Target Audience and Conventions Essay

The Conventions – the Producer and Target Audience of my Text

If my product was produced in the ‘real world’ it would be produced by the magazine production company ‘Natmags.’ They are a British production company who also produce Cosmopolitan and Reveal. They do not currently produce any teen pop magazines so I think my magazine will benefit from this as it will have no competition. The audience demographic that this production company targets is mainly females with an age range from15 – 65. My target audience is slightly younger than that but it is very close.  My target audience is young teenage girls aged 13-16 years.  I think the fact that this production company produces texts for females is an advantage to my magazine because they will know and understand the conventions that a female target audience will enjoy and they will know what attracts them to a magazine. All of the magazines that they produce are very successful and the majority of them well know with also bodes well for my magazine.

The target audience of my text is young teenage girls aged between 12 and 15 years. They will have an interest in both celebrity gossip and music, mainly pop music. Social media will be very important to this particular group of people so I will therefore try to include as much of this in my text as possible. My target audience is fairly mainstream as the interests possessed by this particular group of people are fairly broad. I do not expect the target audience to be local. They are likely to enjoy younger pop bands such as ‘One Direction,’ ‘Little Mix’ and ‘Girls Aloud.’ It is likely that they will not enjoy rock music so I will try to avoid bands from this genre in my magazine. In terms of economic status, there is not a particular social group that I believe they will belong to so it could vary from working class to upper class. There principal role models may include people like Cheryl Cole, Beyonce, Kimberly Walsh, Nicole Sherzinger and others similar. I think my target audience are most likely to listen to media stations such as Capital and Metro Radio as these stations play the most pop music. I may try to include a reference to these stations in my text.

The image on my front cover will be a medium image that has eye line match with the audience; these are both common conventions of images on the front cover. I decided to stick to this conventions as I think that eye line match in particular is good way of drawing a reader in. I plan to use a consistent text colour, font and size (as far as possible) throughout the text as it creates a sense of continuity and house style. The colour palette will also be consistent and include a variety of pinks, purples and blues. I think it is good to vary the colours as it would be dull to have the same colour throughout, however too many colours is too distracting to the reader. Disregarding one or two conventions I am trying to stick to the common conventions that I found when researching teen pop magazines. I am not going to copy them exactly and will try to make them unique to my product so they appeal to my specific target audience.

I think it is a good idea to use a diverse range of media platforms to broadcast my text so it can reach as many readers as possible. Primarily the text will be sold in local shops and supermarkets as well as online and via post subscription. There will be links to social media websites throughout my magazine as I know that my target audience will spend a lot of time on these websites.