Media Researcher

I haven’t always been a media researcher for Give Blood. I first started off as someone who just recruited the actors for adverts either on TV or radio. A few years later, and after I had gained some much needed experience, the company gave me a job that goes into much more depth than the previous one I had. The job of a media researcher requires a lot of effort, thought and research for areas such as: the audience, market and production. The reason that so much depth the research goes into it because the company want to try and appeal to the audience through modern and up-to-date ideas and techniques. 

The audience research is very important whilst organising a TV and radio campaign. It gives us the chance to identify our target audience for the advertisement side of the campaign, which means that we can start to think of ways that will appeal to them. We can also then start to base other ideas for the campaign around them, which will in turn increase the chances of a successful project. One of the ways we gather information from our audience is through setting up our ‘Give Blood-Save Lives’ stand in shopping centres and high streets around London. We have around 10 members of staff who work on that particular stand, where two of them stay with the stall and the other eight go and interview people around the streets/ in the centre. The two at the stand are there to interview people as well as being a place where all the results from the day are kept. The types of questions we would ask whilst interviewing would be; whether they have ever given blood before, would they ever give blood, their age, what area they currently live in, what is the programme they watch most on TV, what radio station do they listen to most, do they read magazines and do they own a phone that can download applications on. These questions all relate to our campaign and trying to find out about the audience so we can appeal and show the advertisement of our charity to them. We can find out key information which can help us of where to advertise, at what times and what platform to use e.g. magazines, phone apps etc. After we have received the results that we wanted, all of the interviewers get their clipboard papers and put them in a big file. We then view the audiences’ demographics , which focuses on solely the different sections of the population in London. Once the information has been checked through and filtered into a pattern of matching answers, we then begin to look at a geodemographic analysis. As we are aiming at residents/commuters of London because, according to the NHS's recent figures, it has proven throughout the last 10 years that London is the place that has the highest rate of blood donators. This in result means that all of the qualitative and quantitive research we did, enables us to meet the interests and appeal to our target audience.

Reaching out and persuading people to donate blood to our charity is very important; it’s what we evolve around. This is all achieved by performing some market research regarding previous controversies go giving blood in the news and other blood donation adverts. To receive these types of results, I firstly organised a group of workers to carry out some secondary research where they would go on the Internet and find any news stories that related to blood donations. The type of stories I would be looking for were the negative ones because I will be able to see what went wrong during these blood donations, then improve and reduce the risk of it happening again. Another team that I set up was to research other blood donation advertisements because i didn't want to have the fact same advert as all of the others. This would create a very boring vibe to it and wouldn't catch anyone's attention, which is something that we want to do. Both of these teams could find this information through statistics online, news reports or complaints that people have written up online. Researching other blood donation charities' advertisements is called 'competitor analysis research'. We do it so I can see what the other competitors are doing similar and differently to us, and work around what makes a good/bad advert. They all target the same thing that makes the process a lot easier. After receiving various stories, analysis of other adverts and suggestions of what to use with out campaign; I go onto a process, which is called 'quantitative research'. This is done when I want to find information from data gathering agencies such as; 'BARB'. 'BARB' is an agency that measures viewing figures of television advertisements. From this program I used it to see what channels the nation was watching, especially in London, and at what times they were being seen by the most people. I thought that ITV1 would be a sufficient channel to air the TV advert on as the adverts were being watch by the most people on here, and on a Saturday night. As the campaign includes radio advertisement as well, the radio version of 'BARB' is a program called 'RAJAR'. They measure the nations radio audiences, and from using this I came to the conclusion that Capital FM on a Saturday morning was being listened to the most. Both of these methods using quantitative research helped me in deciding when and where the best time/place was to air the Give Blood campaign.

The next step is production research. This is when we research a product or a service in order to retrieve information that I can use in the future. With all campaigns I carry out production research with my team because it lets me get the most recent, up-to-date and modern ideas that will appeal to the audience. Whist doing this research I have to consider where the advert is going to be filmed, who is going to be involved in it and also what is it going to based upon e.g. a story or just a standard advert. The location is important because we want to find somewhere that would relate/appeal to the audience. Since we were targeting people in London, the best location to do it would probably be in Central London somewhere e.g. London Eye. This is a famous landmark therefore everyone in London will be able to relate to it. The possibility of bringing in someone famous to be involved with the campaign would be good because a lot of people are influenced and look up to famous people. Someone who hasn't got a bad reputation would be the best option because it wouldn't drive people away, just make them realise how good giving blood is. Someone such as, David Beckham would be a very good person to involve because he is a role model for millions of children, a lot of women like him for his looks and a lot of men like him for his football status and duties. Buying props for what will be involved in it or renting a service could cost quite a bit of money therefore we would need to be careful of how mad we were going with the advert and that is everything necessary of trying to appeal to our target audience. Managing the budget and finding out the prices of everything is called quantitative research, and it is very important with every advertisement that is made; television or radio. 

To completely summarise the job of a media researcher, you would say that there is a lot of in-depth research that needs to be done in order to be successful in your job. Having knowledge of the current trends and business ideas is also very important in creating the best, and most successful advertisement campaign.