Ten Audience Analysis Exercises - EFL Classroom 2.0

Ten Ways to Use an Old Stack of Magazines
1. Assume that you work for an advertising agency, and your job is to create a
classification system that explains the kinds of advertisements in a particular
magazine to help account executives determine whether their client's products
would fit in the magazine. You need to explain what kinds of advertisements are
normally included in the magazine, including some detail about how the
advertisements present the product or service to readers. Here's a possible way
that the document would be used: an account executive is placing ads for a new
children's breakfast cereal that is targeting health-conscious parents. The
executive would pull your document to see whether the ad would fit in the
magazine that you've examined.
To get started, pull all the advertisements from your magazine that take up a fullpage
or more (in other words, also pull ads that take up two or more pages). Now
go through the advertisements, and create a classification system to organize them
into piles. For example, you might use a classification system based on the kind of
product, the persuasive appeal used in the advertisement, or the segments of the
audience that the advertisement is targeting. Once you've created these large
categories, look for sub-categories that fit the ads (for instance, use of color,
amount of text, and so on). When you've divided all the ads, write a paper that
explains your classification system.
[TWO TIPS: (1) If you ask students to bring their own magazines to class for this
assignment, be sure that they understand that they need to bring a magazine that
they are willing to destroy. (2) This assignment can be adapted by asking students
to do an analysis of the magazine readers based on the advertisements that they
find in the magazine.]
2. Write an analysis of the readers who write letters to the editor for your particular
magazine. Because there are only a handful of letters in any magazine, you might
want to look at the letters from two or three issues to simplify the process of
drawing conclusions about the people who have written the letters. Who are these
readers? Based on these letters, what are the readers of your magazine interested
in? What issues are important to them? What is the purpose of their letters? Do
the letters show differing opinions or agreement? What conclusions can you draw
when you think of the letters as a collected group--what do they have in common?
You need to turn in the pages from your magazine that include the letters you're
analyzing. If you're working with your own magazine and you don't mind tearing
out the pages, you can pull the original pages out and staple them to your paper. If
you don't want to tear up your magazine or you're working with a borrowed
magazine or a magazine at the library, attach a photocopy of the pages. Be sure to
include all the letters for each issue that you examine.