Q3- [EMAP Part 2]

Taking one magazine as an example, Drapers is a fashion magazine, and by doing some research I have found the statistics and key information on their audience and circulation.

I found this media pack, which held a lot of information about the magazine itself:

http://www.drapersonline.com/Journals/2012/04/23/z/s/x/Drapers-Display-Media-Pack-2012.pdf 

Readership for Drapers

Marketing- Here it shows that, although it is not clear on age range, the magazine makes a clear audience profile for each section of the brand- for example the most popular section at 33% readers if Womenswear.

Circulation- The circulation (amount of sales) for Drapers is 8,671 which is less than magazines such as Q in the Bauer institution. This shows that perhaps the branding and advertising for Drapers and the other magazines with EMAP are not as successful as those with IPC and BAUER.
However, although print copies are low in sales, the online views are much higher, at 91, 931 web users per month.

Q3- [EGMONT]

However, an alternative institution I looked at was EGMONT. This is the publisher of 'We Love Pop' magazine, a well known pop magazine, that I have previously done much research on.

Egmont is the UK's biggest children's publisher, selling more than 25 million books and 12 million magazines a year. With this wide audience of children, teachers and parents, Egmont is a successful publishing institution.

"We publish only for children: they're our main focus not a sideline."

http://www.egmont.co.uk/default.asp?pageid=2

http://www.egmont.co.uk/magazines.asp?pane=teen&mag=welovepop

The magazine has quite a high circulation, and the target age is 13-15, aimed at girls only, which minimizes the audience profile as this is only half the population.

A different magazine, also published by Egmont, is 'GoGirl', a music, gossip, girly magazine for young girls aged 7-12. This is a different age range to We Love Pop, however the contents of the magazine, and the genre of the magazine itself has its similarities. 

http://www.egmont.co.uk/magazines.asp?pane=sevenplus&mag=gogirl

Looking at these key facts about the magazine, it is clear that the overall circulation of this magazine, compared to We Love Pop's circulation is slightly lower, even having more issues sold each month.

(To compare, Go Girl issues 3 magazines weekly, and We Love Pop issues 1 monthly)

Q3- My Chosen Institution

Now that I have done some in depth research on these three institutions (IPC, BAUER and EMAP), as well as an alternative institution (EGMONT), I can come to make a decision on which would be the best to take and publish my music magazine.

As my magazine is a pop magazine, I need an institute with experience of this genre of magazine, however the three leading publishers do not carry any pop magazines. The only one I researched that did was Egmont- which carries We Love Pop magazine, aimed at 13-16 year old girls.

However, I think Bauer would be the best option for my media product, even without experience of a 'pop' magazine, as it has the best reputation, and can handle marketing and branding very well. Therefore with my music magazine, Bauer can use skills from other genres of magazine such as 'Q' and 'Kerrang' which they carry, to build a good profile for my own magazine.

Q4- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Who would be the audience for your 

media product?

Within a magazine production, it is usually very clear straight away what the target audience is, and the message the magazine is trying to send them. As I had chosen Pop as my genre for my final product, a music magazine, I needed to chose a target audience that would enjoy this genre of music, therefore would want to continually buy my product.

After doing some research on other pop magazines, I noticed that these magazines are mainly aimed at teenagers, aged between 11-16.( Some being aimed at girls specifically). I wanted to create something original and fresh, but still attract this popular audience.

For example, on the 'We Love Pop' magazine website http://www.welovepopmag.co.uk/about
I discovered their target audience was labelled as 'pop loving teenagers', they weren't specific on age or gender.

You can see how they label their target audience, less specifically to others.

But on their publishers' website (Egmont) http://www.egmont.co.uk/magazines.asp?pane=teen&mag=welovepop it stated that the magazine was aimed specifically at '13-16 year old girls'.

Q4 Continued

After doing my research, and gathering this information, I set my target audience as young girls, aged 11-15, as I felt it was a commonly used age range, and many people this age range enjoy pop music, so would chose to buy my media product. Also, I wanted my magazine to be completely original, therefore by targeting a specific gender, as well as age range, my product would be enjoyed more by that group.

Looking back from my music magazine, to my preliminary task, it was a bit more difficult to create such a clear audience profile for my school magazine. But this shows how I have developed since creating this, as I have managed to find the resources to build my knowledge on audience profiling for my final product- my music magazine.

Q5- How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience?

A few of the conventions I used to attract my target audience were:

This Lure has been used to attract my target audience, as young girls like makeup, therefore this 'Free Makeup Starter Kit' will lure them in to buy the magazine.

Freebies are very common in magazines, especially when aimed at a younger audience, so I wanted to put my own spin on it, and include something that my target audience would appreciate.

http://www.totpmag.com/ 
As seen on the 'Top of the Pops' magazine website, this 'freebie' Lure has also been used-

The lure used on their website, advertising the freebie in their latest issue

Evaluation Q6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The first thing, which was a major part of the construction of my product was the Camera and Photography.

The very first thing I learnt about photography using a camera was about the framing, and positioning of the camera, to ensure you capture what you want.

We used iPads to practice photography, firstly to test out the different shot sizes and angles to prepare me for the photography I will need for my product. These images helped me picture the size and angle of the photo so that when I came to take the picture, I knew what I was doing:

I found that I learnt a lot about this part of the technology and I picked up the skill of photography quite quickly, and this task prepared me for photography when it came to the real product. 

These are just a few of the photos I took with the iPad, to practice my skills:

We then went onto using the iPad for further photos, however this time using the grid, to show us how the object (usually the person's face) must be parallel to the lines of the grid. This is a skill I certainly had never used before, and had never heard of 'The Rule of Thirds' that many people use in photography, in order for the composition of photos to be at their best.

In this photo I took for my music magazine, you can see that the lines on the grid cross over at the focus point of the photo (the face). This is the Rule of Thirds, and played an important part of my photography.

This is one of the photo I took for my school magazine. You can see that I used the grid idea on both, but it worked better for the final product as I had developed my photography skills.

Video clip explaining the 'Rule of Thirds' in more detail-