Being the art director of my team I will be looking into the target audience of our magazine. This research has helped me establish our audience profiles to publish within our media pack. Initially looking into the horizon of consumer concerns when revolving around purchasing items. The four Drivers are Climate emergency, Mental health Crisis, Recession and cost of living, and conflicts and radicalism. Acknowledging these issues within current society will give us a standpoint that shows that we understand the present struggles of living and want to support our resources. Due to these Drivers, we will also consider them from a marketing and production point of view as we have to reconsider print costs so that the magazine is still affordable but we still turn a profit. Features like this will be more deconstructed within future posts.
Looking into the key emotions of the current market will help understand what the market is craving in relevance to the content. Some of the most prominent emotions were hope, enrichment, and compassion. Pulling these emotions into the tone of our content will resonate with our audience better. This resource is from 2020 which was a very different time but I still think from post-lockdown resentment a lot of these feelings follow through too.
Brands are using societal issues such as the mental health crisis to resonate with their consumers and channel empathy and loyalty into the company. Investing in the care economy is something we as a team have discussed and have already established that our magazine is going to centre around community and wellbeing. From a marketing perspective having a lot of content that supports others and welcoming events will embed us into the care community and hopefully show our audience that we resonate with and support their feelings and values to form loyalty to our brand.
From the Future Consumerist 2024 post, two key profiles stood out to me for marketing our magazine too, they were the connectors and the memory makers. These two profiles resonate the most with our target audience but through our audience profiling which I will do later, it will be more catered and specific to our genre. The connectors surround themselves with anti hustle culture and focus on sustainable outputs rather than what’s easier for them. Connectors are reinventing their lifestyle due to covid-19 and want to live a new and improved life and are searching for resources that age well and connect to their lifestyle shift. The memory makers are heavily affected by covid-19 and are sick balancing work with their social life and want to focus directly on creating and living worthwhile experiences with the people that they care about. Decluttering is a big source of memory makers and finding a way to market and present our magazine as a helpful and needed resource will help us impact the sales of our consumers.
Some part of Gen Z has started to find their safe space online within the metaverse. Having an anonyms place where you can present yourself and express yourself how you want to be online has given Gen Z a platform to tackle their mental health crisis and form communities and relationships through a variety of platforms. Discussing and researching current crises and educating themselves and sharing thoughts have given Gen Z a lot of security in these uncertain times but using this for our magazine will be incredibly helpful. We are aiming to create a community within our consumer market and create a safe space online where our consumers can discuss, educate, and entertain themselves is an element was trying to achieve. Finding the right platforms to create this however is still in the process of our development as a magazine.
Links to WGSN research used in this post:
https://www.wgsn.com/insight/article/93487#page5
https://www.wgsn.com/insight/article/86618
https://www.wgsn.com/insight/article/92984
https://www.wgsn.com/insight/article/90034#page11