Target Audience Research- Health Magazine

 Health Magazine has a target audience of about 9 million readers, which is higher than Sota Wellness' reach, but is always a goal. Health Magazine has an audience of about 32% male and 68% women, which is my magazine's target gender audience, including both men and women, but more centered around women. Our magazines have identical mission statements relating to giving inspiration and advice to people wanting to live a healthy and happy life. Health Magazine's target age audience is a median of 50 years of age, which although is a lot higher than my magazine's target audience, my magazine believes any age can achieve their healthy lifestyle goals as displayed in our Sarasota based magazine. Health Magazine markets their products through both print and media. Through print, they sell their magazines to grocery stores and doctors offices. This is similar to our magazines goal of marketing, having it in all local grocery stores and in the waiting rooms of various doctors offices. Through media, they advertise on all social media websites (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest) and they have their own website called Health.com that displays images and articles surrounding their most recent issues. For my magazine, Sota Wellness would have its own website so we are able to reach out to the younger ages online and in social media, to eventually reach out to all age groups and genders of the Sarasota, Florida area.

Other than being viewed in print version in doctors offices and grocery stores, Health Magazine advertises through social media. Here is their Instagram page, which is one of their most popular ways to reach and connect with their target audiences, other than their Pinterest and Facebook. Again, this is a technique my magazine wants to achieve, so we can grow and reach out to our target audiences more.

Health Magazine holds events to advertise their magazine, especially to health and fitness lifestyle striving audiences. In this photo below, they are holding a cardio class to help show their audiences what theyre goal as a magazine is and how they can achieve it. This appeals to both digital and real life audiences, as their magazine is advertised in person at the event, and digitally through Instagram. This is an advertising technique my magazine would like to try, as it would grow our audience numbers and, in turn, help advertise the lifestyle we want the people of Sarasota to achieve.

Health Magazine's Target Audience Media Kit for 2019:

Target Audience Research- Shape Magazine

My magazine's target audience is gender neutral, ages teenager (13-14) and up to around middle age (40-45). Since the magazine is centered around Sarasota, the target audience location is anyone living in Sarasota or surrounding areas in Florida, or even by the coast. The general audience is anyone trying to get in shape or just stay healthy through food, exercise and self care. We would sell/distribute to only Florida locations. Shape magazine is a magazine we previously researched, being a representation of our magazine's goal to look like and act like. Their target audience is a female audience, ages 25-39 who are most likely educated, employed or a mom who are wanting to better themselves. Our target audiences are similar based on the age group being teens or 20s to age 40, including women as a goal for a healthy lifestyle and audiences being smart or intelligent wanting to better themselves. Shape magazine's marketing techniques involve digital advertising. For digital, they advertise and market through social media apps like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter by featuring appealing fitness or health related photos, magazine articles and inspirational quotes or tips that relate to their mission statement. The thing that makes our magazines marketing different is that Shape Magazine made a decision a couple years ago to only publish digitally, no longer printing paper. My magazine will advertise both digitally and in print to appeal to both audiences and ultimately sell more magazines. They advertise their brand through social media, ad pop ups on websites, and online websites like FitnessMagazine.com. For my magazine, we want to market it digitally through social media sites like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook, have our own website, and showcase our name in Florida channel commercials. In print, we would go to healthy food places or gyms and give out cards with our name on them, sell our magazine in stores, and go to marathons or workout events and sell our name to the public with free samples and products.

Shape Magazine no longer advertises their magazine through print, which is not something my magazine would like to do, as selling in print will reach a larger audience. But, Shape magazine advertises largely to social media and through their website. Here is their most popular platform, being Instagram, where they digitally reach out to any health related audiences that are involved in social media. They also have Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Shape.com.

Shape magazine also hold events to help advertise their magazine. Here is one of their events where healthy lifestyle representatives came to encourage a wellness life to their audience. Their goals were advertised on walls and their articles were listed all over the event. Events like this grow audiences and encourage everyone to get in shape, which is a major goal for my magazine. We would like to hold health related events like these as sell our magazine to those people. 

Here is Shape Magazine's Target Audience Demographic for 2019:

Feedback/Revisions

After presenting my Mid Term Submission magazine, I got a good amount of feedback back to me. The feedback was more positive than negative, which boosted my confidence in my magazine submission.  I got back things that I did good on my magazine and things I need to improve on in the next quarter. A few of the good things I got back include, good quality/choice of photos, cool and fun "eye catching" fonts, great color choice that helped in creating a central theme, and a clean cover/article layout. Those were all some of my biggest goals in making this magazine and in also replicating magazines researched, so to achieve that was fulfilling. As go the compliments, there was also tips or ideas that could be added to my magazine to bring it to the "next level". There was at least one negative idea in each piece of feedback I received, some very crucial revisions that need to be made, while others will just enhance my magazine. The negative feedback included a hard to follow Table of Contents, too small of fonts on the main article, fonts and subtexts needing more variation, and specific photos weren't as enhanced or bolded as they should be. So, as I went through the negative feedback, I wrote down some of the major revisions I could make to better my 3rd Quarter Submission. Some revisions include, fixing my Table of Contents format to be easier to follow, making my fonts more consistent and fixing sizing of subtexts on my cover page, making my two page spread have larger fonts on the article, lowering the opacity on the main article picture to become more bold, and adding frames to intensify pictures throughout the whole magazine. I am very grateful to have gotten back the feedback that I did. I believe every compliment helped me ensure that what I was doing was great and on the right track. While every negative idea or tip helped me take a step back and re-evaluate a few things. All of the revisions I will make this quarter are going to help my magazine appeal to my target audience more, make it more professional resembling, and help display my overall purpose and central idea I am trying to get across. They will all assist in helping more people of Sarasota become more fit and healthy by the reading of my magazine submission and revision choices I made, based on feedback received.

Use of Conventions

How does your product use or challenge conventions of your genre?
How does it represent social groups and issues?

In my magazine product, I used several conventions used in the magazines we researched. For my group and myself specifically, we used conventions of health and fitness magazines. I used several conventions on my cover page, including a white or solid color background, a fit cover model taking up the whole page with their head covering part of the title, and words/phrases/subtexts of article titles in all fonts and colors surrounding the model. For my table of contents, I used conventions of similar format and layout. I replicated the format of having 3-4 categories of article topics and the genre they fall under, and having one section displaying articles in every issue. They all seemed to have a white/bland background with half the page being words directing to pages and the other half being photos. The table of contents page has the date in large fonts, mine was December of 2019, which was a technique I noticed was commonly used in magazines I researched. For my main article, I used some common conventions of layout of pictures and words, and having the branding/page numbers on the bottom of every page (including the table of contents). Every article I read was separated into 2-3 columns per page, so for my main article talking about a local healthy restaurant, I used 2 columns of words on the first page and 3 on the second. In magazines researched in the same genre, pictures for article were either embedded into the article or had a full page of pictures. I chose the route of embedding my photos into the words of the article. I ended up using a total of 3 pictures, which was a personal choice made, but the photos were set up next to it's identical content and had captions of what was going on in the picture, under the photo and in a smaller font. This technique was a common convention I noticed was regularly used in health and fitness magazines.
My magazine and it's conventions help represent health and fitness people, teen ages and up, in the city of Sarasota. The world commonly runs into the problem of its overweight and obese numbers. So, eating healthy and keeping up with exercise is very important, and this magazine is trying to assist in that, specifically for Sarasota and its people. If you don't keep up with yourself, its easy to harm your health or even worse. So as our magazine applies to teen ages and up residents in Sarasota, we want to give tips, locations, and encouragement to our readers and help our target audience achieve their goals.