Audience Research - Pulp

Pulp

As our band is relatively new, it would be beneficial to look at similar, more established bands to understand the target audience they are trying to attract. Therefore we have done some research to find similar groups whose audiences we could study. Pulp formed in 1978 in Sheffield and work in the 'indie rock' genre of music, making it a good band to compare to 'Howl'.

Their general audience are 40-54 year old males of social grade ABC1. However, the male/female split is very fine with their audience being made up of 50.7% men and 49.3% women. This means the gender of the audience can't really be specified.

The age of the audience surprised me as I thought 'Howl's' target audience would be much younger as I usually associate 'indie rock' with young people. However, as this is a 70's band so their fans would have been teenagers when the band formed and have stuck with them through to modern day, causing a general audience age now of 40-54 year olds. This means Howl's target audience are likely to be teenagers. This links to the decision to have their music feature on the Fifa 17 soundtrack which was a designed to appeal to teens.
Their audience age could also be explained by how the indie rock genre was popular in the 80's and has become more popular again now, causing a reflux in the genre. Therefore, a lot of bands with a similar style to howl were formed in the late 70's, 80's and 90's. Due to the age of the audience, their general hobbies include quizzes, scrabble and sudoko showing a general tendency towards problem solving, suggesting that an interesting, more intellectually engaging music video would be more appealing to this particular group of people. They are also football fans and enjoy 'fantasy football' showing that they are inclined towards sport, a theme which could also be incorporated into the music video.

This is a really interesting video of theirs that kind of breaks genre conventions by using a more 'arty' style rather than just performing the song in a live setting. The rotating camera is really memorable and eye catching, making the video stand out rather than just blending into all the other indie rock music videos that exist. It also manages to incorporate a bit of a narrative too, whilst having the lead singer lip synching sections of the song therefore also complying with the genre conventions to a certain extent. I think we should look at this as an influence, perhaps not taking solid ideas from the video as I don't believe it's right for our band, but definitely looking at themes and techniques - artistic elements and the combination of narrative and performance - when coming up with our own ideas.