikes - clothes, music, media, film. What are their hobbies and interests?

Task 2: Now complete mood boards illustrating your target audiences.