Target Audience Research (Evaluation)

Evaluation 

Having a target audience is essential for any artist; it gives them the ability to use specific features that they hope will inspire a small fragment of the population. The wider the targeted audience, the harder they are to please. Making it difficult for an artist to reach or target just one area of the population.As a group we carried out different kinds of primary and secondary research: Our chosen artist was Rihanna; we used her target demographic, which are adolescents and young adults and tried to expand on it.

By doing primary research on them to specify a sub-culture in that audience range, we used questionnaires as well as vox pops, to find more information about our targeted audience, in doing so it helped us to find out more about the kind of demographic we should target and what their likes and or dislikes were about our chosen artist.
In total we survey 48 people, 40 by questionnaire and 8 by vox pops; which in my opinion was an accurate number of people to survey. As it gave us the aptitude to enquire in people of different ages and gender; also by not being a large number we were able to record our findings quite easily as well as obtaining an excellent general view of our target demographic.

The vox pops were extremely helpful as it assisted us in getting a better insight of what people actually think, where as in the questionnaire people’s opinions may not always be entirely honest, due to the fact that they may not be in the frame of mind for writing or may not even have completely understood the questions asked. With the vox pops being face to face people were able to give their honest opinion, but if the questions asked, were not clear, we were able to explain it to them in an uncomplicated form.

I found that the information recovered by the vox pops was extremely helpful for the preparation of our music video, as we discovered that the image which is portrayed by Rihanna was not right for us, as most people did not agree with her approach to fashion. We however learnt, from 67% boys that we asked, that they did like the image which she portrays as they considered it "attractive" and where more likely to listen to her music because they think she is sexy.

A question which aided us in the planning of our music video was: Do you see Rihanna as a positive influence or role model?
50% of the people that we surveyed said: They did not see Rihanna as a role model. But seeing that this question was also a part of the vox pops we got a more in depth account. We actually found out that one of the reasons she was not much appreciated was due to her support for ‘The Illuminati’, but most of all her taste in clothing which was stated by the adults that we questioned.

Another question that was fundamental to our survey: which we asked students and teachers was; did they listen to Rihanna?
75% of the people surveyed said that they actually enjoy listening to her music and some could even name a few of her songs old and new. I was also quite surprised to find that teachers (30+) also liked listening to Rihanna, as we had originally predicted that they would have disliked her for her stage presence and the way she portrayed herself as a sex symbol.
This established that we had chosen a popular artist, and by including all our findings in our music video, we were able to target an audience who are more inclined to appreciate it.

In conclusion; the results that we found during this primary research will enable us to better plan our music video, as we now have much more accurate input as to what or what not to include.

Rihanna's sub-culture supports the Contemporary Culture studies (CCCS) as her sub-culture is a deviation from the mainstream, as she focuses on conformity and rebellion as she makes reference to drug use and sexual precocity. Rihanna also conforms to the sexual sub-subculture which was developed in the 1960s after the sexual revolution. This sub-culture has now become very popular recently and it adopts certain clothing and gestures which distinguishes itself from the other sub-cultures.