Tuesday 4 January 2011

Audience as Product

I actually liked the text on Audience as Product, I understood it and it made me think about adverts surrounding shows I watch and the nature of the shows reflecting that rather than vis versa. So I took an example and analysed it further.
Misfits is a drama on e4 aimed at teenagers, male and female, the nature of the show is funny but often quite dark. The first advert to come on in the break was an advert by the company Staples,  an office and stationary company, which correlates to the target audience in that in education from high school up to university, stationary is needed, from pencils to printers. The advert featured a baby whizzing around at high speeds to some happy music, overall very 'feel good', most probably intentionally contrasting the nature of Misfits, plus babies are cute, and teenage girls love cute babies. Also the advert mentioned mobile phones, a product and subject also strongly stereotyped (and quite rightly) to a teenage audience. And another advert for mobile phones was also in there. So we have established that the adverts and show are very obvious and strongly aimed at teenagers based on every stereotype of teenagers and every aspect of a youth target audience, so in the eyes of the Audience as Product; the creators of misfits will create their show, drawing in a teenage audience, they will then take their show to the advertisers and say 'Hey look, THIS kind of people are going to watch our show' and the advertisers want to sell their product to that audience, done job.

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