3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our music video is aimed at targeting the primary audience of 16-24 year old females who are fans of dance music. We have primarily targeted specifically females by using a strong female lead as a role model as well as feminine colours. Our secondary audience is 16-24 year old males who are fans of dance music. We have furthered our reach to males by using two male DJs as well as some masculine colours such as blue. Our tertiary audience is fans of the genre from any age demographic. The thing that all our audiences have in common is being fans of the genre, and thus we have focused strongly on conveying the genre while following the conventions of a music video and finding new ways to stand out in the music industry. 

This presentation briefly explains the ways in which we have tried to appeal to our target audiences:

Despite our efforts to target the audience and what we felt was successful, we were aware of the importance to hear the opinion of the audience themselves, as they are the people we are directing our product at. Therefore, we gathered some audience feedback in a variety of ways.

During Construction
In order to help with decision making throughout the course of the project, we got regular feedback from the audience. Once we had a rough edit of the music video, we asked a member of the tertiary audience to give us his opinion and any ways in which we could improve the video. We found that it was important to get feedback from outside of the group as we needed new opinions and ideas, and we asked a member of the tertiary audience as we felt that our opinions would be more similar to those of the primary target audience.

From this feedback we learned:

We drew of the constructive criticism from this member of the secondary audience by altering the sections of the video that he had suggested. We changed the ending and made it more of a mix of paint and balloon shots, as well as doing what he said by making the middle section a build-up to the chorus. We then asked further members of the primary and secondary audiences which version they preferred, and we found that the feedback was unanimous in that they all preferred our newer cut, as shown on the right. This showed us the importance of audience feedback.

We also got feedback on our ancillary products. For our website, we had to make the decision between a primarily pink banner and a primarily blue banner. This would also affect the colour of the title on our album cover. We asked members of the primary and secondary audience to look at two options and choose which they preferred, as shown on the left. Due to a majority blue preference, we used this banner. We found from our audience feedback that this would have a much wider appeal as it does not limit the audience to 'girly' girls.

While constructing our album cover, we had to make a decision on what to do with the focal image in order to appeal to our audience most. This was because we knew that the purpose of the album cover is to catch the audience's attention, making them purchase the product. Therefore, we asked a member of the primary target audience to decide between the following options:

This is the feedback we got from a member of our primary target audience. From this, we decided to go with the audience feedback and use the original album image without any textures. We found that this worked a lot better and we agreed with the feedback in that the others were too distracting from the original concept.
We found audience feedback incredibly important throughout the construction of our main and ancillary products. As audience is at the heart of media texts, it was incredibly important that we had an understanding of their opinions as well as our own.

After Construction

Music Video:

We used SurveyMonkey in order to get feedback from a wide range of audiences:

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

From looking specifically at our primary audience we have found:

Some of the general negative feedback we had noticed ourselves and did expect. This included the 'randomness' of the paint fight and how it didn't link well enough to the rest of the video. We also thought, upon reflection, that it would have been better to have more variation in what is happening in the narrative.

From this we learned the importance of producing a video that works together when using a variety of locations and styles. In he-insight, perhaps it would have been better to film only in the studio in order to give the video a more complete and professional look.

Potential for wider appeal
From looking at our music video feedback, we found that our video appealed to a wider range of audience that we had expected. We intended for it to appeal most to 16-24 year olds, which 20 people agreed with. However, we found that 8 people said the video would appeal most to under 16 year olds. This feedback is positive in that it means our video is less restricted in audience potential. However, this is also negative as we did not intend to appeal to a young audience. This implies that perhaps we should have given the video a more mature look, and we did not quite target our audience completely successfully. 

In this video we asked a member of the primary target audience to look at all three media texts and give us her opinion on them.

This Mindmap sums up the feedback we got from this audience member:

Survey Monkey Feedback

Lots of the music video feedback from this member of the target audience was similar to that of others throughout and after the project. It was evident that one of our most striking factors in the music video was the paint fight. Feedback from our online Survey also demonstrates how the paint fight appeared to be the most prominent section in our music video.

On the one hand, we took from this the positive fact that it was striking and memorable, and worked well. However, we also learned that the sections of the video weren't as balanced as we had hoped. Therefore, we learned the importance of a balance in narrative when cross-cutting in music videos.

The website feedback that we received from this audience member was really positive. We used the conventions of a website in order to increase usability for the audience. From the feedback we found that this worked well as the website was really easy to navigate around. Since a key feature of artist websites is purchasing opportunities, we found it incredibly positive that the feedback was that the 'tour tickets were really easy to find'. Although it was pleasing that this stood out, we would have perhaps preferred if either the Music Video or the Album cover could have been the most prominent feature of the website. This therefore emphasised the importance of synergy between the products and using the website as a hub for all media texts.

I asked a member of the secondary target audience to tell me his opinion on the Digipak and Website.
Website Feedback; male, 17, dance music fan
From this feedback I found that the landing site particularly appealed to this member of the target audience. He felt that it provided practicalities and adhered to the audience's needs and expectations of an artist website. This proved that the landing site was successful in appealing to the secondary target audience.

opportunities on our landing site

He also felt that the main website was 'easy on the eye' and 'not cluttered'. This is something we were aiming to achieve by using a minimalist design in order to encourage the user to remain on the website and not get too distracted or over-whelmed.
However, this audience member felt that it would be better if the website provided the opportunity to listen to more music by the band. This would improve the website and artist identity dramatically, and would increase the use of website conventions. Unfortunately, with the nature of our project, this would not have been possible for us to do.
Furthermore, he also said it could be improved if the website provided more information about tours. With purchasing opportunities being a key function of artist websites, this is would've been an incredibly beneficial improvement to make.

For example, here we could have provided a date and specific location in order to increase the likelihood of purchasing by the audience.

Digipak Feedback; male, 17, dance music fan
From this feedback we found that the audience member liked the front cover of the album the most. He thought that it would 'stand out amongst other album outwork in a shop'. This feedback is incredibly positive as this is the main function of an album cover. This means that we have successfully fulfilled the purpose of album artwork.

However, he did think that the inside is too plain and could be 'a bit more interesting'. Upon reflection, I agree with this statement because in comparison with the highly edited from cover, the inside appears too contradictory and minimalistic.

Plain inside of digipak

To conclude, I have learned from our audience feedback that we did successfully appeal to our target audiences. However, there were some improvements we could have made. In particular, I feel that the music video could have been improved the most, possibly with a better awareness of audience's needs and gratifications. There was also a need to improve specific aspect of the music video, for example making each section link better together, thus improving the fluidity. This demonstrates the need for audience understanding when producing media products.