Evaluation: Question 3

The publishing company I chose to research into was IPC Media. This publishing company publishes over 90 different magazines. IPC Media is known for magazines such as NME, which is a rock genre magazine, and many other very well known household magazines such as LOOK and Marie Claire.

I believe that my magazine would do well for this publishing company as it is not within their already wide-set audience. I would think that NME’s target audience would be that of university students who come from the middle class family. My magazine has a target audience for urban youths aged from around 16-20, with no set class of the family of which they come from, and as the age gap is not very big.
I think this will benefit the company as it will have a more selective target audience and can then be based within one county of England, I would chose my magazine to be based in London as it is the capital and the youths within this county have a very diverse sense of style.

Another reason my magazine would benefit IPC Media, is my magazine is based upon new urban UK music, with a bit of American music chucked in. This would be a good investment for IPC media as it will connect to the other big music magazine that they publish NME without taking any of their audience. I say this as they would both be magazines on UK music, but they would have two completely different genres within UK music. As NME is more a rock/metal kind of magazine with features of different genres, my magazine is based on urban music, such as UK Grime, Funky house and some Hip Hop and R&B. So this would enable IPC Media to reach out to both ends of the UK music spectrum.

Also IPC Media say that there target audience for there men and music magazines are aged from 18-34. NME is also targeted for more the men audience, whereas my magazine is targeted towards both genders, so although my age group is smaller I am targeting both genders so it then opens up the audience more.

I would distribute my music magazine in newsagents and WHSmith’s within train stations and hospitals. I would also distribute my magazine within selected youth clubs and colleges which would change every month. I would do this as I believe it would come across to my target audience strongly. The reason I wouldn’t distribute it in WHSmith stores other than in train stations and hospital is because my target audience wouldn’t really go there on a regular basis, and a corner shop or newsagent is much more accessible to my audience that a WHSmith store. I would also distribute in different youth clubs and colleges as I believe it would receive more interest and would then capture the audience much more quickly, well in comparison to giving the magazine time to distinguish a strong audience.