Target audience research & homework on client brief and SWOT

Target audience definition:

A specific group of people who may be interested in/need a product/service or media form. These groups of people can be segmented in many different ways. Demography.

Targeting an audience:

Age

Gender

Interest

Geography

Audience Research

Quantitive audience research:

- Quantitative audience research is when companies gather large amounts of information from large      groups of people, done via emails,phone calls and face to face surveys to determine how best to           make their product appeal to the target audience.

-For films and marketing this is done with questionnaires, these groups are knows as 'samples" and     the larger the sample the more reliable the research is to fall beck on.

-Paper questionnaire is a closed question survey, but people can still write on the paper their     thoughts and opinions.

-Digital questionnaires collect exact data and desk research is secondary research, going through old   reports and publications to back up your own research.

-Qualitative data gives more wordy answers and explains more why people would chose whatever particular thing.

Socio-economic status:

-This is a means for some people to predict behaviour based on how much a person earns, where they live and their type of education and the characteristics a person may have. 

-This data is used to estimate what influences this person may have.

-Based on the class systems, from poor-rich

-NRS Table --> social demographic scale

Psychographics:

-The scale uses categories of personalities and puts people into categories regarding their personality    and lifestyle

-The film industry will use psychographics to target what their audience would typically go for

-A psychometric audience profile defines an audience by how they think and by considering their       values, attitudes and lifestyle.

Types or people according to the psychographics table:

-Resigned

-Struggler

-Mainstreamer

-Aspirer

-Succeeder

-Explorer

-Reformer

Geodemographics:

-Geodemographics tell us about the type of people for marketing, their age, gender, area they grew up in or live in and their financial class tell us a lot about the type of audience they would be. -->links to the 7 stereotypes of psychographic

- Geodemographics are based on where the target audience live

Age and Gender:

-Depending on the type of industry results in research into the age group target audience. --> e.g.  film industry, they will target films at the age groups of 16-24 year olds as they are young, impressionable and have the most spending money and spend lots of time socializing. 

-Nowadays because we live in a multi-cultural society and everything has to fair sex, non sexist and race and age appropriate

Mainstream and niche:
-Mainstream are the audience that consume mainstream or popular texts such as soaps or sitcoms.
-A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. A small specialized market for a particular product or service.

SWOT Analysis:

-SWOT Analysis helps you to identify you Strengths and Weaknesses, possible Opportunities, and potential Threats 

-You can use it to find and exploit a sustainable market niche

-You can distinguish yourself from your competitors and gain a competitive advantages over them by assessing your company's strengths and market position
-And by understanding its weaknesses, you can manage and eliminate any threats that would catch you by surprise
Strengths:
-What does your company do better than other companies in the same field?
-What is its unique selling proposition?
-What do people in your market see as its strengths/
Weaknesses:
-What factors lose you company sales?
-What production or sales processes could it improve?
-What do people in your market likely see as its weakness?
Opportunity:
-What interesting business trends are you aware of?
-What useful opportunities could come from changes in technology or government policy?
Threats:
-What are your competitors doing?
-Is changing technology threatening your position?
-Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?

Client Brief Summary:

Why do clients write briefs?

Writing a brief can lead to better, more effective and measurable work. A brief is the most important piece of information issued by a client to an agency. It is a strategic move that allows the creative thinkers in agencies to apply their specialist skills to produce great solutions. If the client brief it good then the outcome will be much better than if there wasn't a client brief, as "it is difficult to produce a good creative work without a good brief" according to 79% of clients and agencies.

Clients write briefs because it saves time and money. The biggest waste of agency resources is to put them through the process of developing a solution without a any sort of direction, it costs lots of money and time will be wasted which affects the piece of work as they will have to meet a deadline. 99% of agencies and 98% of clients agree that "sloppy briefing and moving goal posts wastes both time and money". Writing a clear client brief can minimise this wastefulness and maximise the chances of a 'right first time' agency response to the client.

Writing a client brief also leads to making remuneration fairer.

Outline the 3 principles behind a good brief

-Written Brief:
"By writing a brief we have focussed on what it is we are expecting from our activity and what we expect our agencies to contribute/come back with. by discussing this written brief, each party has the opportunity to build on the written brief, challenge it and buy into it. it assits clarity and helps build an effective team." A written brief is also vital in ensuring the 'buy-in' of other key people in the company.

-Clarity of thinking:
Too much information can fog the process. Relevance and context are more important than reams of data."The main difference between good briefs and bad briefs is that good briefs leave you with a clear understanding of what you are trying to do. Bad briefs drown you in contradictory information and objectives" (Briefing research 2002: Agency sample) The brief should contain only important information and it should focus on setting out the objectives of your product or service that commercial communications can play a key role in achieving

-Clearly defined objectives:

The clarity of the objectives is the most fundamental part of a good written brief. The single greatest frustration is when there isn't a clear and credible problem to solve.

What elements should a good brief contain?