Layla May: researching target audience

To find out who our target audience is, our group are researching into the artists: avril lavigne and Lily Allen. These similar acts we have indentified for our genre research are the basis of our research into target audience of teenage girls.

Lily Allen's Fans

This fansite is very useful in representing Lily's audience as it is very girly and fun.
The website advertises the site perfect-look.org, which is a website that lets you know about the latest fashion. Users can make a dress up doll, tag and share fashion pictures, e.t.c. which presents the target audience is very girly and young.
On the website it quotes, ' Lily Allen is taking on a new adverture by opening up a store called Lucy In Disguise. But don't worry, we will still be following her every move! Stay updated with the latest photos, videos and news items! With a gallery which has over 23,200 pictures, oh-lily.com is the biggest Lily Allen fansite on the web today!' - again, it mentions clothes (Lily's store), which appeals to a female audience and the fact that that follow her 'every move' shows that the audience are very interested in her private life. Therefore, on our website, our group should consider this by definetly using a gallery with the 'latest photos, videos and news items'

This fan site is a perfect example of something that helps distribute Lily's products as it keeps fans up to date with her latest music, concerts and news.

The affiliates use on this website present Lily's audience perfectly. All these celebrities are very fashionable and have particularly appeal to a young female audience.

These Affiliates are from Britain as well as the US and therefore, they cover a widebase of fans.

Although there most popular audience are female, all of these Affiliates (that have be chosen because they have a similar target audience to Lily Allen) attract a male audience also because they are attractive. This is something we should consider for our artist.

It's interesting to look at who the artist is 'into' and what there interests are as this gives an idea as to why the artist's star image appeals to their audience. Looking at who Lily is following on Twitter helps this research. Lily Allen is following her sister Sarah Owen who she opened a fashion renatl shop with (Lucy in Disguise - which she's also following) in 2010. She is also following Lana Del Ray and Marina & the diamonds, who's star image appeal are beauty and fashion.

Here is a image of Lily's audience at one of her concerts. This shows her audience are female and male but also are a bit younger than what we thought. I'd say her target audience are more 11-18 years than 15-30 years. This is supported by the fact that Lily's fan websites and her social media websites are constantly discussing fashion, beauty and relationships.

Lily Allen has nearly 4 million followers on Twitter: an absolutely enormous number of fans. This is primarily because she is very open and frank about her personal life and her fans particularly enjoy the intimacy and closeness this offers them. These are some pictures that she posted on her twitter that represent how intimate she is with her fans about her feelings and personal life: (this is something we should consider with our artist)

This is a significant star image appeal that her target audience buy into as it's fun and entertaining - she let's her fans into her life instead of being detached and dull.

Her followers:

Mainly young girls and some young boys. The majority are girls that seem to look at Lily Allen as a role model for fashion and beauty.

To them, Lily is fun, friendly and intimate which is exactly what her fans want. This is very similar for our audience.

Lily's audience help distribute her products through their fan sites and the fact that so many follow her on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Her MySpace is also very successful in appealing to her audience:

This advertises her music extremely well and shows her own personal photos, which again appeals to her audience because it's more intimate: she becomes a sort of role model to young girls this way.

Lily's YouTube:

This is auto generated by YouTube and shows all her latest music videos that are available for all her fans. It also shows her related channels, some of which are videos made by her fans such as lyrics to her songs, which will help circulate the artist's products even more.

It also gives a description about Lily Allen (From Wikipedia) that perfectly represents why she is so appealing. Her 'cheeky' attitude is attractive to teenagers as she is fun and entertaining and the fact that she first released her demos on the Internet support how important an audience are to distribute an artist's products - if she wasn't popular with them she might have not become successful.

Avril Lavigne's Fans

Her official website immediately represents one star appeal: she sells fragrances that will appeal to her female target audience. This is something significant that we should consider with our artist as it is also a way of circulating the artist's products as girls will see their friends with the product and want to buy it.

This image also illustrates how the artist keeps her fans up to date with the latest news that is appealing to an audience because she becomes more intimate.

Her fans are from a wide nationality because she appeals to a wide audience: this image presents a video in reply to questions fans from Brazil asked the artist. This is a key star image appeal that is perfect to attract a wide audience as she is friendly and attractive. Using video updates in a website is something that we should consider as it's a fun a friendly tool that helps distribute the artist's products - becomes more popular.

Similar to Lily Allen, social media sites are a significant tool that Avril Lavigne uses, which involes her fans tremendously and therefore, is a successful star image appeal.

Here is an image of the artist's Twitter and some of the people that she follows. This gives me an idea into why she is so appealing to her fans and therefore what her fans interests are because she is similar to these people:

One of the people that the artist is following is a snowboarder/skater, which attracts her fans that are quite tomboy and punk as this is part of her star image appeal. Although our artist isn't like this, on her Twitter she could be following beauty and fashion things (similar to Lily Allen) as this is what her main star image appeal will be and what her fans will be interested in.
Both Avril and Lily have this cheeky side about them, which is fun for their fans because it makes them more interesting. They represent this through their social media sites, particularly through their pictures and videos, which allows their fans into their world. This is something we should consider with our artist. Here are some of Avril's images on her Twitter:

I definetly think that we should do this with our artist by taking some pictures during our shooting day (behind the scenes) and some pictures of the artist with her friends as both Lily Allen's and Avril's target audience love this.

Looking at the artist's website, it is clear that she has lots of fans across the world (lots of different nationalities).

This fan site I found is Spanish:

Furthermore, this is a 'rock' website and therefore presents her fans has quite punky, fun and also quite young.

This website also shows pictures of the artist at London Fashion Week, which also suggests that her target audience are interested in fashion (same as Lily Allen)