With many
years of experience from working for Grazia, a high fashion magazine for women,
I have been asked to write an article explaining my day-to-day job as a media
researcher. At the start of my career, I was a fashion intern where I did a bit
of everything from editing and page designing to organising the advertisement
space. Later on, I went down the route of fashion marketing by designing
advertisements, promoting fashion shows and also looking at online fashion
blogs and forums. In order to make a newspaper or magazine successful, it is
vital that research is done using audience research, market research and
production research to gather fresh and up-to-date ideas to keep up with
society and to appeal to the readers.
Our
principal priority of the audience
research is to identify our target audience by using a range of research such
as observations and experiments to narrow down the type of people who like to
purchase Grazia. It is important to do this research as the information
gathered enables us to improve our magazine for the audience, allows us to
directly target readers and maximise sales. It’s great to have an audience or
reader’s perspective as we make the magazine for them and they know what they
want in the contents of the issues. One form of research we carried out was self-generated
research by holding Vox Pop interviews with people in high streets such as
Croydon, Sutton, Oxford Street, Westfield Stratford City and London. To begin,
we started interviewing men and women who fitted the category of 17-50 year
olds so that we covered a variety of people. Beforehand, we planned questions
we were going to ask the citizens for example how old are they, what area are
they from and where do they currently live, what they like to do in their spare
time, where and what do they work as which are more personal questions to find
out their likes and dislikes. Once we had filtered the interviewees, we looked
at the audience demographics by focussing on particular sections of the
population of London. I believe it is essential to ask questions about mediums
for example, what magazines do they read? How do they read the magazines? Do
they read in magazine form, online or as an app? This is essential because it
enables us to stay up-to-date for example using phone apps and also it can
reduce the amount we spend on printing magazines. Once we had gathered this
information, we did a geodemographic analysis, comparing the similarities of
the people who live in the area we wanted to target, London. We chose to target
those who live or commute into London, as fashion in London has been declared
the world’s top fashion capital of 2011 and it is evident that this is where we
will be able to sell the best. All of the qualitative research enabled us to
build an audience profile so that we could meet the interests of our target
audience.
Selling
Grazia is an important aspect in order to be successful and this is achieved by
carrying out market research to gain
feedback about our previous articles. Market
research is research that gathers and analyses information about services from
the producer to the customer. To get
these results, the team and I set up a focus group and planned a questionnaire
for the interviewees to complete. The participators were seven females ranging
in age from 18-35 years. Their occupational status varied between part-time
jobs and full-time jobs, so we did not invite unemployed women as the magazine
is aimed of those who are up-market and who are high spenders of beauty and
fashion. Selecting a particular type of person is vital because if I had
invited men to the focus group, the information I would have collected would be
useless, as men do not generally purchase Grazia. The primary research helped
us compare the leading UK magazines to Grazia such as, Heat, Look, Elle and
Cosmopolitan and we asked them specific questions like, ‘How would you compare
Grazia to these other magazines?’ I believe that it is important to ask exactly
the same questions so that you receive an accurate answer that you can compare
with other responses. I chose to carry out competitor analysis research because
these magazines target similar readers and write for similar purposes and
therefore they are our competition. Advertising our brand using many different
mediums has shown to be successful as people are more likely to see them
around. Again, we compared the magazines by watching their adverts. This
included showing the focus group each advert, posters, online banners and then
asked them what colours, images and styles would capture your eye? When trying
to find information from data gathering agencies I used BARB, an agency that
measured viewing figures of television advertisements in order to see what
channels the nation is watching. When I discovered this information by doing secondary
research, I was then able to plan where I wanted to broadcast the Grazia advert
and sum up budgets. As an example, ITV2 would be a suitable channel to
broadcast the advert on as it is specifically for the niche of a young
audience. Doing this quantitative research enabled us to discover the circulation
figures compared to other leading UK magazines. I was able to retrieve this
information from websites such as Press Gazette that displays the figures and
statistics for a period of time and media directories like Ulrich’s Periodicals
or SRDS Media Solutions. In the first six months of 2012, figures were recorded
that Grazia magazine sold 180,769 copies, Elle sold 175,219 and Vogue sold
194,406. This way, we were able to keep track of our competitors and their
progress.
Production
research is researching a product or a service in order to gather information
that you can use. On a regular basis, I carried out production research with my team so that the contents of the
magazine were very current and modern. Furthermore, we searched for many
publishing companies through the Internet and directories that would publish
the magazine and once we had chosen an adequate publisher, we discussed
marketing and promotion ideas to help the magazine sell better. Not only do you
have to think about the sales, you have to consider the contents of the
magazine for example, being cautious when writing an article by trying to avoid
plagiarism, knowing and abiding by the copyright laws. Personnel research is
recruiting and hiring people for a particular job for example I would do this
research when finding models to photograph and successful female celebrities
and male celebrities that women adore. Not only this, but I would do personnel
research for people to go to fashion catwalks to note and sketch the latest
trends. As a fashion marketer, I researched for locations such as photography
studios in London or local areas where we could photograph models and
celebrities that have dressing rooms, some photography equipment and perhaps
hotels close by for the models to stay in and I carried out this process for
interviews as well. Budgeting for the company requires all of the information
gathered. When I was summing up the budget, I had to consider, booking models,
cost of advertisements, buying clothing and footwear to photograph, printing
and much more! An example of this is printing. I used to print the magazine’s
glossy and from the quantitative research I had collected on approximately how
many people buy Grazia a month, I was then able to decide on how many I would
need to print. On top of this, I would search into a range of companies and
looked for the best deal that was still high in quality for example companies
such as, Mixam. Their offer for 25,000 magazines for one month totalled up to
£17,894.
To
summarise, the job of a media researcher is crucial for a media company to be
successful as I believe researching, knowing and taking into account the
reader’s opinion helps us to become more popular, current and successful.
