3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our Target Audiences:

Primary audience:

• Aged between 16 and 30 years old 
• Both male and female 
• Specifically fans of the Rock genre and it's other forms (indie rock, alt rock etc.)

This was our intended primary audience, as we understood that this is a very wide audience group and would allow us to reach a lot of people. We wanted our music to be very accessible, so we aimed at targeting both men and women as well. Typically, rock and indie rock bands will target a male audience; unless the band is made up wholly by women in which case the opposite is often. However, most indie rock bands consist entirely of men.

These are the bands which appear after searching 'indie rock bands'.
There are very few women in any of these bands.

Secondary audience:

• Aged between 30-55, but not excluding those above 55 
• Both male and female 
• Fans of the Rock genre, but more nostalgic. Avid fans of the genre who still follow and are interested in upcoming bands.

Similarly as before, we wanted our band to be extremely accessible. Through our research, we were able to find out that a lot of our parents are still keen music fans. We hoped to be able to reach and appeal this audience rather than alienate them like most current artists.

Tertiary audience:

• Fans of popular music 
• Not necessarily confined to the Rock genre 
• Whilst this audience follows the mainstream music scene, they often look for artists a little bit beyond the popular scope.

This audience was quite different compared to our other two. We intended to target fans of different genres with our tertiary audience, as we believe that there are many music fans who fluctuate in their taste depending on the current music scene.

These are some of the current most frequently mentioned artists
on the web. Most of these artists produce Pop music, though there are
some other genres such as R&B and Soul.

Our audience's music consumption:

Our targeted audiences would find their music from a number of different sources:

Online sources:

Both Spotify and Youtube are some of the most widely used music platforms around. They are primarily used by younger people who are more used to having on-demand access to music and are constantly looking for new music to share with their friends. These two platforms are the most prolific, but other platforms include SoundCloud, iTunes and radio streams. Online sources would be used most often by our primary and tertiary audiences.

Physical sources:

CDs are slowly meeting the same fate as records, but there are still many people who prefer to collect their music physically rather than in an online library. This applies primarily to our secondary audience, though that does not mean that younger people do not buy the occasional CD.

Uses and Gratifications Theory:
Blumler and Katz's theory of the uses and gratifications of a media product had a big influence on our project, as it validated our methods of reaching and appealing to these target audiences.

Diversion:
We were able to satisfy the audience's need for diversion through fast-paced editing. Additionally, the cuts between our two contrasting compositions make the video seem more surreal and eye-catching.

Relationship:
Though this was not a gratification we strongly considered in our products, we included subtle hooks for the audience in our music video which could imply the presence of a relationship. When we started gathering feedback, we did find members of our target audience who identified these signs.

Identity:
We addressed the audience's need for identity by constructing our band's appearance to be as genuine as possible. Social media was especially useful for this as it allowed us to upload content of the band members acting as if they were a regular group of friends. We believe that members of our target audience would recognise this and empathise with this friendship.

Finally figuring out how to use the new snapchat filters #fun #beardoftheyear pic.twitter.com/9mZAtyj5ev

— Come What May (@ComeWh4tMay) October 21, 2015

Additionally, our costumes were made to appear quite recognisable amongst members of our target audience. Dark jackets were a common piece of clothing in our pictures, but we also included more quirky items such as the black and white pizza shirt.

Surveillance:
Social media and our band's website gave us an opportunity to gratify the audience's need for surveillance. Social media allowed us to consistently release content for our audience, so that they can always know what is happening with the band. On the website, we included a news page which would release similar information.

Audience Feedback:
To gather feedback on our three products, we employed several methods to get feedback from our target audiences. One of these methods was through a survey:

The results of this survey were very useful; below I have analysed the response to each question.

The results from this question suggested to us that our audience for the music video was more heavily skewed towards men. Whilst this may be the case, these results could also mean that we failed to reach women with this survey.

As expected, most of the respondents were between the ages of 12 and 24, though I estimate that this would have been centralised around people between 17 and 20. We did also get a response from someone aged between 25-34, which helps to validate our target audience of men and women aged 16-30. However, it would seem that our survey was unable to reach people within our secondary audience: those aged 30-55 and beyond.

The results from this question were very interesting: we had more respondents saying that they were not a fan of indie and indie-rock music than those saying they were. This suggests that we have done a pretty good job of addressing our tertiary audience: music fans who enjoy the mainstream, but are looking for something different.

The previous question's results alongside these results confirm this appeal to our tertiary audience. Though not many of our respondents would identify themselves as indie fans, none of them scored our video lower than a 6; this would suggest that they enjoyed it.

When asked to explain their selected scores, we received some more useful feedback.

This response was nice to see as it confirmed that the relationship hooks we placed in our video were picked up on.

On the other hand, this respondent proved that we were gratifying their need for diversion, as they agreed that the fast-paced editing kept the video interesting.

Our feedback on the album cover was more varied. Some respondents seemed to like it a great deal, whereas others gave it a score much lower than that of the video. The cause of these low scores seems to have been generally agreed upon: the design was rather generic and lacked a real unique selling point.

On the upside, one of these comments remarked on the album's consistent theme:

I decided to ask about how easy it was to use the website, as due to its role as the marketing campaign's central hub I figured it would be important to know how manageable it was. Thankfully these results would suggest that there were few issues regarding navigation.

Then we asked how compelling our audience found the website. The results were quite positive, with two respondents scoring the website a 5 and the other fourteen scoring it no lower than a 7.

Lastly, we asked if the audience could recognise the synergy between the three products. All of our genuine responses agreed that this synergy was clear and consistent.

Survey reflections:
On the whole, our responses from the survey have been very enlightening. Below are some of the positives and negatives I took away from the responses:

Positives:

• Our marketing campaign had a clear and consistent theme running throughout.
• The music video and website were particularly well received by our target audience.
• We were able to gratify the needs of the audience.

Negatives:

• We may have struggled to precisely target all of our intended audiences.
• Some of the responses we received were not genuine due to the anonymity of the survey.
• Our album cover was considered too generic.

As only the last negative point was not subject to the limitations of the survey format, I believe that overall, the survey has been a useful tool in gathering audience feedback.