A term used in the world of
advertising and in military
PSYOP to describe a group of people who share common
goals and vulnerabilities. Target Audiences (
TA's) generally fall into four types and seven groups:
Target Audience Types:Apparent Audience: This is the audience who
appears to be targeted by a
product (ie, adults for tobacco adds)
Intermediate Audience: An audience who serves to pass a message along to a desired audience (ie, children who see toy commercials, then go bug their parents to buy them. In this case the child is the intermediate audience)
Unintended Audience: These are target audiences who are not targeted by a perticular product, but will receive the message nonetheless (This happened alot in
Kosovo with messages of preference targeted towards ethnic
Albanians that were also received with
civil unrest by ethnic
Serbians)
Ultimate Audience: These are the audiences who are actually
targeted by a perticular product (ie, children with tobacco adds)
Types of TA Groups
Primary Groups: A small social group whose members share
personal and
enduring relationships. Examples: A family, a tight-knit ressistance cell, many
fraternal groups whose
bond goes beyond a common
goal.
Secondary Groups: A group who shares a common goal(s), but have differing ideas on how to go about acheiving it/them. A large and impersonal group whose members pursue a specific
interest or
activity. Examples: Any political party, most insurgencies and pretty much any group affiliation that falls short of any real fraternal bond.
Catagories: A group of people who share some
demographic similarities;
Race,
sex,
religion,
profession, etc etc. Examples: White males computer geeks, aged 18-22 in the
Silicon Valley area. All
Serbians in the
balkan region.
Aggregates: Collection of people identified by a common geographical area. This is the least desirable type of
TA, as it's members share no bond beyond their current location, and the differences within the Audience can (and usually are) quite
vast. Examples: Everyone in the
Seattle area, everyone in
Porte Prince (the capital of
Haiti).
Key Communicators:Individuals to whom members of the
Target Audience turn to for information, opinions or interpretation of
information. It should be noted that a key communicator is different from a center of gravity in the sense that key communicators act as an
intermediate audience, in the sense that they act as individuals who can pass a
message on to an ultimate
audience. Examples: A labor organizer,
Public Relations representatives, chairman of any
organization/
foundation (could also fall into center of gravity, depending upon arrangement of aforementioned organization/foundation)
Center of Gravity: People with
great power in their
sphere of influence. Can oftentimes be
hard to
access. Can also be a
small group of people. Examples: Bill Gates, any "ruling council" of a military
junta (the word
junta literally means "together"), A local resistance
figurehead/outspoken
dissedents (they can also function as key communicators depending upon the situation).
Crowds: A temporary
cluster of people who may or may not interact at all. Crowds usually share the vulnerability of "safety" at any given time. Examples: Hordes of protestors mixed in with businessfolk, observing the protests. Even though the protestors and the businessfolk do not
at all share the same goals, tear gas affects them both just the same.
It should be noted that the term "Target Audience", has fallen out of favor with the
Department of Defense, due to it's insidious intonations, much like
propaganda. So the term has been dropped in favor of "Key Audiences", in official documentation. The term "Target Audiences" though, is still used internally by most military
PSYOP organizations.