Primary and Secondary Audiences

My primary audience for my Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland stamp set are:

Stamp collectors
Fans, enthusiasts, followers of Alice in Wonderland
Post Office shoppers
Visitors to Royal Mail stamps website

As speaking to the target audience at this time is challenging, I tried to find ways in which I could understand the community of both stamp collectors and Alice in Wonderland. Within this research I found a website dedicated to all things Alice in Wonderland however the community section had not been active since 2016. I searched social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) to find a community that are active in their support of the theme. With 6000 members the Facebook group ‘Alice in Wonderland Fans (UK)’ was particularly active, the group is used to promote independent shops and artists who sell Alice themed artwork, clothing, furniture and accessories. Although I was unsuccessful at getting a response from several members that I attempted to talk to, the group let me have an insight into the community. A particularly important piece of research that I found was that a large majority of the items being sold have John Tenniel’s original illustrations on from the book.

The stamp collecting Facebook group allowed me to gain an insight into the stamp buying and selling community. A lot of the posts involve people asking about stamps they have, finding out information about where they came from and what to do with stamps they have inherited. This group I felt was particularly interesting as I was let into a community that I did not even know existed before now, I knew that people collected stamps but this allowed me to see how passionate the audience are.

The secondary audience include:

The wider public
National press and broadcasters

To communicate with the secondary audience, within my stamps I need to emphasise the unique elements. For example, the Video Games stamps were intriguing with the UV light messages and the Visions of the Universe with the intense and dramatic use of colour. For those stamp sets I was the secondary audience, someone who has never paid attention to stamps before but out of all of the stamps sets I looked at those were the most fascinating. I shall aim for my stamps to have the same effect.

During the module launch Matt Baxter (co-founder and creative director) from Baxter & Bailey presented desired responses that should be looked at throughout a creative project. The purpose of them is to understand what the audience want from your designs and is a reminder throughout the project to encourage you to stay on track. The responses I created were:

“The theme was portrayed unconventionally, taking the story in a direction that I did not expect but was not disappointed by”

“The designs are beautiful. The original illustration style is brought to life in a way that I could never imagine”

“The stamps and presentation pack blend together seamlessly, I love it!”