Comparing my Research

When I was creating my advertisement, I carried out a variety of methods to research about academies, helping me in the making of the advertisement. Here I am going to evaluate which methods were most useful. I began carrying out my audience research by creating questionnaires and surveys for people to sign which was helpful as this resulted in me creating an audience profile so I could directly aim my advertisement at a particular target audience. The questions that were included in the survey were general questions so I could create a picture of the target audience, knowing their age, gender and likes and dislikes in advertisements. It enabled me to understand what the audience wanted to see in advertisement which developed and made my advert more successful as it was made specifically for them.

For the audience awareness, I held vox pop interviews with students and they gave me their honest opinion about their knowledge of academies. I asked question such as, ‘What is an academy?’ ‘Did you know GHS offered academies?’ ‘Do you think that academy subjects are better than general subjects?’ Despite using this research, I didn’t find it as helpful because most of the interviewees knew what an academy was and didn’t give much detail within their answers. However, researching into their media preferences helped as I then was able to see what media my target audience used and this contributed to the placement of the advertisement.

I believe that market research is the most important form of research as you have to compare what other competing institutions are doing and how you can develop yours further. I began with similar products by using secondary research for example, websites, advertisements and their prospectus to see what their course offered. This was valuable to me as I could see what their dance course offered and how they presented this using their websites and their advertising clips.

 When doing competitor analysis, I looked specifically at their advertisements to see what they put in them for example, techniques, type of accompaniment, conventions etc. and this helped me decide what I needed to put in to be successful but to also stand out. Doing advertising placement was essential as I wanted my advert to be seen by my target audience and I discovered this by using circulation figures and channel cards. Finally, production research is vital as I needed to get information on what I needed to include in the advert which was also supported by my market research. Using websites for resources such as equipment allowed me to calculate the cost of the whole advertisement. I then held and interview with the client to see how viable the advertisement would be and this was helpful as I was then able to start creating the advert.

 All of the information was important to me and contributed to the creation of the advert.