Task 1: Secondary Research Evaluation
We will quickly glance over the results from our secondary research task, this task was based around the Boy band, One Direction, where we looked at existing information such as statistics and reviews on both one direction specified and general AMA, Digipak and Music Videos.
Quantitative Research
This was only dedicated to music videos and I found that statistics were really easy to find on YouTube, as it was dedicated to showing statistics to the general public about how popular a Music Video is by it's views. There were also a lot of articles online (albeit, some were very outdated) that were talking about the Top 40 and the popular music videos, how some people personally rated them. some I have screenshot onto my Blog, but are probably outdated since views are changing all the times and music videos are always moving through the charts.
As One Direction are extremely popular, there are online fandom dedicated to providing information about One Direction, I found a brilliant website which literally was lal about how often an average One Direction Video is viewed on an hourly basis, which was really helpful when looking for figures regarding One Direction. I also found a very interesting article about the most popular (in terms of views) videos. that although it was old, it was correct in saying what the most and least popular music videos are as of 2016.
However, the issue with exiting data,for both general/ 1D music videos, especially on YouTube is that it changes all the time and it is safe to say that the statistics of the videos that appear in my blog are lower than what is on YouTube right now. So my own information that i extracted last week, is now considered Old. With music videos, i also found a lot of articles that were old and should archived as it wasn't up to date, therefore i got confused as to what the order of mos watched music videos were. as it was so easy to find these statistics, i felt that i got confused as the different facts clashed with each other.
Qualitative Research
Music Videos
These were easy to find as i had to look in the comments section on YouTube and just easily screenshot some comments about somebody's opinion on the music video, for which i did for Gangnam Style. however, a lot of the comments were i German (due to a licensing agreement that had just got released in Germany, allowing gangnam style to be accessed there and many others) and therefore, to celebrate many Germans posted. this was followed by other users posting some racists slurs/ offensive statements relating to Germany and the Holocaust, so i found it difficult to find comments actually mentioning the music video. but otherwise, i found it a good source to extract personal opinions
I also found a comments section on an article about One Direction's Music Video as an alternative to just comments on you tube, This was more difficult to find as YouTube is known as "The Place" to comment on a video. but i eventually found an article, with some comments about the feeling that some users feel towards the video. In the future, i think YouTube would be more effective when receiving comments.
Digipaks
These were extremely difficult to get personal reviews for, as not a lot of people knows what a Digipak is and when people do comment on a Digipak (such as on Amazon, where i got my reviews from for both general and One Direction) they comment on the actual music rather than the packaging. This is also the reason why only two reviews can be seen when digipaks are being represented as qualitative information
Album Art
I found that this was difficult to get reviews for again, And are more excited about the music inside as opposed to the packaging around the CD, which i resorted to Facebook in order to be able to find reviews in that comment section on the release on either One Direction or Zayn's album artwork.I however did find an article for Zayn's artwork bit the majority of the comments were about his voice rather than the cover. except that i discovered that most people agreed they disliked the artwork as it was unoriginal and just plain awful. For One Direction, some comments mentioned the actual album cover, but it was in a sea of "I love Harry" or "Liam is cute", what i managed to find was posted on my blog post. This was also published as One Direction Philippine but so some comments as you can see were actually in Filipino
AMA
I have to say this was the most difficult to find, because magazines are never published online, let alone the AMA actually in there. So i eventually found an AMA written for Billboard magazine by the fans of 1D, promoting their new album "Made in the AM", which although it wasn't a real advert, it was closest one i could find that came with reviews from the ban members themselves. So it was interesting to see some role reversal. i got this from an article in Billboard magazine and comments were expressed on twitter which was also there.
In conclusion, i found some qualitative research that i gained effective but was extremely difficult to find the majority on time. I found it easy to get comments and opinions on the social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, where people use on a daily basis. rather than articles tat are outdated and hidden in ten pages of the internet, it was more difficult to find comments and opinions on these different media products. In the future, I will use more social media websites in order to get more effective results and gain more up to date qualitative research
2: Primary Research Evaluation
Here are the results of our primary research questionnaire on Digipaks, Music Videos and Magazines respectively.
After 32 responses, we have interpreted the results of the market regarding these three products, we will now discuss each product individually in relation to the results on the graphs below.
just ti say about how the layout was effective, making this Questionnaire digital was much better than doing it on paper, the reason being was that people were more compelled to answer it. they found it easier and didn't feel that there were too many time constraints. This questionnaire was also very useful online, as you could easily access it on your phone, tablet or computer by just easily ticking the link. The questioner was also quite straightforward and people understood it well, they also understood that online it would not take them long to fill out. Also, on this website, it was easy to change questions if you made a mistake. unlike, on paper it can end up looking messy and unappealing.
My one criticism, is that the option to add own comments was not included, so we couldn't hear any feedback about how everyone though the questionnaire was and how we could improve,
Digipaks
As you can see, i have collated the results of the questionnaire above into a Pie chart, as this Assignment was based mainly around teen music, we agreed to ask mainly teenagers the questionnaires o that w could get the best possible result, we also asked some older people like our parents or relatives in order to get a large variety of results. the biggest issue that we faced was about what exactly a "Digipak" was, and then me and my partner had to explain it. Therefore, you ca see that exactly half of the people who took the questionnaire said that they never bought one. This leads me to believe tat Digipaks have gone out of fashion, as everything is online now and can be bought digitally. We can also see from these questions what the Market likes currently, in terms of pop stars, luckily, the majority of our recipients liked One Direction, which os who we were basing the rest of our assignment off. It may also be a case that Boy bands or just groups in general are more popular than singers. Because, people were basing the design of buying a Digipak on which artist they liked to listen to more, rather than the design of the Digipak that their CD would be coming in. Finally, looking at the "features" Pie chart, we can see what the market like in Digipaks, the majority of the answer being freebies, this could be the same as magazines, whereas you only by the magazine because of the free toy that comes with it. but then again, it may be seen as an added extra to an already good album.
Music Videos
From these charts, you can seethe target markets personal habits about watching music videos, such as the content, the streaming and the regularity of them watching music videos. Unlike, the digipaks the questions were more straightforward. From what we can see, that 28 out of the 32 people we asked watch their videos of the YouTube over MTV and Facebook, we can use this to our advantage as we now know that as most people watch music videos on YouTube, we can easily post it on there and therefore get the most views possible. We can also use this to spread our name easier to our age group. We also now know how often people watch music video, the majority of the answers were split between monthly and weekly ( leaning more towards weekly) this shows us that our Target Market spends an even amount of time on YouTube and they could possible be using YouTube to watch other videos that are not relating to music videos. Finally it s really interesting to see that our target market likes watching music videos of One Direction more than Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber, I think this is extremely important to note that although you may like the songs that the band producers, you may dislike the video or prefer another music video style to another artist. Again, this proves my theory that our market currently prefers watching Bands (specifically boys) as opposed to stand alone singers. However, in this case Taylor swift was the second most preferred singer to watch as Justin Bieber is known for not being very popular with the fans
Magazines
Finally, we are focusing on the magazine circulatory figures in order to see which magazines most popular and therefore which magazine should we put an AMA in. From the first graph, you can see that Hello is the magazine that is most popular with the market that we are targeting, this could b because the majority of the questions answered were by girls and who are avid readers of this magazine, whereas Q and Billboard are not as popular and quite obscure magazine, however, it's ironic that AMA have and are most likely to appear in those two magazines as opposed to Hello or OK. the next chart looks at how often one buys a magazine. I was surprised by these results as they say that most people only by a single magazine per year. however, the reason why this answer was so big was because we didn't add another option for "other" or "i don't buy magazines" so people went with the closest one. This could also be because that as the target market are teenagers, they find it hard to buy a magazine on a weekly basis, they are also quite expensive. moreover, most magazines only release 12 issues per year, which is one for each month of the year. Finally, we wanted to find out where our target market buys there newspapers most often, this was one so that we know who to target selling the AMA's to. The majority of the answers were in a Newsagent such as a "corner shop" or a WH Smith. So therefore, we can now look further into what companies sell the most newspapers with AMA and pitch to them our ideas about appearing their magazines.
Overall, you can see to a large extent the answers to our questionnaires, we can briefly see that the majority of our Market like One Direction, both their music videos as well as their actual track listing, from sixths we also know that in order to make the questionnaire easier for next time we should add additional answers so that the viewer doesn't get confused and answer the closest to the real answer. I also learnt that going digital is more easier for everyone, as by saving paper you are saving the environment, but t's also easier for people to answer questionnaires on their own device, that can easily store the answers
Also on here we did an Audience Panel, Focus Group and Interview (Which is on Gabby's Blog)
Audience Panel
This is availible to see on my previous blog post, where we showed a video to roughly 10 people (including Gabby and I as the panel) watching History by One direction and providing Feedback.
This was a good method of research as it showed a variety of views from different people;s point of views. What was also really effective was the diversity of the opening our audience such as there were mix of different ages and genders that could comment on the video. there were also some fans on One Direction and others who were not so they provided biased views on what they thought of the video. They were also all part of our target audience where we were aiming at Teenagers.
The Issue with the audience panel is that it is extremely difficult to form people together, as we ae teenagers we have our won work and like as much time as possible to do it. Running a Audience Panel in the middle of class was seen as very time consuming and annoying to do as there were better things that the audience members could have done. This is also the reason why some of the responses that we received sound Sarcastic as our classmates just wanted to get on with their work rather than watching a music video. I also felt that as the whole collaboration was so last minute, it was hard t think of questions to ask the audience and they might have come across as too general or vague. therefore the responses were also quite vague.
As this was an audience panel, we also had to prompt the audience members to ask questions about the music video that they were likely to have seen already as it is quite popular among our age group, so a lot of people were put on the spot as we wanted to get a response from everyone, which with hindsight wasn't fair to do as they were already reluctant to watch the video in the first place.
Focus Group
This was done with my two younger sisters (Michal aged 15 and Shira aged 13) at home, who are a great example of the target audience that One Direction are aiming at. What I did was I printed out 5 Album Magazine Adverts (AMA) and put them in front of the girls, then I requested them to order them in their favourite AMA from best to worst, regardless of whether they liked the artist or not.
What was good bout this focus group is that the girls were very willing to do what i needed, despite the fact that i had to keep re shooting the focus group. There was a;lo a difference in age between the two of them so they had different opinions what they thought was their favorite AMA, but eventually they agreed that the King of Leon AMA was their favorite.
The focus group is a really good way of research, as it bring's different personality's together to decide what the best product is and as they are both teenagers and both liked the King's Of Leon album, it made me realize what the style and trends of that generation, and how i can base my own AMA on that so that it would be positively received.
However, an issue with the Focus group was the length as it was difficult to decide when it was too long or too short to be considered a focus group or a discussion. In the end, i had to ask the girls to keep it to under 90 seconds so that we would have time to discuss after to which they agreed.But admittedly, I felt that the focus group was time consuming as ut took over an hour to perfect and to get the right reactions from the girls to the AMA.
Another issue is that the girls didn't know what the AMA were, as i had to explain it before i started to filming and compared it to Album covers because everything is digital and my family personally don't read many magazines anymore, the girls found it hard to judge something that they didn't know what it was. We all unanimously agreed that AMA are outdated.
Task 3: Audience Research Evaluation
Overall, We have worked out what our Target Market is and who One Direction aim there music at.
The Average Fan of One Direction, is aged between the 13 - 18, female living in the UK and at home, they are likely to have an array of posters in their bedroom and/or have photo's on their smartphone
Our target audience is likely to own all the CD's that the band have released and even have at least 1 limited edition album that the band have released. However, they are even more likely to have a digital copy of at a n album released by the band or on a Spotify Playlist. they also regularly look at Music videos on YouTube,
We believe that fans of one Direction fit into class E on the demographics table as they are probably in full time education,students and only work pat time if needed to.
In terms of the physchographics table, our average target audience member is an Aspirer, as the music of One direction tends to make them realize things about themselves, such as making them gain status and revolve around appearance and personality
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Media Preferences and Buying/ Viewing patterns
to summarize the information that we found was that there were more music video views than digipak sales, so we know now that's what our target audience prefer. From articles we understand that the fans enjoy Book Signings, CD giveaways or any event where there is a change to actually meet the boys in 1D. Media Preferences also include Social Media such as |Facebook and Twitter where the bits update regularly about the band and the boys individual life, it is also an easy way to access information, they would also take the time to listen to their music and keep being updated automatically when something 1D related has been posted.
regarding sales, a fan has attended at least one of 1D concert over the course of adolescence, usually in their local city such as London or Manchester rather than travelling to a city further away just to see them play. at this concert, the fans would either purchase merchandise or wear something from a previous concert that is 1D related, either a T Shirt or a hat etc.
On the graph, you can see the average video views of just one direction from a daily - 7 month range, showing how often a video by one direction is Viewed, This also shows how many views over time one direction music videos have got on YouTube. a graph version of this table is availible in Task 2 blog post.
Task 4: Market Research Evaluation
Here we looked at One Direction Vs 5 Seconds Of Summer.
We studied the 5 seconds of summer and what they were like compared to 1D.
We did a competitor analysis which showed that unlike most bands, they don’t compete but both members support each other’s careers, and that.
5 Seconds if Summer (5SOS) are a 5 piece boy band from Australia, who have toured globally promoting their music, they play the same genre of music as one direction which is Pop mainly and attract the same target audience members. 5SOS target towards the same market in the Demographics and psychographics tables. Both songs have similar story lines, in terms of lyrics and music video and they both dress in the same style. Such as wearing earrings, piercings and tattoos. However, from polls and overall comments the public favor 1D rather than 5SOS because they are more experienced with the market and produce reliable music that fans like to listen to. They are also more well known especially in the UK and the USA.
This information was also extremely easy to find as although there wasn't as many article on 5SOS as they are still a fairly new band, there were enough for me to go and see what they think about 1D, the friendship that the group has. I also looked around on social media platforms, where the groups post all the time, about both themselves and the bands music career. I have access to sites like Twitter and Facebook, so i can see what they post easily.
Analysis on Competitor Products
Music Video
We compared 5SOS "She Looks So Perfect" to 1D's "What Makes You Beautiful" as they were both debut albums of their respective artists, in comparison to 1D, I discovered that both again, have the same style of music, similar lyrics about the idea of romance and girls.
In the music video, i also noticed that there wasn't a point for more than 2-3 seconds where a band member was shown by himself, they were all shown together during this video. Unlike 1D, where each member of the band is given a considerable amount of on screen time to show off his voice and express his own vocals rather like singing as a band altogether.
As well as the fact that the 1D act in front of the camera and play on the beach, having fun, rather than the boys in 5SOS focus on playing their instruments and the sing itself, therefore, there is no interaction between the 5SOS boys and any actors rather with 1D video it's the exact opposite.
Finally, i said that the musioc video of 5SOS, i felt that the ,message of the song wasn't strong and didn't link to the story behind the video, rather than it was just the boys playing their own instruments and having a story split with that on screen time.
Digipaks
The overall analysis is that personally,I believe that 5SOS Digipaks called "5 Seconds of Summer" are better than the 1D digipak, the reason i say this is because i like the personal touch that i added to the 5SOS one, such as the doodles all over the disc, and on the album art in the front of the Digipak. I also really like the track list at the back because the songs are all in individual font, colours and shapes so it looks like the names of tracks have personality and could represent the likeness of the song as well.
Compared to 1D, and their digipak called "Up All Night" their overall packaging design may come across as boring,but what it does it focus on is the bond between the members of the group, who joined together on the X Factor, It is overall pleasant to look at and the colour scheme is focused around the summer beach style.
In conclusion, after analyzing both (more detailed on my blog post), i personally prefer the 5SOS digipak because of how unique it is and is not like a typical Digipak. I like the colour scheme and the drawings around, like someone tried to make a really boring Digipak better, Which is why there are some splashes of red around the package and on the CD itself.
AMA
The summary of this portion of the analysis,is different as i was comparing an 5SOS AMA to a 1D Tour advert, because i searched the web and i couldn't find a single AMA for 1D, so i felt that this was the next best thing.
I felt that the AMA for 5SOS was really good as it included all the typical conventions of an AMA except the format was landscape and not portrit like most AMA, and it has the same image as the front of the album would have. I also liked the idea of using the boys in the band as the tally chart fir 56 (having 4 people crossed through to equal 5) therefore, the boys are acting out the name of the band "5" seconds of summer.
Task 5: Production Research
The overall budget chart can be seen on my previous blog post, whereas we put together a budget chart of the bare minimum that we would need in order to create a music video, Digipak and AMA budget. we then calculated the average costs of all of these things nad created a budget that we would spend on creating these products. We looked specifically at Personnel, Talent, Suppliers, facilities and locations and finding the average cost of them.
We looked on BECTU, we looked at the rates that would go for commercials,so we used similar statistics and that covered personnel, as well as the other products and we looked up certain items that we would need to film/ create the product and our overall estimate appears on the budget chart that you can see in the blog-post. We then added up the costs all together and then we guessed the budget based on that. We continued to look at how much average videos would cost for one direction and how we compared it.
