Audience categories Young and Rubicam

Learning Objective:  

How different audiences expect media texts to satisfy their wants and how to categorise these audiences.

• Key words: Young and Rubicam, Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation, Four C’s.

THE FOUR C’S (cross-cultural consumer characteristics): 

This is one of the earliest, but still most popular, ways of profiling audiences. It profiles the audience in terms of wants and needs, not simply demographic. The model divides audiences into 7 types but there are four main categorise for us to consider.

• Mainstreamers

• Aspirers

• Reformers

• Succeeders

The categories can be defined as follows:

 • Mainstreamers; this is the largest group. They are concerned with stability, mainly buying well-known brands and consuming mainstream texts.
People that follow the crowd.

• Aspirers; seeking to improve themselves. They tend to define themselves by high status brands, absorbing the ideologies associated with the products and believing their status alters as a result.
People living a 'champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget'

• Succeeders people who feel secure and in control – generally they are in positions of power. They buy brands which reinforce their feelings of control and power.
People with lots of money and can afford more high class products

• Reformers; idealists who actively consume eco-friendly products and buy brands which are environmentally supportive and healthy. They also buy products which establish this ‘caring and responsible’ ideology. Individuals (highly media literate, expects high-production advertising and buys product image not product, requires high-profiling sophisticated advertising campaigns).
-People who are worried about ethical issues/want to change the world

Task 1:

Assess which of Young and Rubicams 4C's are being targeted in the print based ad