Defining Your Audience

Audience Profile

Work Time

With your group, read the background information provided about your character’s time, location, and political surroundings. (The readings are on the next page for reference.)

Your task is to figure out who your character’s audience might have been and what kinds of arguments would have appealed to that audience. Write what you know about each piece of information listed below to create an audience profile for your character.

  • Character’s name
  • Dates of character’s life
  • Title and publication date of character’s work that you are reading
  • Important political or cultural events and circumstances of the time
  • Issues that were important to your character
  • Your character’s stance on those issues
  • Your character’s likely audience members
  • What do you think your character’s audience’s stance was? What were the prevailing opinions of the time?
  • What would the audience’s knowledge level have been about these issues?
  • What do you think would have been important to your character’s audience (for example, religious values, money, fairness, freedom)?

As you work, reflect on what you learned about the importance of audience when you imagined being an advertising executive.