How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Script:
My magazine engages with its audience through a synergetic house style, and will be distributed and promoted traditionally through print media and online through social media, my website and mobile application. I chose to target a female audience aged 15 to 35, with an A, B and C1 socio-economic demographic, from numerous cultural, social, racial, ethnic and national backgrounds, according to Graham Burton;s theory of social grouping. My psychographic will be interested in consuming magazine such as Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, with a demographic entailing most females engaged in a higher, managerial, administrative or professional employment.
It is vital for a magazine to be able to engage with its audience in order to achieve any scope of success. According to my research and the reception theory each member in the audience interacts with the media presented to them in their own individualistic way. My magazine campaign is aimed towards a dominant and negotiated readership, with optional readership as secondary target audience. By researching and analysing how magazines like Vogue and Elle create a link of communication between their brand and their audience, I came up with a strategy to sanction an intimate and strong connection between my target audience and my magazine campaign. In order to establish a strong sympathetic connection between my magazine and its target audience, I chose to employ cross media convergence within my campaign, incorporating it into my contents page talking about the magazine’s partnering application and website named after the magazine.
Through primary research about and the use of interactive cross media convergence, I will be able to make minority populations in my target audience feel more involved and valued. This will not only spur on my exponential growth of popularity among a mass audience, but will also avoid the restrictions placed on my brand when targeting and extracting revenue from young female consumers, as well as a male minority population that may not engage with my brand as effectively as female on, according to the spiral of silence theory.
The audience members could go onto the website to get more information about Elodie, its branding and ideologies, and access to exclusive content on the mobile application available on all electronics devices. Also included in the contents page, as a reward for subscribers is a “free gift”. The use of buzz words such as “free”, “exclusives”, “plus” and “gift” help attract the target audience through brand appeal and social appeal. The word “fantastic” connotes that the audience member will feel special and unique as they are getting the most exclusive, authentic and quality content tailored especially to them and their desires. They also feel included, as they then become part of a community of Elodie subscribers, according to Blumler and Katz’s theory of Uses and Gratifications. The website and app would allow the audience to interact with the Elodie brand personally, giving them a sense of control, identification, according to Blumler and Katz and participation, generating the impression that they are contributing to the publication and its contents. This creates the notion that the magazine and brand itself would not be able to survive without that specific audience member, rather than the realistically wide demographic that would, as a whole, be responsible for the success of Elodie, which keeps the audience engaged. Moreover, the free gift creates a perception of the concept of “reward in exchange for attention”, which will appeal to my target audience of succeeders and aspirers, according to the Cross Cultural Consumer Characterization theory by Young and Rubicam. From this, I concluded that a majority of my target psychographic will tend to be materialistic, seek status, and orientated towards their personal image, fashion, appearance and the opinions of others. I will use this to my advantage through my strong social media presence and online magazine advertising campaigns with interactive activities for my target audience to take part, for example asking my target psychographic to caption their posts on Instagram with the hashtag ElodieSummer, for the the special summer issue of my magazine.
My research also suggests that my use of cross media convergence will help me in preventing my female target audience from developing boredom, disinterest or classifying my brand as irrelevant. The online presence of my brand on its website, social media and mobile app will enable my target psychographic to remain engaged with my brand and its magazine campaign.
Through platforms online my magazine campaign will be able to reach a wide demographic through short films, print adverts, exclusive articles and other content on the brand website and app to keep the audience engaged and interested with different forms of visual, audio and print presentations; hence, through research I found that my use of cross media convergence will further audience interaction and involvement and help expand my company’s platform of communication and popularity.
I came to conclude through my research about media texts and how they influence an audience’s perceptions and behaviours, that the media dependency theory could be applied to my magazine campaign seeing as my research shows that the audience would be dependant on my magazine as a means to justify their needs of information, identification, the constructing of relationships and entertainment, in association with the uses and gratification theory. In turn my brand will rely on its target audience to keep consuming the published content and bring in more revenue for my real media text. This will enable my brand to remain engaged in a symbiotic relationship with its young female target audience.
I will further audience engagement through my use of social media to create a more publicised branding and create a buzz around my product. I want my magazine to have a viral advertising campaign so as to be able to capture the attention of readers and then encapsulate it and then build on it. The behind the scenes “video exclusives” would play a part on social media, the Elodie website and app, drawing in the target psychographics. Along with such videos, I plan to hire a social networking management team to keep my brand’s social presence very much alive and constant, keeping my audience perpetually entertained and supplied with content relevant to their interest in fashion, beauty and lifestyle. Such content may include release dates for the next monthly edition of the magazine, sneak peeks of articles and photoshoots of the featuring celebrity appearing on both social medias of my magazine, and the featured artist, to create greater promotion for my product. Fans of the artist will be attracted to my magazine since their role models or favorite celebrities may be featured in its next issue. This will allow me to recruit new readers from the celebrities and their fan bases.
Another convention I chose to enlist in order to engage the audience was continuity and synergy within my magazine campaign through my strong house style, which included my colour scheme, images of Crea Butlin, the featured artist on every page of my magazine, and the contemporary style of language and typography. Magazines such as Vogue and Elle are iconic due to their strong house style, which has played a huge role in how they have been perceived by audiences and the industry as a whole. I maintained a white-based colour scheme for my contents page so that I had the freedom to apply whichever colour scheme I preferred to the rest of the magazine including the cover page with a yellow-based colour scheme, and the article with a black, white and blue one. The repetition of Crea’s image on each page of my campaign highlights the most important feature of this magazine: featuring artist Crea Butlin. This will effectively engage fans of the artist and her work.
Further audience engagement was achieved through the use of direct mode of address and an imperative semantic field used throughout my campaign through the means of text and images, for example: “click on our website for this month’s Elodie video exclusives”. This will make the reader feel special, as if the contents are aimed specifically towards them. Moreover, the direct eye contact of the models with the camera and reader, will be successful in engaging my female target audience; the catchy coverlines on my front cover will produce the same audience engagement.The direct eye contact will also create intrigue for the reader and raise enigma codes, according to Roland Barthes’ theory. Moreover, the coverlines on my front cover will also raise enigma codes as the audience will feel curious to find out more about the titles articles, since they provide very little information, making the consumer want to read them. An example of this would be the cover line: “Elodie writer reconnects with her past” - this raises enigma codes and does not give the reader much information to go on; only telling them that someone who works for my magazine reconnected with some part of her past that must have been interesting and fascinating enough to be featured in the magazine. The intimate connection between a magazine and its audience is crucial for the brands success. So other eye-catching conventions such as a variation of font typefaces, colours and style in addition will also help engage the audience’s attention.
In order for me to successfully promote my product, I looked at how Vogue uses advertising to its advantage, namely perfumes, cosmetics and accessories. So I chose to advertise a perfume named Ballerina. However, I gave the advertising campaign for that perfume another name: “Deep Dive”. This attracts more consumers as perfumes in past couple of decades have become an affordable luxury item with a high status in society. I also promote in my magazine, other luxury brands such as Dolce and Gabbana, Dior and several others in my magazine. This is a way that advertisers often target readers: by advertising products and brands that only their target psychographic would be interested in. This is most often the case in Vogue magazines that feature products and brands from high-end designers. Through the conducting of surveys and questionnaires advertisers are able to decide which magazines to advertise their products in, according to readership figures; and this branding is one of the main ways in which my product will engage with its target audience. The products advertised in my magazine will not only give reader a good idea of the genre of my magazine and what to expect from it, but it will also help get my magazine more recognition and promotion.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, my younger target audience will have the desire to develop friendship, sexual intimacy and relationships with others, which they will receive through the articles about said topics written by professionals available on the interactive Elodie website, application, as well as through social media, which will allow my young female target audience to interact with others and enable them to engage with my brand and construct relationships online, according to Blumler and Katz’s theory. My young-adult target audience will mostly be career-driven and aspiring to achieve a higher sense of worth, confidence, respect of and by others, and raise their self-esteem. Therefore a direct mode of address displayed in my text and images will also help this target psychographic achieve recognition, confidence and evoke a more pronounced self-esteem in relation to the several personalised sell-lines on my double-page spread contents. My older target audience will seek morality, self-actualization, problem solving, spontaneity, lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts; and my magazine will help this demographic by appealing to them with sell-lines on my contents page concerned with social issues in society such as the “Me Too” movement, and articles covering self-care, for example: “one more day: How to take things on at a time” and “Tone it down: How to master self-control”. These articles focus greatly on the self and self-actualization. Therefore, all my target demographics and psychographics will be able to engage with my magazine, its branding and ideologies.
In order for me to successfully publish my magazine, I would have to sign a contract with a production and distribution company and my magazine shall make use of conventional codes of the media industry so as to be distributed to a mass target audience in line with the contractor company’s guide and destined placements. As a real media text, I would want my magazine to be distributed primarily in America and Europe, so as to avoid the heavy costs of translating the publications and getting them printed for a tertiary audience not likely to read, understand or identify, according to the Blumler and Katz theory, with them as much as the primary and secondary target audiences, moreover the high postage costs might result in a decline in profits for my company. Hence, by choosing to only distribute my magazine in America, namely New York and Los Angeles that hold much of my target geodemographics, and major metropolitan English-speaking European geographical locations, I will be able to save up on the distribution revenue costs and invest them into promoting my brand through digital and print cross media convergence. Moreover, by targeting major cities such as New York and London, I will be able reach a larger population of people in financial districts, attracting wealthier people to consume my product.
Thus, print copies of my magazine will be successful and ensure the parent company and I a profit. Additionally, the low manufacturing costs will allow for an easier editorial production of the monthly magazine. Therefore, when my brand has an exponential growth in regards to its audience base, quality and popularity, the parent company may issue out different regional editions of the magazine suited to specific parts of the world, as a means to appeal a wider spread audience worldwide. My magazine will also have a monthly subscription arrangement that will help my brand make profits, although the high postage costs may still have an impact on them, keeping them low. Nonetheless, if the consumer signs up for a digital subscription, more money could be added to profits. Furthermore, according to my research on the cognitive dissonance theory my young, modern target audience aged 15-35 will constantly be evolving and changing as stated by latest trends, evolving social constructs, discovers and new philosophical theories; and so I will use the Elodie website and application as a means to stay connected and relevant among my target demographic and psychographic, along with the subscription which will in turn enable my young female target audience to engage with my magazine and vice versa.
My magazine will be published by the American mass media and business information conglomerate Hearst Magazines, a which is a subsidiary of the large mass media company Hearst Corporation; since the company publishes other magazines that fall into a similar target demographic as mine they will be aware of how to distribute and promote my magazine campaign to certain populations of the general public. This will provide my brand with a highly professional marketing team and the distribution of my magazine will remain within the hold of a company that has established itself within the media industry, and has great clout within the other industries as well, such : television, radio, print media, and investments in other investments in several digital entertainment companies in this industry. This will allow me to inflate readership through the means of a conventional primary audience subscribed to Hearst Magazines publications such as Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan. And while this would provide my magazine with competition, it would also provide my brand with access to a suitable target audience demographic and psychographics interested in fashion, beauty, lifestyle and celebrity news. From my research I deducted that the distribution of my campaign would be a success since it would be marketed to an audience already familiar with the genre and therefore, be attracted to my magazine. Henceforth, my magazine would be distributed in the industry through a conventional means as a real media text.
It is vital for a magazine to be able to engage with its audience in order to achieve any scope of success. According to my research and the reception theory each member in the audience interacts with the media presented to them in their own individualistic way. My magazine campaign is aimed towards a dominant and negotiated readership, with optional readership as secondary target audience. By researching and analysing how magazines like Vogue and Elle create a link of communication between their brand and their audience, I came up with a strategy to sanction an intimate and strong connection between my target audience and my magazine campaign. In order to establish a strong sympathetic connection between my magazine and its target audience, I chose to employ cross media convergence within my campaign, incorporating it into my contents page talking about the magazine’s partnering application and website named after the magazine.
Through primary research about and the use of interactive cross media convergence, I will be able to make minority populations in my target audience feel more involved and valued. This will not only spur on my exponential growth of popularity among a mass audience, but will also avoid the restrictions placed on my brand when targeting and extracting revenue from young female consumers, as well as a male minority population that may not engage with my brand as effectively as female on, according to the spiral of silence theory.
The audience members could go onto the website to get more information about Elodie, its branding and ideologies, and access to exclusive content on the mobile application available on all electronics devices. Also included in the contents page, as a reward for subscribers is a “free gift”. The use of buzz words such as “free”, “exclusives”, “plus” and “gift” help attract the target audience through brand appeal and social appeal. The word “fantastic” connotes that the audience member will feel special and unique as they are getting the most exclusive, authentic and quality content tailored especially to them and their desires. They also feel included, as they then become part of a community of Elodie subscribers, according to Blumler and Katz’s theory of Uses and Gratifications. The website and app would allow the audience to interact with the Elodie brand personally, giving them a sense of control, identification, according to Blumler and Katz and participation, generating the impression that they are contributing to the publication and its contents. This creates the notion that the magazine and brand itself would not be able to survive without that specific audience member, rather than the realistically wide demographic that would, as a whole, be responsible for the success of Elodie, which keeps the audience engaged. Moreover, the free gift creates a perception of the concept of “reward in exchange for attention”, which will appeal to my target audience of succeeders and aspirers, according to the Cross Cultural Consumer Characterization theory by Young and Rubicam. From this, I concluded that a majority of my target psychographic will tend to be materialistic, seek status, and orientated towards their personal image, fashion, appearance and the opinions of others. I will use this to my advantage through my strong social media presence and online magazine advertising campaigns with interactive activities for my target audience to take part, for example asking my target psychographic to caption their posts on Instagram with the hashtag ElodieSummer, for the the special summer issue of my magazine.
My research also suggests that my use of cross media convergence will help me in preventing my female target audience from developing boredom, disinterest or classifying my brand as irrelevant. The online presence of my brand on its website, social media and mobile app will enable my target psychographic to remain engaged with my brand and its magazine campaign.
Through platforms online my magazine campaign will be able to reach a wide demographic through short films, print adverts, exclusive articles and other content on the brand website and app to keep the audience engaged and interested with different forms of visual, audio and print presentations; hence, through research I found that my use of cross media convergence will further audience interaction and involvement and help expand my company’s platform of communication and popularity.
I came to conclude through my research about media texts and how they influence an audience’s perceptions and behaviours, that the media dependency theory could be applied to my magazine campaign seeing as my research shows that the audience would be dependant on my magazine as a means to justify their needs of information, identification, the constructing of relationships and entertainment, in association with the uses and gratification theory. In turn my brand will rely on its target audience to keep consuming the published content and bring in more revenue for my real media text. This will enable my brand to remain engaged in a symbiotic relationship with its young female target audience.
I will further audience engagement through my use of social media to create a more publicised branding and create a buzz around my product. I want my magazine to have a viral advertising campaign so as to be able to capture the attention of readers and then encapsulate it and then build on it. The behind the scenes “video exclusives” would play a part on social media, the Elodie website and app, drawing in the target psychographics. Along with such videos, I plan to hire a social networking management team to keep my brand’s social presence very much alive and constant, keeping my audience perpetually entertained and supplied with content relevant to their interest in fashion, beauty and lifestyle. Such content may include release dates for the next monthly edition of the magazine, sneak peeks of articles and photoshoots of the featuring celebrity appearing on both social medias of my magazine, and the featured artist, to create greater promotion for my product. Fans of the artist will be attracted to my magazine since their role models or favorite celebrities may be featured in its next issue. This will allow me to recruit new readers from the celebrities and their fan bases.
Another convention I chose to enlist in order to engage the audience was continuity and synergy within my magazine campaign through my strong house style, which included my colour scheme, images of Crea Butlin, the featured artist on every page of my magazine, and the contemporary style of language and typography. Magazines such as Vogue and Elle are iconic due to their strong house style, which has played a huge role in how they have been perceived by audiences and the industry as a whole. I maintained a white-based colour scheme for my contents page so that I had the freedom to apply whichever colour scheme I preferred to the rest of the magazine including the cover page with a yellow-based colour scheme, and the article with a black, white and blue one. The repetition of Crea’s image on each page of my campaign highlights the most important feature of this magazine: featuring artist Crea Butlin. This will effectively engage fans of the artist and her work.
Further audience engagement was achieved through the use of direct mode of address and an imperative semantic field used throughout my campaign through the means of text and images, for example: “click on our website for this month’s Elodie video exclusives”. This will make the reader feel special, as if the contents are aimed specifically towards them. Moreover, the direct eye contact of the models with the camera and reader, will be successful in engaging my female target audience; the catchy coverlines on my front cover will produce the same audience engagement.The direct eye contact will also create intrigue for the reader and raise enigma codes, according to Roland Barthes’ theory. Moreover, the coverlines on my front cover will also raise enigma codes as the audience will feel curious to find out more about the titles articles, since they provide very little information, making the consumer want to read them. An example of this would be the cover line: “Elodie writer reconnects with her past” - this raises enigma codes and does not give the reader much information to go on; only telling them that someone who works for my magazine reconnected with some part of her past that must have been interesting and fascinating enough to be featured in the magazine. The intimate connection between a magazine and its audience is crucial for the brands success. So other eye-catching conventions such as a variation of font typefaces, colours and style in addition will also help engage the audience’s attention.
In order for me to successfully promote my product, I looked at how Vogue uses advertising to its advantage, namely perfumes, cosmetics and accessories. So I chose to advertise a perfume named Ballerina. However, I gave the advertising campaign for that perfume another name: “Deep Dive”. This attracts more consumers as perfumes in past couple of decades have become an affordable luxury item with a high status in society. I also promote in my magazine, other luxury brands such as Dolce and Gabbana, Dior and several others in my magazine. This is a way that advertisers often target readers: by advertising products and brands that only their target psychographic would be interested in. This is most often the case in Vogue magazines that feature products and brands from high-end designers. Through the conducting of surveys and questionnaires advertisers are able to decide which magazines to advertise their products in, according to readership figures; and this branding is one of the main ways in which my product will engage with its target audience. The products advertised in my magazine will not only give reader a good idea of the genre of my magazine and what to expect from it, but it will also help get my magazine more recognition and promotion.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, my younger target audience will have the desire to develop friendship, sexual intimacy and relationships with others, which they will receive through the articles about said topics written by professionals available on the interactive Elodie website, application, as well as through social media, which will allow my young female target audience to interact with others and enable them to engage with my brand and construct relationships online, according to Blumler and Katz’s theory. My young-adult target audience will mostly be career-driven and aspiring to achieve a higher sense of worth, confidence, respect of and by others, and raise their self-esteem. Therefore a direct mode of address displayed in my text and images will also help this target psychographic achieve recognition, confidence and evoke a more pronounced self-esteem in relation to the several personalised sell-lines on my double-page spread contents. My older target audience will seek morality, self-actualization, problem solving, spontaneity, lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts; and my magazine will help this demographic by appealing to them with sell-lines on my contents page concerned with social issues in society such as the “Me Too” movement, and articles covering self-care, for example: “one more day: How to take things on at a time” and “Tone it down: How to master self-control”. These articles focus greatly on the self and self-actualization. Therefore, all my target demographics and psychographics will be able to engage with my magazine, its branding and ideologies.
In order for me to successfully publish my magazine, I would have to sign a contract with a production and distribution company and my magazine shall make use of conventional codes of the media industry so as to be distributed to a mass target audience in line with the contractor company’s guide and destined placements. As a real media text, I would want my magazine to be distributed primarily in America and Europe, so as to avoid the heavy costs of translating the publications and getting them printed for a tertiary audience not likely to read, understand or identify, according to the Blumler and Katz theory, with them as much as the primary and secondary target audiences, moreover the high postage costs might result in a decline in profits for my company. Hence, by choosing to only distribute my magazine in America, namely New York and Los Angeles that hold much of my target geodemographics, and major metropolitan English-speaking European geographical locations, I will be able to save up on the distribution revenue costs and invest them into promoting my brand through digital and print cross media convergence. Moreover, by targeting major cities such as New York and London, I will be able reach a larger population of people in financial districts, attracting wealthier people to consume my product.
Thus, print copies of my magazine will be successful and ensure the parent company and I a profit. Additionally, the low manufacturing costs will allow for an easier editorial production of the monthly magazine. Therefore, when my brand has an exponential growth in regards to its audience base, quality and popularity, the parent company may issue out different regional editions of the magazine suited to specific parts of the world, as a means to appeal a wider spread audience worldwide. My magazine will also have a monthly subscription arrangement that will help my brand make profits, although the high postage costs may still have an impact on them, keeping them low. Nonetheless, if the consumer signs up for a digital subscription, more money could be added to profits. Furthermore, according to my research on the cognitive dissonance theory my young, modern target audience aged 15-35 will constantly be evolving and changing as stated by latest trends, evolving social constructs, discovers and new philosophical theories; and so I will use the Elodie website and application as a means to stay connected and relevant among my target demographic and psychographic, along with the subscription which will in turn enable my young female target audience to engage with my magazine and vice versa.
My magazine will be published by the American mass media and business information conglomerate Hearst Magazines, a which is a subsidiary of the large mass media company Hearst Corporation; since the company publishes other magazines that fall into a similar target demographic as mine they will be aware of how to distribute and promote my magazine campaign to certain populations of the general public. This will provide my brand with a highly professional marketing team and the distribution of my magazine will remain within the hold of a company that has established itself within the media industry, and has great clout within the other industries as well, such : television, radio, print media, and investments in other investments in several digital entertainment companies in this industry. This will allow me to inflate readership through the means of a conventional primary audience subscribed to Hearst Magazines publications such as Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan. And while this would provide my magazine with competition, it would also provide my brand with access to a suitable target audience demographic and psychographics interested in fashion, beauty, lifestyle and celebrity news. From my research I deducted that the distribution of my campaign would be a success since it would be marketed to an audience already familiar with the genre and therefore, be attracted to my magazine. Henceforth, my magazine would be distributed in the industry through a conventional means as a real media text.