Resolving my Target Audience Issue

From my interview and focus group research, I have been addressing the possible issue of the older demographic of my 17-35 year old target audience being isolated due to my young, 17 year old presenter. However I found that overall, my target audience is opinionatively appropriate.

It was picked up on that younger people are represented perhaps most strongly through my youthfully fast paced, "choppy" editing style and young cast; however the formal, educated vocabulary of my narration and complex issue in focus will attract older audiences. I also found from my interview with a member of my older demographic that he did not feel isolated by my young presenter, and respected her due to her knowledge and professional deliverance. He also stated that using a young presenter would break the stereotype of young people being less interested or educated on political issues. Therefore, overall I have concluded that my target audience is appropriate, and whilst my younger audience is represented through my youthful documentary style and cast, my older audience is represented equally through my narration, costume and topic.

From the opinions I collected within this research, I've also considered marketing more closely to feminists rather than educating all people on sexism, although my documentary would be more informative to non-feminists. Therefore I've developed my target audience to include an active audience of educated feminists and people interested in sexism or the media, and a passive audience of non-feminists interested in Channel 4's successful expository documentary programming, or curiously attracted through the social media debates featuring my hashtag (two-step flow concept). My active audience will seek to be educated with information which supports their opinions and could be brought into debates and entertained by coverage issues which they are interested or passionate about, whereas my passive audience will be educated on an issue which they were perhaps unfamiliar with, and entertained by the youthful and interesting style/ composition of my documentary. Furthermore, although my documentary is supportive of the feminist perspective as its purpose is to present an awareness of sexism, it considers opposing arguments throughout therefore removing an isolating bias, which could actively attract anti-feminists who will seek to challenge the documentary through debates and social media.