Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our audience demographic is that of 16-24 year olds as our band image would be, and has been, deemed too immature for people any older than that. Small Town America is very performance and image based, we are all about having a good time and not caring about what other people think, this style of band lends itself particularly to playing at festivals as they can get the crowd going and just promote the whole vibe of 'free-spiritedness'. We reasoned that teenagers and young adults are the prime demographic of festival go-ers making our  audience and band image work together in synergy.

We have also appealed to a secondary audience of younger teenagers who aspire to be like our target audience when they are older. This was through the care-free immaturity our band promotes through its music video and subsequent ancillary products. Our genre is very broad and therefore our music can appeal to both males and females what with the band being all men it is more likely that they will appeal to males through their music and females through the band image.

To gather audience feedback we had arranged a screening of our music video in a studio with theater seating. Around 100 people turned up and from them we took a focus group of 10 people to fill out questionnaires about the video. We made sure to have a variety of people within the group as to make sure we had covered most demographics.

From the samples of audience feedback we received very positive and encouraging responses. however their were a few questions concerning the beginning  and end of the piece.

Although very positive feedback it appears that the beginning of the song was too slow in its build up and the end was 'unclear' and as shown in our audience response video people were unsure when it ended with a small round of applause just before the real end.

Our target audience positively however the higher end of the spectrum seemed to not enjoy the song itself, often claiming they would not buy the single/album as the genre is not too their liking for example, Rob a 25 year old who I asked to evaluate our video said 'I don't like the song' and 'Its not serious enough'. Despite the older half of our target audience not enjoying the song I still feel we have targeted our audience successfully and we had a superb response during and after our screening.

From the responses to our music video I am happy to say that we have successfully targeted our audience and whilst having a very niche concept, a non-serious indie alternative band, we still have a broad appeal to not just our intentional audience of indie bands but to most teenage music fans of Rock, Indie, Pop and Alternative. I believe this broad appeal was due to the comedy and intertextuality of the piece. The use of popular culture characters appeals to a broader audience and by juxtaposing their evil image with doing mundane and childish things helps enforce the comedy of the piece.

Album Cover

We also handed out questionnaires about our album cover to our focus group. Many people liked the effects we had put on the landscape and the band members saying that 'the colour scheme is eye-catching' and the band members look 'laid-back and cool'. As for the inner cover of the digipack many people thought it was original and said that by keeping the colour scheme running throughout it really emphasised the band image. 

We had great responses from everyone even from adults who were not fans of the genre saying that the albums greatest strengths was its visual aesthetics. It is clean, colourful and eye-catching which means it will be picked up off the shelves and looked at. This means even if people do not purchase the album they are still aware of the band.

Website

Our website was centred around the concept of interactivity to gratify the needs of the consumer. We recieved alot of positive feedback concerning the merchendise saying that it was stylish yet symplistic aswell as comments about the whacky, scrapbook style and colour scheme of the website. Many people picked up upon the highway, which was also on the album cover, and said that they now accosiate the open road and touring with Small Town America.

The object of our website was to act as a central base for the bands products and to guide fans and consumers to other means of getting involved with the band. We asked our focus group whether or not they thought we did this well all of them replied with 'yes'; they claimed that the simplistic navigation bar 'made it easy to find things to do' and that 'there were tonnes of things to look'. They thought the 'gallery' of the band and the 'about me' sections were fun to browse through and really gave them an idea of what STA are about and what they get up to.

From my audience feedback I have learnt the importance of clarity in all media products. If people are in anyway confused or unsure about a media product they will not bother purchasing it or even picking it up.

I have learn't that we successfully targeted our target audience in terms of all three products by making them bright, interesting, visual, engaging and entertaining. Aswell as this I learnt that there are many ways to broaden my products overall appeal to people through Goodwins idea of intertextual references and also the use of physical comedy, which extends to all demographics as it is universally understood.