Reader profile Research

Abbie Jackson

Why do magazines do such research? How does it help them to make the magazine?

Magazines do research so they can find out the conventions needed for their magazine, the magazine will find out what it needs in order to sell to their target audience, whether it be for young teenage girls or elders. These conventions will catch the eye of the specific audience and make them want to buy it.

ExamplesThey also research so they can find out what to involve in magazines for example, 'who is popular in the music industry today?' the magazine will need to do an interview with them and base the questions on what the audience need to know. The magazine needs to know, who to put on the cover (who is popular in this moment in time) for example on the cover of 'Vibe' magazine is Chris Brown, at the time this issue was made Chris Brown was popular and people wanted to know about what is going on in his life, he had the main headline and the readers wanted to know about him, also what they need to wear, what questions they need to ask, what colours to use, if it was a young girls magazine the obvious colour scheme would be pink. But in this case the two magazines show the colour scheme of red, this connotes the colour of danger perhaps meaning Chris Brown is dangerous. The facial expressions both artists are pulling look dangerous which also links in with the colour scheme and the rebellious stereotype of the R&B genre. The language also needs to suit the audience, 'girl talk' wouldn't suit a R&B magazine, the conventions would be wrong and the magazine wouldn't sell to its target audience. Doing this research makes sure that the magazine has all the right conventions needed for its genre in order to sell and become popular.

Targeting an audience through social media

Many magazines today have online websites for exclusive interviews/images/competitions not included in the magazine or, further detail online.People running these social media sites post things for that specific audience to keep them interested.For my magazine, I am targeting people from age 15-26, this is a young generation who use social media the most, therefore to keep my readers interested I need to keep up to date with social networking sites and post relevant topics to attract more people.

R&B target audience

The previous slide shows a mood board of my target audience

• Tattoos

• R&B style/clothing and hair

• Piercings

• Latest R&B Music

• Biggest Artists

• Have Social Media updates

• Competitions

These are the

topics my readers

will expect to see and read about.