Unit 6: Media Campaigns

Activity 1 – Audience Research

Who is your audience?

Primary research and findings

The primary target audience for the Media Studies Showcase is going to be pupils in Year 9 and Year 11 who
want to learn more about the subject and might want to take it as a GCSE option, or as A Level or BTEC L3.
The primary audience will be pupils from Bishop Challoner boys and girls schools who are about to make
their subject choices. I also need to encourage Year 11 pupils to stay at the 6 th form as well as taking Media
Studies. My secondary audience is going to be Year 11 pupils from different schools in the borough who
might be interested in coming to Bishop 6th form. Therefore I need to think about how I can get information
to them so that they know when the event is taking place.

I carried out some secondary research into young people in Tower Hamlets so that I could learn about their
habits and interests. I found out from the Tower Hamlets council website that young people are very
interactive onsocial media and only 13% of secondary students either do not own a phone or don’t have
acess to social media. 94.5% of students said they participate in at least on activity per week like attending
an event or helping charity.

I then carried out a survey to find out more detail about pupils at Bishop Challoner school. Below are my
findings.

From this question I have learned that Snapchat

and Instagram sure the most popular of them all
however they are all quite popular. I will be using
Instagram to market part of the campaign as it is
the most popular and I will also use twitter to
market the numbers are still quite high. From my
own experience of using Snapchat advertisements
are not very common and are easily ignored.

From this graph I can see that I will have to be

quite active on social media as young people
spend quite a lot of time on social media 4-8
hours is a big chunk of the day and that is the
average time. I will need to ensure that I have a
cross platform promotion that is cohesive and will
time my promotions in a synchronised way
 The majority of people said that they are
likely to see a film poster on the side of a
bus however due to expenses we may have
to advertise in a local newspaper or around
the borough. I will need to find out the cost
of bus advertising.

Promoting in a local newspaper could be

helpful to those who read it occasionally as
they may not use social media very much or
be aware of the social media pages. I could
put the poster in the newspaper and also in
the school magazine.

Not many people tend to go to events

aimed at their age group so we may have
to think out the box on how we market
this campaign maybe to competitions and
make it really interactive.

Activity 2 – Responding to the Commission

■ What is the purpose of the commission?

The purpose of the commission is to encourage Year 9 and Year 11 pupils from Bishop Challoner
Federation of Schools as well as from other schools in the borough, to attend a showcase to promote
the Media Studies department. The Media Studies department has not had as many students taking
the subject, particularly at KS5, and it isn’t as popular as other subjects. This is due to pupils being
pushed more towards facilitating subjects such as Science and Maths. The Media department is
really keen to get pupils back to arts subjects and this event is going to be part of a wider series of
events to promote the Arts Faculty including the school play and the Arts Exhibition taking place in
Spring.
■ What is the ethos and reputation of the client?
The campaign is going to predominantly raise awareness of the importance of Media Studies. The
department has three teachers who have all been at the school for more than 10 years and have
excellent exams results. The teachers believe that living in London it is really important that young
people have the chance to develop skills that will prepare them for industries that are in London.
They also think that a narrow curriculum is not for everyone – not everyone is good at the most
academic subjects, so they want to make sure that pupils know what media is about. There is also
 the problem that pupils have misconceptions about Media studies, such as they’ll be sitting around
watching films in lessons. The department want to show off the work that the students have made
as well as show what happens in lessons.
■ What is the message of your campaign?
The message of my campaign is that Media Studies is both challenging and fun. I want to show that
creative subjects are as important as the academic subjects and that they should come to the event
to learn more about it. Media might not be what they expect it to be – it’s better!
■ What geographical/demographical opportunities are there?
As the school is in tower hamlets in London there are a lot of geographical privileges in terms of
promoting to a young audience as we have a lot of busses with posters on and they are always
moving to different parts of London, also its quite populated therefore the more people that see it
may promote to people they know as it is quite a social area. The demographics of the audience is
that they are young so I will use social media to promote the event. To promote to the Bishop pupils
I will also use the boards around the school to display the poster. I can also hand out leaflets in
assemblies to raise awareness.
■ What are the restrictions on the client?
Some of the restrictions that will affect the age range of the event is the short films as the themes
used are quite hard hitting so we will either need to limit the age group to over 16’s only for the last
part of the event or have permission slips or parental guidance. Another thing that is quite restricting
is social media age limits, certain social media does not allow some ages usually its under 14s