Evaluation Question 5

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Wherever possible, try to make the distinction between what you planned to do and what you actually achieved. Were you effective in fulfilling your original plan? Did you have to make changes? This is perfectly OK, as long as you can explain why you took decisions and can show you have reflected on whether they were successful or not. I have made my magazine bright, attractive and quite busy using eroded fonts, cool colour schemes and bright pictures, and used a variety of different styles of music. I have made sure that I took into account the responses I got back from my questionnaire and one of the main recommendations was to use lots of interesting pictures, which is what I have done. Another way I have attracted my audience is I have used free offers; prizes etc all over my front cover and also offered free tabs etc in the contents page. This will make my magazine seem better value for its money and make my reader feel like they are getting something out of buying the magazine.

To make sure that my magazine would attract my target audience I asked my target audience itself. For the main decisions that I made such as, name, logo, and general genre I made sure that most my decisions were based around the feedback that I received back. This has enabled me to gain a proper understanding as to what they are and aren’t interested in. Because of this I did have to make some changes. The name of my magazine was originally the ‘Big Band Theory’ however the responses I got back were that Live Feed was preferred. This meant a late development on my logo. I still kept big band theory however I used it has my main cover story instead as it was still liked just not as a name. Another change I had to make was the main cover image. Originally it was going to be a girlier picture as more of their clothes were being focused on. My target audience consists of both genders. The male feedback I got back wasn’t good so I changed the image to something more neutral, showing more of the train, the guitar and their faces. To also guarantee a good feedback from my male audience I made sure my colour scheme wasn’t too girly as well, so I used colours like red and yellow rather than pink and purple.

Overall I think that my magazine in terms of relation to my target audience was successful. The feedback I got from both male and female presented with a nearly finished product was mainly positive which is a good sign.