TARGET AUDIENCE PROFILE

When looking into the soap that we are going to produce, we have
to take into consideration who our target audience is going be, and
who we are aiming our media product at. I am going to be defining
my target audience based on class, race, attitudes & beliefs, gender
and age.

Class

Because of the nature and theme of our media product, typically

you would think that it was aimed at people of a high class.
However, due to the storylines we are going to aim it at any of the
demographic groupings.

A – Upper Middle Class – top management, bankers, lawyers,

doctors and other professionals.
B – Middle Class – Immediate Managerial, Administrative or
Professional.
C1 – Lower Middle Class - Supervisory or clerical and junior
managerial, administrative or professional.
C2 – Skilled Working Class – Skilled Manual Workers
D - Working Class – Semi-Unskilled Manual
E – Lowest of Subsistence - Casual or lowest grade workers,
pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their
income.

Also, the ‘Young & Rubicam’ way of separating an audience came

into fashion when people started questioning the concept of class.
This then made producers think about audiences in a different way.

Mainstreamers – make up 40% of the population. They like security,

and belonging to a group.
Aspirers – want status and the esteem of others. Like status
symbols, designer labels etc. Live off credit and cash.
Succeeders – people who have already got status and control.
Reformers – define themselves by their self-esteem and self-
fulfilment.

For our piece we are aiming it at B, C1 and the C2 demographic

groups because these are the people that are most likely to be able
to emphasise with the characters. It may also appeal possibly to D
and E demographic groups as it displays the ideal lifestyle that they
perhaps aspire too. For example, the character of the gold digger
Emma-Louise Rolfe originally comes from a lower class background
than most of the characters in the soap which may make her easier
to emphasise with.

Race

Our soap opera will not be aimed at a particular race and the
characters will be mostly white-Caucasian however the character
Rochella Wembridge will be played by a mixed race (Caribbean)
actress as the character is supposed to be conventionally attractive
with tanned skin and long dark hair. This will help her play to her
characteristics and is not stereotypical of the usual promiscuous
character – which would be a female with fake tan and white blonde
hair.

Gender

As our soap is to a similar nature as that of soaps such as

‘desperate housewives’ and ‘Hollyoaks’ it will be targeted at both
males and females as it will contain characters that will appeal to
both genders. For example the character of ‘Brad’ is created so that
young males interested in girls and their social life can empathise.
He may also become a role model for males as the financial
background of a majority of the male characters is an appealing
attribute and one that most young men would wish to aspire too.
Although the soap will be aimed at both males and females we
expect a larger female audience as the stereotypical drama of the
‘rich’ and ‘glamorous’ is traditionally more appealing to the female
gender. For example shows such as ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Desperate
Housewives’ (which our soap is quite heavily based on) are mainly
targeted at the female audience as they are more likely to focus on
a character they aspire to be like and use them as a role models.
We expect this to be quite frequent with our soap as the characters
will be the typical ‘young’ and ‘attractive’ stereotypes such as
‘Emma-Louise Rolfe’ who marries into money and there for gains
the life of luxury that everyday women dream of. This sort of
character will appeal to females as a form of role-modelling and the
male audience as the female (and male) characters will be groomed
and attractive.

Age

In our episode we have many characters of different ages. The old

couple (The Jarvis’s) would have a better impact on the older
generation when it comes to target audience because they would
play the elderly couple and how they would be like in real life. Thus,
making people aspire or relate to them. Also, to make our soap
attractive to the younger generation aswell, we had to add the
younger characters in too. The stereotypical teenage sweetheart,
‘Jessica’, will appeal to girls of a similar age and also boys because
of how she is perceived to be this attractive and innocent character.
By adding different ages into our soap, we are opening up the
variety of audience that we are attracting, whereas if we just had
characters of all the same age, the soap wouldn’t be as exciting and
wouldn’t be as interesting to people of all different ages.

As you can see from this chart,’

Desperate Housewives’ accumulated
18.5 million viewers in just one
showing. This makes ‘Desperate
Housewives’ 7th in line. Also,
another soap that is in the chart is
‘Ugly Betty’ who got 13.7 million
viewers worldwide.

This is good because we are aiming

our soap at the same target
audience groups both the soaps aim
at.