T5 - Methods of Research

It is important to conduct research before planning starts on a new advertising project as without it you may not have adequate information on which to make the advert effective at selling the product/service.
Some of the reasons you would take the time pre-planning include;

• media production can be expensive so you want to make sure it will attract the right audience, and that the audience will react to it in the right way
• e.g. you want children to eat broccoli, so you don't show broccoli being the antagonist in a cartoon as this creates a negative image of the product.
•  To ensure the product can be completed within the time allocated, and within a given budget.

There are three main types of research that can be conducted;

• Audience research - The who? Useful when you want to find out WHERE to advertise, as to achieve maximum sales of the product/service.
• Market research - The what? Helps to discover if the product/service you're trying to sell isn't already out there.
• Production research - The How? Required to stick to a budget, don't want to spend all the resources on 10 seconds of footage during a 2 minute advert.

Audience research

• Who is the audience?
• Where do they live?
• What do they do for a living?
• What and when do they watch?
• What are they interested in?

Market research

• It is important to understand what products are already available to the public
• How to compete with the other companies offering the same/similar product?
• How aware are the audience of the media production?
• What are the attitudes towards the product/service?

Production research

• Directly relate to the production of the media product (advert in this case)
• Assess' the viability of the project
• Plan production logistics (staff/location/licenses/equipment)

There are four main categories which can be used to organise the types of research available;

• Primary - Original data collected by yourself.

Pros/Cons

1. pro - trustable and reliable, you know where the information is coming from.
2. con - takes up more time/money/resources to collect the data yourself

• Secondary - Data that's been collected by someone else, reusing old data

Pros/cons

1. pro - cheaper, resource wise, to use already collected data
2. con - potentially untrustworthy source.

• Quantitative - Statistics involving numbers/graphs/charts

Pros/cons

1. pro - simple to understand/interpret, raw data
2. con - only gives you numbers, not a more personal reaction e.g. why x-amount of people watched a program

• Qualitative - written, more personal, peoples feelings towards a product, generally from a questionnaire.

Pros/cons

1. pro - gives reasons, help understand how the audience feels about a product
2. con - excessive questionnaires can be aggravating after a while, sometimes too personal for the situation.