Research for our documentary - Facebook

As part of our research for out documentary, we had to find out what our target audience are into as this will help our decisions on how we advertise and edit or documentary.

To do this I went on Facebook and asked a series of questions to some of my friends. Such as:

"1. What kind of magazines do you read and why do you like them? (layout, themes)
2. Do you listen to the radio? If so what station and how regularly? 
3. Do you watch documentaries? What types have you seen? Did you like them? Why?"

However, I received no responses *sigh* As most of my friends fit our mainstream criteria for our audience this meant that a response from these people was unable to be attained. This is some ways creates a difficult situation as to what this niche would want to see. We plan to do a focus group so hopefully we can gain more information from this.

As I did not receive any responses on my own account, my Mother kindly allowed me to post the same set of questions to her friends. I got a range of responses and ideas. What I found is that I only got responses from mostly women. They all range from different ages, ethnicity, class and jobs so this in some ways does help us to see how we can advertise and edit or film. As i did not get any responses from men, like or mainstream audience it will be hard to market to them, but hopefully we can resolve this in our focus group.

From my findings I have found:

• 1. Many of the women who commented listen to the radio on the way to work - This means that when marketing our documentary, is a morning slot the best time to advertise it?
• 2. These women mostly reas gossip magazines, fashion or anything educational - Can our documentary be advertised in these magazines?
• 3. These women also watch documentaries regularly and clearly go for a specific niche (mostly real life) - These different documentaries can help us to see how we can edit our own film to match our target audiences interests.

My research has given me a strong idea of what we can do to attract our audience and apply this to our film. From this research I have targeted a very specific audience which is the 25-40 age range which means that they are much higher than what are actual target audience is.This research links to the Uses and Gratifications Theory by Blumler and Katz. I think that is most thinks to the idea of Surveillance - using the media to find out what is going on around us. I believe that the audience who have been targeted would more likely be interested in our documentary as they would want to find out about the different things going on in the world. As some may have children they may also be concerned for the kids welfare. This again also links to Young & Rubicam. This audience may be more of a Reformer or an Explorer seeking enlightenment and discovery. As this is what we are appealing to many of the people who gave feedback fit our 2 types of people we are aiming at.