Target Audience

I will establish the target audience for my magazine based on similar magazines such as NME and Kerrang as these are the publications which seem closest to what I want to create.

The target audience for Kerrang for example seems to be predominantly young males (probably in the younger end of the 15-44 age group that the NRS presents) split pretty evenly between ABC1 and C2DE. Readers tend to follow musical trends and Kerrang represents this in it's journalism, courting popular opinion within the alternative sub-culture. Many of the magazine's target audience would identify heavily with a 'youth tribe' and would probably express this in what they wear and how they act. A perfect example is the now slightly defunct 'emo' trend that Kerrang identified early and have very much geared the style of the magazine towards ever since. Although this doesn't represent a huge market it is one with a fairly large amount of disposable income, and therefore the advertising space is of great value to the right companies.



Information gathered from NRS.com, bauermedia.co.uk (who publish Kerrang) and from being an occasional reader of the magazine.



NME represent a similar but noticeably different market share and it is interesting to note that most of the differences are psychographic ones. For example NRS.com lists NME's readership as also being mainly 15-44 year old males with a slight bias toward ABC1 (but not a hugely significant one). However NME readers are generally slightly older (IPC Media say they aim the magazine at 18-34 year olds) and have slightly more matured musical tastes, they are less likely to follow a musical trend blindly and more likely to listen to music in different genre's without immediately dismissing it (although NME does have a tendency to shy away from committing to being an alternative magazine in an attempt to sell more copies). The overall way in which NME is constructed is aimed toward a more discerning reader. Interestingly this makes it a very different beast for potential advertisers as the readership are less likely to buy something just because it is associated with a sub-culture, advertising has to be sharper, more professional and much more imaginative to capture potential customer's attention.


Information gathered from NRS.com, IPCmedia.com (who publish NME) and from being an occasional reader of the magazine.





Media Pack for DEVIANT:

For the young man who isn't afraid to be an outsider, his jeans are tatty and his hair is long. The iPod in his pocket has bands that no one's heard of sit amongst classics from the seventies and guilty chart pleasures. He is disillusioned with the way Kerrang and NME follow trends and wants real journalism applied to real music.

In hard demographics this is a young male, possibly a University student who comes from a lower middle class family. He doesn't fit into the 'ABC1C2DE' method of categorisation but he may work part time in a bar or shop. He goes to gigs, buys the occasional CD and only bothers with bands merchandise if he likes it in it's own right, not just because it has the bands name on it. He may used to have read Kerrang but feels he has 'grown out' of that style of magazine but NME doesn't cover underground enough music for him to be interested in.