Monday 13 March 2017

Demographics and Psychographics

Demographics is a technique used in modern day media marketing to assign audiences into categories such as age, race, gender, income and many other variables about a consumer.

There are 6 different demographics based around income:

A: Higher class citizens. Doctor's, lawyers, large business owners, etc.

B: Middle class citizens. Teachers and creative occupations such as artists.

C1: White collar jobs. Office workers, small business owners, specialist staff.

C2: Skilled manual workers. Plumbers, builders, blue collar jobs.

D: Semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Retail, lower class income.

E: Unemployed, low to no income. Students, pensioners and casual worker.s

Psychographics segmentation divides the market into groups based on social class, lifestyle and personality characteristics. It's based on the assumption that the audience will consume products based on their individuality and personality traits. The various types of psychographics include:

Mainstreamers: Who seek to be conformative and safe in their purchases. The largest and most conventional of the groups.

Aspirers: Who seek status. Tend to be materialistic and more particular about their appearance and how other's view them. More common among young people.

Succeeders: Who seek control. Like to be the one's setting the trends rather than following them. Tend to be upper class citizens with a high income.

Resigned: Who seek survival. Stick to what they already know and are the most secluded to modern trends. Most common among older people.

Explorers: Who seek discovery. In quite the contrast to the resigned group, this group loves exploring new trends they are new to and value difference and adventure.

Reformer: Seeks enlightenment. Doesn't like to be restricted by trends and prefer to do whatever they feel is best, regardless of what other's view of them. Socially aware with independent judgement.

Sunday 5 March 2017

Black Mirror

I watched Season 3, Episode 1, titled 'Nosedive' of the British television show 'Black Mirror'. To put it bluntly, I loved it. This particular episode was centralized around Lacie, a seemingly young woman trying to move up in the world. However in the dystopian future this episode is set in, social media 'ratings' are everything. She is a 4.2 out of 5 and this means she's already quite upper class, living in a nice neighborhood with quite a lot of money and minimal problems. When she tries to move up in the world by becoming her old 'friend' Naomi's maid of honour to get more ratings from the very high rated guests, she takes a nosedive in ratings, hence the title, through a series of unfortunate events. This episode takes a very good, serious look at modern day societies obsession with social media where the amount of digital praise you get on a post is everything. In this fictional world, it's amplified to the point where it even determines your well-being, as shown by a truck driver we meet who helps our protagonist. It is extremely obvious this is a metaphor for real life as we base our self worth on likes on social media and various other forms of superficial ratings. We see Lacie's journey from near the top of the popularity food chain to the bottom as she starts becoming more and more aware of how unhappy she is with her seemingly perfect life. Everything about her surroundings at the beginning of the episode connotes perfection, from the angelic, brightly coloured landscape, to her expensive and premium clothing to even her job and what she eats, it all seems very lavish and perfect. A near dream life, so it would seem. However, as she drops in social standing, her clothes become more ragged, her surroundings become more dark, gritty and she seems in general, just much lower class. And she's treated this way too. Simply raising her voice in an airport resulted in her being 'downvoted' and thrown out of the airport, being shunned by everyone who would have otherwise helped her if she had been a higher rank in social status. Eventually she reaches an epiphany where she deems all of these attempts to climb the social ladder pointless and stops worrying about her status, doing whatever she wants and this is a very clear message that we should do the same.

I also watched Season 2, Episode 1, titled 'Be Right Back'. The reason I choose this was because various sources credited it as being the best episode of the entire show. I personally disagree because I liked the previously mentioned 'Nosedive' more but it's still a brilliant episode highlighting the important issues of privacy, our over dependence on digital devices and what humanity actually is. The protagonist, 'Martha', provides personal emails, profiles, details and various other sources of information to a new program that makes a near perfect clone of her deceased fiance. The more information about him that the program gains access too, the more accurate the clone is. All is well for a while until the protagonist starts realizing that this is not, nor will it ever the father to her child, as she was pregnant with 'Ash'es child. This episode is a lot more dependent on imagery and metaphors than the previous episode and is HEAVILY reliant on the acting and performance more than anything else. This is portrayed in Ash who has to constantly switch between being very monotone and emotionless to a fake, but picture-perfect copy of Ash and his sincere emotions.

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