Tuesday 23 March 2010

Ancillary Task - Magazine Ad

I have decided to take a look at the kind of area our magazine advert would be featured, and I thought that the rock magazine "Kerrang!" would be most likely. So it was this magazine I decided to take a closer look at.

The magazine was introduced as a paper supplement in 1981, and it was initially devoted to the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" (NWOBHM), along with other hard rock acts. On it's first cover was the Australian band AC/DC. The name was derived from the sound when playing a power chord on an electric guitar, and was an onomatopoeic representation of this.

Throughout it's first 20 years the magazine published more glam and heavy rock acts (I.e. Slayer, Bon Jovi, Poison, Venom). However the turn of the millennium bought a new editor and a new era for Kerrang!. It started to feature more mainstream influential bands without straying from it's original purpose. It was around this time that the Foo Fighters were becoming popular and it wasn't long before they were featured on the cover, as can be seen above. In fact, they were featured in a "Legends" Special Edition, emphasising their growing fame.

The magazine is a reliable source of information for the hard rock scene in today's society and this is reflected in its audience figures. The magazine is published by the Bauer Media Group, with regular circulation of 52,272 as of December 2008. Originally the magazine's audience was primarily an age 18-25 category C demographic. However, more recently the primary readership age has dropped to 14-17. Obviously, these wouldn't be the ONLY readers. We will need to keep this in mind when making our advertisement.

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