Monday 12 December 2011

Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


Firstly from simply looking at our youtube views we have the second highest in our year which proves our video is appealing and possibly something people will want to watch over and over again.

We feel our audience demographic is16-24 year olds because our band image is really fun and immature, deemed too immature for people any older than that. Small Town America is very image based, we are all about having a good time and not caring about what other people think, this fit in well at festivals as they create an energetic atmosphere and can get the crowd going. We reasoned that teenagers and young adults are the largest participants of festivals making our audience and band image work well together in synergy.


We have also appealed to a secondary audience of younger teenagers who like to think they are as cool and rebellious and almost look up to our band. This was through the immaturity our band promotes through its music video and also our ancillary products. Our genre is very broad and therefore our music can appeal to both genders however with the band being all men it is likely that they will first appeal to males through the music itself and females through catching their eye with the band image (being good looking etc.).

The image of the band particularly will interest girls at a glance.

The rebellious nature of the music video appeals to younger audiences.

To gather audience feedback we had arranged a screening of our music video in a studio and recorded the reactions of these people watching it. Loads of people turned up but to make our feedback more thorough we also carried out a focus group of 10 people to fill out questionnaires about the video, album cover and website. We had a mixture of people within the group from 16 year olds to 30 year olds as to make sure we had covered most demographics so we could really see where our core audience was.






From the samples of audience feedback we received very positive and encouraging responses from those aged around 15-19 and 20-25. however their were a few questions concerning the beginning and end of the piece.


Although very positive feedback with averaging scores of 81/2 to 9 it was clear that the audience felt beginning of the song took too long to build up and the end was 'unclear' as to what happened (was it a dream? etc.) This lack of clarity was clear in our audience response video where people clapped too early thinking it had finished.

The feedback overall was mostly positive however the higher end of the spectrum seemed to not enjoy the song itself (a distaste to the genre), and so would not buy into the band.

A pie chart showing in the different age brackets how many people would 100% buy the song/album

Rob a 25 year old who we asked to evaluate our video said 'I don't like the song' and 'Its not serious enough' which is clear evidence of the older ages not liking the song, however he did have some good points to say about the video 'it had some funny moments'. Despite the older half of our target audience not enjoying the song I still feel we have targeted the audience we identified for our band at the beginning of the project successfully and we had a superb response during and after our screening.

From the responses i feel we successfully targeted our audience although being a new twist on an indie band (with the more fun image and approach), and from altering the image of this indie band, we have managed not only to appeal to fans of the music within the indie genre but also to punk rockers who like the fun free image other punk bands carry such as Bowling for Soup and All Time Low. I feel the main reason for our sucessful broad appeal was due to the comedy and intertextuality of the piece.


Album Cover
We also constructed questionnaires for our focus group asking about the album cover. Many people found it eyecatching, fun and colourful overall saying they would be drawn to it on a shelf and potentially pick it up 'the colour scheme is eye-catching' . They all liked the cartoony effects we had put on the landscape and the band members and said we had captured the laid back yet fun image of the band perfectly well with the front cover being laid back and the inner cover being funny. The inner cover of the digipack was a big hit and many people thought it was highly original and helped keep the colour scheme running throughout which really emphasised the band image, not only this but it helped link the album cover with the video and developed the band image with the quirky funny faces.

We had great responses from the broad spectrum of people, even adults who were not fans of the genreand did not like the song overall saying that the albums greatest strengths was that it was visually appealing- meaning even if it didnt get bought it would definitely be picked up from a shelf and looked at increasing band awareness and could act as a ripple effect with the older people maybe buying it for their children who they know ARE fans of the genre.




Website






Our website was ultimately a hub linking all three of the products we created (being able to watch the video on it and buy the single/album aswel) it was majorly centred around interactivity to gratify the needs of the consumer and so we were positive the feedback would be good on it.

We recieved alot of positive feedback about the whacky, scrapbook style and colour scheme of the website making it bright and engaging. As well as this the feedback on the practicality of the website was excellent saying it was easy to navigate, had sufficient information, links to many places to make purchasing easier and lots of pictures to catch the eye.

The merchendise was also a big hit with most people saying that it was stylish yet symplistic with lots of choice and reasonable prices.

Many people picked up upon the highway background and American roadtrip theme, which was also on the album cover creating a clear band image and accosiate the open road, America and touring now with Small Town America.


There were lots of ways of interactivity with the band on the website which was clearly spotted with the audience feedback, such as a sign up page, competition page, general messages page, merchandise page and the allowing of comments on the video page.



 We asked our focus group whether or not they thought we could have done more to interact with the band and they seemed to think we had covered all the areas needed.

They thought the 'gallery' of the band and the 'about me' sections broadened their knowledge of the band and said they were intreguing and they were drawn to them because of the hidden nature of the identity within the other products.
The audience also stated that the simplistic navigation bar 'made it easy to find things to do' and that 'every page is very visual with lots of things to look at'.





From my audience feedback I have learnt that the biggest influence of people to pick something up is eyecatching visuals and so this is something which should be largely used in attracting the audience.

I have also learnt that the image of our band mainly attracts a young target audience, around the same age of the band as they can relate or aspire to be like their fun and care-free ways.

Overall i feel we successfully targeted our core target audience with all three products by making them bright, visually interesting, engaging and entertaining. Aswell as this I learnt that Goodwins idea of intertextual references and also physical comedy highly broadens a target audience, as they are universally understood and engaging.

I believe the importance of audience feedback is very high as it allows you to understand wether you have sucessfully achieved to attract an audience for your product, not only this but it allows you to understand where you went wrong with the targeting and what you would need to change in the future or in hindsight, for instance in our video- the ending.


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