Demographics research

 In this blog post I will concentrate on the demographics of my target audience. Of course it would be the easiest to say that my project is for everyone, but the truth is that nothing is really directed at every single person. For example my project is definitely not directed at young children, but my project last term was specifically directed at them. 

Who would I say my project is for? 

I would say that my project [animation] is directed at teenagers and young adults. By teenagers and young adults I mean people from age the age of 13 to the age of 25.  It is supposed to be for them to make them feel less lonely. They are the ones that are mostly affected by mental health problems, because they are at the age of developing mental illnesses, which can cause confusion and the feeling of being lonely and misunderstood by everyone. 50% of lifetime mental illnesses are being developed by the age of 14 and 75% by the age of 24 (National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2021). That confusion and strong feelings connected to developing those problems need to be addressed. 

I also decided to look at exactly how to make content appealing to my target audience. Teens are obsessed with sharing everything on social media (Outbrain, 2021). I knew about that because I am a young adult and I observe myself and my friends and our addiction to social media. In order to make something relatable to people this age, it is critical to make it connected to their interests or in this case, often addictions. I was aware of that planning my animation. This is why I wanted to make sure that the animation would have elements of the character just scrolling through social media or posting online. I knew I needed to make it all relatable for teens to make it interesting and something they are keen on watching. 

I also thought about the other part of my project which are the posters. I thought about directing them strictly at adults - parents. I want the parents to also be the ones interested in the problem, because as I mentioned in my previous research, parents can cause a lot of harm if they do not completely understand the issue. The target audience of the posters would be parents of teenagers mostly. That would mean, people between ages 35 and 55. The posters will be strictly connected to the animation, but they will be 'talking' to the parents. Teenagers mostly get everything they know from the internet and that is why the animation would be easier to access for them, when the parents get information from variety of sources and a poster hanging on the street could possibly be easier for them to notice, for example on the way to work. Parents usually are working and they often need to get from home to work, when teenagers and university students have been studying remotely for the past year and it can be a lot more difficult for them to notice a poster in the street. 

I generally thing I am doing a good job addressing my project at the target audience it is for. I analyzed my target audience and mentioned the reasons for choosing this audience in the posts on mental health awareness I did. I have personally conducted the research on mental health awareness between teenagers and young adults and I got some interesting data that I have analyzed. I have also done some secondary research that persuaded me to also have a part of my project focus on the adults because they are a big part of the problem. I think I understand my target audience and the demographics and I think I will be able to address the project to them. 

Reference list:

National Alliance on Mental Illness, (2021), Teens and Young Adults. Available at: https://www.nami.org/Your-Journey/Teens-Young-Adults  (Accessed: 14/05/2021).

Outbrain (2021), [Beginner – 102] Content Marketing to Teenagers: Trends and Platforms, 'Outbrain'. Available at: https://www.outbrain.com/help/advertisers/content-marketing-to-teenagers/ (Accessed: 14/05/2021)