A2 Media Studies: Target Audience

Sad Robot are an indie rock band with pop influences. This means that they have a fairly wide appeal, but not quite as mainstream as just a pop act. Bands that are similar to Sad Robot include: Paramore, VersaEmerge, White Lies and Yeah Yeah Yeahs etc.

There are certain people that we would expect to be fans of Sad Robot more than others. This is the target audience that we aimed our music video/advert/digi-pak at:

Indie rock as a genre is popular with teenagers and people in their early twenties. More specifically we would expect Sad Robot to be popular with those between the ages of 16 and 24.
We feel like Sad Robot will be liked by both sexes, as the music is not particularly aimed towards one or the other. However, with our representation of Sad Robot, featuring a female vocalist and a female bassist, it is possible that this may appeal to young women more, as it provides them with role models or simply someone who they can relate to.
Indie rock fans are likely to attend a lot of gigs.

Making Sad Robot appeal to this target audience relies a lot upon being relatable.
Indie rock bands will often have a constructed star image, that makes them look as if their star image has not been constructed at all. Instead of extravagant clothing, make up and hair styles, as seen on some mainstream pop acts, indie bands are more likely to dress in "normal" casual clothes, often with vintage influences. Dressing like their target audience gives the artists great appeal to the fans. Indie rock fans want their favourite bands to be independent of the mainstream music industry, both in the way they look and the way they sound.
To incorporate these ideas into our star image for Sad Robot we focused on dressing our band members in 'indie' style clothing. Black was worn by all three members, showing a seriousness to the band and their music. The clothes were all simple and easy for fans to recreate. This makes the band more relatable to the target audience, but the simplicity of the outfits also means that the clothing does not detract from the music (as for Indie fans, the music is always the focus).
Because of the importance of the music, and knowing that indie rock fans are also big fans of live music, we felt that our decision to do a performance based video worked very well. It could create the feeling for the fans that they were seeing the band perform live in an intimate setting, and created plenty of opportunity for direct gaze, so the band could create a relationship with the audience, which is very conventional.

Some examples of similar bands and artists using these techniques can be seen below: