1) The first is market research which is a collection and analysis of information of the market that the particular product they are researching has to make money in and compete with other products that are similar. A good example of market research is when Coca-Cola realised that Pepsi had a bigger market share of the diet brand of cola’s. coca cola realised that it was because there diet cola brand diet coke was mainly aimed at females in the adverts and men though the drink was to feminine so they bought Pepsi max instead because it was not aimed at any gender. So in order to gain more of the market coke made the same drink but branded it differently and aimed the advert at men, the new drink was called coke zero. CocaCola found out these results through market research, this shows just how valuable market research is. The second is production research it is related to the production process itself. Production research is done in order to provide content and gather material to write and develop the product. It is also done to gather information on the commercial viability of making the product. Production research is also used to gather througher researcher to plan the production and post production stages to ensure the production process runs as smoothly as possible. 2a) National Readership Survey Audit Bureau Circulations Broadcasters Audience Research Board Radio Joint Audience Research Limited 2b) The national readership service provides audience research for print advertising trading in the UK. The survey covers over 250 of Britain's major newspapers and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they achieve. It classifies audiences in a number of ways, one of which is the NRS social grade. The NRS social grade is a system of demographic classification where people are divided into groups based on their degree of education and slary. Class a is upper middle class higher managerial, administrative or professional, b is middle class intermediate managerial, administrative or professional, c1 is lower middle class Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional, c2 skilled working class skilled manual workers, d working class semi and unskilled Manuel workers and e Those at the lowest levels of subsistence Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income. In the UK and ireland, the Audit Bureau of Circulations certifies and audits the circulations of major publications like newspapers and magazines. The audit bureau of circulations publish reports on various sectors. Other the course of each year. They do this by bringing together individual certificates to make comparisons. National newspapers reports are published monthly. The Broadcasters Audience Research Board or BARB, is the organization that compiles audience measurements and television ratings in the UK. It was created to replace a previous system, where the BBC and ITV companies compiled their own ratings. BARB compiles their research by sticking a black box in the back in peoples tv’s and it records what tv channels they are watching. Currently they have boxes in 5,100 homes which monitors what 11,500 people watch. There are disadvantages to the way BARB carry out there research because they only survey a small percentage
of the uk’s population so the statistics they give can be unreliable also they monitor how long people spend on each channel but this can be unreliable as most people have there tv’s on but theyre multi tasking and doing other things instead of watching it for the amount of time the tv’s on. A strength of there research is they are interviewing real people that are generally like your every day person so there result might reflect the mainstream general public. The radio joint audience research limited provide radio rating of different radio stations and or radio shows. RAJAR gather there research by getting people to fill out a diary every 15 minutes for 1 week saying what station they are viewing. Around 130,000 people a year feel out a RAJAR diary. The research is carried out by private contractors IPSOS and MORI. A strength of RAJAR research is that they interview a lot of people so there findings do carry weight to some extent. A weakness is they may only interview a certain type of people that are a specific, race, gender or age so they might find that some stations has a really high audience out of the people studied. The research method used by RAJAR has been put under scrutiny in the past e.g. the former owner of talk sport Kelvin Mackenzie said the paper diary method consistently under reported his stations audience. 3) Audience is segmented in two main ways by cacographic and demographics. The demographics are called cargel which are divided into class, age, religion, gender, ethnicity and location. The class segmentation is made up by peoples degree of education and job status/title. Class a is upper middle class higher managerial, administrative or professional, b is middle class intermediate managerial, administrative or professional, c1 is lower middle class Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional, c2 skilled working class skilled manual workers, d working class semi and unskilled Manuel workers and e Those at the lowest levels of subsistence Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others. A good example of class segmentation being used is by the NRS to collect data on what types of audience read what newspaper. Audience is also segmented by age. This is done to help maximize an audience e.g. a film is aimed at a specific age because if they focus on making the film for a specific age then the majority of the age group will want to see the film thus giving them a large audience. Age is also used because it helps classify if a product is sutiable for a certain audience e.g. a film might not be sutiable for anyone below the age of 15 but the film would be sutiable for someone 15 and over so they would rate the film as 15+. Media audiences are also segmented into religion this because certain products are aimed at people with certain religions. This is done in order to narrow cast and provide a product for a very specific audience an example of this is radio Islam it is a radio stations only aimed people who are Muslims or believe in Islam. Gender is one of the two main ways audience is segmented in the media. It is the most straight forward way to segment the audience and its very effective. In order to work out the audience for a product the first thing to do is decide what gender it is aimed at this is because it’s a really fast way of determing your audience. A good example of a product in the media targeted at a specific gender is heat magazine because it is specifically aimed at females because they talk about topics that mainly females are interested in but that’s not to say no males will buy it. Ethnicity is another way of segmenting media udiences. It is very narrow cast like religion and it is used to get aim a product at a specific audience. An example of a product that is aimed at a specific ethnicity is Bollywood the indian film industry, there films are aimed at people that are of Indian ethnicity. Audience in the media are also segmented into location this is done with things like news
programmes and radio stations because people don’t want listen to news on the tv or radio that doesn’t effect them or is not to do with the area they live in so studios like the bbc have radio stations and channels for certain regions so people can be updated with news that effects them. It is also the same for the weather forecast they have specific channels or radio stations for their regions. 4)Advertising is important to media production because it provides an income for the company that is making the product. Then they can keep on making the product. And it helps keep on providing jobs for the people that work for the company. Advertising is also important to media production because it can define what sought of products the media company make as with advertising an audience is already provided for the product being advertised e.g. harveys sponsors coronation street because coronation street has the perfect audience for there product as there harveys is furniture store and their will be 10 million people watching corrie while sitting on their furniture so the advet appeals to them. So media companies will make certain programmes that advertisers would like to target there product at so they make programmes that will make them the biggest amount of money from advertising e.g. if media companies know that a company like mcdonals would pay a lot of money to advertise there product they will make a specific channel or programme that targets an audience that likes fast food would watch so then mcdonalds pays them loads of money to advertise there product. So when media company make their products they don’t just have to think about the size of the audience the product will bring them but also the type of audience the product will bring them. 5)A researchers job is find out things like themes that are to do with a tv show. They also interview or contact potential candidates to go onto the show and they check out their stories. On radio shows they may do research to find out the news for the day. They also oversee clients accounts and different research products. Researchers are also expected to keep the company in touch with its customers and inform the company of any marketing and investment descions. Researchers are also expected to commission other companies researchers to carry research out on the companies behalf. A researcher is also incharge of organising internal research amoungst staff and customers. A researcher starts of as a research executive overseeing the day to day running of specific projects from the commissioning stages to the final presentation to the client. A researcher may also have to design the best way to fufill the clients needs, manage a budget and advise on questionnaire design, brief interviewers, monitor the conduct of the research process, check and analysis data and lastly write a results and recommendation paper for your client which the researcher may have to present to them. 6) To asses the viability of a product you need to break your product down into 5 stages financial funds, skills needed to produce, adiqute equipment, the right support/assistance to produce product and the time to complete the product. To asses the finances of the product you need to work out the potential income from the product and compare it with the amount of money you think it will cost to produce, this is how you indicate the viability of the product. A good example of accesing the viability of a product is when I made my advert for whiskas. To access the viability of the advert I looked at how much it would cost and I found it was
viable because I already had all the equipment and skills I needed to make it so I didn’t have to hire anyone to help me make it or buy any new equipment. Then I looked at if I had the necessary skills to make the ad and I realised I did by looking at all the equipment I would be using to make the ad and seeing if I knew how to operate the equipment I needed. I also looked at whether I had the equipment I needed to make the product e.g. camera and sound equipment and editing software and I knew I would because it was provided by the school so the equipment was viable. I had to look at what support I would require when making the ad and I looked at this by thinking about what couldn’t I do that I needed help with and whether there will be the right protocals in place to give me the support needed and as I had an lsa to support and help me I judged that it was viable. Lastly I looked at whether I had enough time to produce the product and I did this by creating a gnat chart and looking at how many days it will take me to complete each task e.g. a shooting script might take 1 day and a story board might take 2. Then I realised I had enough time to fit everything in so I knew the product was viable. 7)A swot analysis is where you asses your product in the market that it competes. You asses your product on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. When looking at strengths of a product it can be things like, it’s the best selling product of its kind, it’s the cheapest product on the market. Weaknesses of a product that you could find in a swot analysis could be things like nestle only have a 20% market share of the chocolate market or nestle is only the 5 th most sold brand. A good example of threat that could be found is cabuary controls 50% of the chocolate market. An opportunity in a swot analysis could be something like if nestle buy out a small company like asda’s chocolate limited then there market share will grow by 15%. An example of the swot analysis I did for whiskas is Strengths:Whiskas canned is the number one pet selling brand in the UK. It made 87.5 million last year. Mars master foods dominates the pet food market in the UK as it has a share of 45% of the market. Not many competitors Weaknesses: Whiskas is in competition with its parent companies other brand pedigree canned which made £82.1m. opportunities: you could argue that pedigree canned food takes some of the market share that whiskas could potentially have, they could combine the two and make whiskas a stronger brand and more effective product. Threats: The third biggest brand is nestles felix canned which made 82 million last year a 32% market share. 8)Copy right is where a person or company can legally protect a product or piece of work from other people trying to steal it and claiming its theirs. It is important for media production because it tries to prevent people from stealing the product and selling it on illegally or giving it away for free thus stopping a media company from losing money. For example on flickr people copy right a photograph they have taken so people cant steal it to sell on or claim they took the photo. Books are also copy righted so people can not reproduce/republish the book e.g. harry potter and the goblet of fire. 1)Primary research is research you carry out yourself e.g. things like surveys and questionnaires, its research that doesn’t already exist and secondary research is research that already exists/been published by an organisation. You can find
secondary research in books, journals and on the internet. Quantitative is research like questionnaires and surveys that can be presented in a numerical form e.g. bar char. Qualitative is research that often includes people views, opinions and preferences e.g. a survey or focus group. 2)When making a survey the factors you need to consider do your questions make sense, can you only put an answer in only one box. Make sure you don’t over complicate the questions and don’t have to many questions. 3) A focus group is where you get a small group of your target audience and you get them to look at your product and evaluate it by answering a questionnaire or they can give you feedback and tell you how to improve it and what works well. 4) When undertaking secondary research it is important that you understand the purpose of the original research. Also you must consider who commissioned the research and when the research was conducted as these factors can change the way you view the research. For example if you were researching the effects of advertising on children, you could find a piece of evidence that suggests something like when advertising cigarettes the advert does not encourage people to by them but then you find out the research was conducted in the usa in the 1960’s and was sponsored by a tobacco supplier. 1) In your presentation the key things you would outline are an • introduction to your research where you will outline its purpose and its aims • An explanation of the methods and techniques used while researching • research data presented in a graph or chart or survey • a conclusion based on your research findings • a proposal based on your conclusion. 2a) Intrapersonal communication means communication within you, and includes all of the thoughts, fears, and anxieties you might have about your presentation and if you control these the presentation will go well 2b) Interpersonal communications means face to face communication between two or more people it includes spoken and non verbal communication. 2c) Non verbal communication is anything you do in terms of body language like clothes, posture, facial expressions and hand and arm movements. 2d) Paralanguage is not what you say but how you say it so tone of voice, volume, pace 2e) Visual aids is anything you might use visually to help explain or demonstrate your product like a picture or graph. 3) To improve your presentation orally you should try and speak clearly and slowly. You should also try and give eye contact to the person you’re talking to while you’re speaking.
4) To improve your written presentation and make it look as professional as possible you should get rid of any spelling mistakes and proof read your presentation several times. You also shouldn’t have large amounts of text on the page. Try and add a couple of pictures every few slides to break it up a bit and be consistent in design.