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Focus Group

By Sumayyah Bailey

+For my focus group, I asked three students between the ages of 16-24 to participate. The had to be within this age range, because the majority of my target audience were females between 16-24. I asked them to discuss the images of my product shown and I gave them each a sheet with questions to be answered. The questions were: 1.  What attracts you to this magazine? 2.  Do you think the price is suitable for a pop

magazine? 3.  What helps you identify that it is a pop

magazine? 4.  Any thoughts? 5.  Is this typical of a pop magazine? As my DPS was not completed at the time, I showed them it and asked them what they would expect and what would appeal to and attract them.

+Front Cover & Contents Page: 1)  Good choice of colours, nothing clashes together and clear information. It is

bright and the layout is very formal. The colours work well together and really draw you in. The layout is appealing, it is clear and neat. The font is attractive and gets your attention. The contents is also appealing to the audience it is aimed for.

2)  Yes, I do think other magazines, especially music are more expensive. The price is reasonable but could maybe be a little cheaper to attract more people. Yes I think the price is quite suitable for an average pop magazine, so it’s reasonable.

3)  The name ‘Popie’, also the chance to win tickets. The information and the font helps. The latest albums are pop artists. The short blurbs on the front highlight the contents and shows that it is music-based.

4)  I like the colour combination and font sizes. I like the colours and the layout, I would make the title a bit bigger. I like the images used on the front and contents page as they are simple, but striking and eye-catching

5)  Some of it, however there could be more instrument photos. Not really a typical pop magazine could make it more obvious that it is pop.

If I were to do this magazine again, I would change the layout and follow more conventions to help the audience identify the genre. In terms of images, I would use more instrument images, I only used one, on the contents page and I think that instrument images would make the genre of the text more identifiable. I followed the front cover conventions of Billboard Magazine and while this is effective, as it creates a sense of community for an audience that knows that text, it also makes it hard for the audience to identify the genre ad the cover is not full of images and colours. However, the colour scheme attracted to a young, but mature audience and that appealed to my focus group members. They were pleased by the information given on the front cover, this is effective as it appeals to a psychographic audience that believe that ‘less is more’ and also draws the audience’s attention the image of the star.

+As my DPS was not completed at the time, I showed the members my flatplan and told them about what I was going to do next. They also got the chance to see the incomplete DPS and they wrote down and talked about what would attract and appeal to them and what they would expect from a pop magazine DPS. I think it would be a good idea to put the writing around the image, because it would stand out. Pop magazines are known for putting text around an image of an artist, so this will help people see that this is a pop magazine. I think you should lay it out as a Q&A, this will make the information clear and easy to read. You could use different colours to make the text less boring. The title is bold and stands out, I’d recommend using that for the text to make it interesting. I like that the image has shadows, it makes it look professional. It would look better if there was more than one image to make the second page busier. I have taken my members’ advice and used a Q&A layout on my DPS this makes the text easier to understand. This is an example of transparency in the utopian theory, which explains that an audience consumes a text because its easy to understand. I stuck with my idea of putting the text around the image. This is effective as it makes the image stand out to the audience and draws their attention. I also used another image and a pull quote and another image on the second page to break up the text and make the page more appealing.