Evaluation/Conclusion for my investigation

So, upon completing my investigation on comparing the two football magazines ‘Four Four Two’ and ‘Match!’ I feel that I can be very pleased with my successful results as my hypothesis was correct. I had initially predicted that ‘Four Four Two’ would display greater professionalism and would be more serious with the text they used in comparison with the children’s magazine ‘Match!’. I did two different experiments to compare the magazines which both involved comparing individual articles.

Using two example articles from the magazines, I proved that ‘Four Four Two’ was using a much more advanced and higher vocabulary by using a lot more polysyllabic words than ‘Match!’, and also within the texts ‘Four Four Two’ proved to provide the reader with much more in-depth analysis – whether it was providing statistics for a football player, or giving specific details to advertise new sporting attire. From the two articles I quantified polysyllabic words for, there were a total of 160. In contrast, ‘Match!’ only used a mere 31 – so you can see that they have avoided using this technique and instead it appears that their approach was to use big, bright, eye-catching pictures and writing in order to catch their younger readers attention – and due to their readers being younger than that of ‘Four Four Two’, they use much less writing in their articles to avoid boring their audience.

This is what I had presumed would be the case prior to commencing with my investigation, and I have proved that I was right.

Also I managed to successfully apply David Ogilvy’s theory when analysing ‘Match’s’ “Hot Stuff!” merchandise page as they use some blatant advertising techniques to their (presumably) easily persuaded audience of children. They primarily use the bright, attractive images of boots and football’s to sell the products, but also use some text to advertise. Using the title “Hot Stuff!” shows that it’s the best stuff out, that you must have.

So all in all, I have managed to find out what I had originally hoped to discover, how these magazines use different their techniques in order to maintain their target audience, and how you can identify that these two magazines are aimed at different aged readers.

Media Text - How to keep a manager's job in football

How to keep a manager’s job in football

Our exclusive step by step guide of what to do in order to maintain your role as the head man.

In this day and age, it has proved to be a tricky task to take on the role as a 'football manager' – and I don’t just mean playing the video game. No matter how big or small the club may be, you're the creative personality that everyone looks up to like some sort of savior sent down to rescue them from the humiliation of relegation. Since this season's English football leagues have kicked off in mid-august, it would appear that some managers are already hanging on for dear life to maintain their role at the club - so what can improve your odds of staying?

From the 9th of September to the 28th of November - in just the top 4 divisions of English football, there have already been a great 13 managers who've packed their bag – or rather had their bags packed for them. It works out to near enough one manager being fired every 6 days! And it could easily be you next if you don't follow our essential essentialities. So how should you come across to your new side? It's important to prove yourself as the big man at the club, and show your critics that you are the irreplaceable gaffer! Of course, getting results are key in improving your chances too, but one thing that will show the board who they've really hired is a strong, confident man leading their team out every week. And this can all be done simply by the use of the right language. 

It’s important to speak to different people you are working with a certain way, so that you can please all of your critics, and don’t accidentally end up calling your boss ‘mate’. The different people you are required to speak to regularly are:

• The football players that you are managing/other staff you are working with

• The board of directors (aka your bosses)

And of course, who can forget the delight of the press?

So firstly when it comes to dealing with your team, whether it's one of your legendary team talks prior to a match or just simply a training session, it is important to maintain the same way in which you talk to them. The main thing you need to know here is that being assertive with them is what you need to be, if you want them to take you seriously of course. That means no jokes, no pranks, and definitely no slacking off training 30 minutes early to play Fifa! You need to talk strongly to them and use quick, blunt sentences to keep them alert and aware, and you can guarantee there won't be anyone slacking off during your team talk. Just remember, you’re their boss and what you say goes - so make sure everyone knows that you mean business.

So, how are you going to speak the board? The bosses of the club – and the people you fear most in the world? Follow these tips and we’re sure you’ll be getting that new contract and pay rise in no time!

The most important thing you need to remember is, before you go into that conference room, leave all of your slang and ‘cool’ words outside. That means ‘yes’ instead of ‘yeah’, ‘I agree’ instead of ‘init’, and most importantly ALWAYS address them as ‘sir’ – not ‘mate’. Aside from this, a major aspect of getting noticed by them is to tell them what they want to hear. They will want you to make BIG changes on a small budget (preferably even no budget) due to the fact that most of them will choose money over matter, and you are the matter in this case unfortunately, so make sure not to request anything too outrageous! If you go in demanding £100 million to buy Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, the chances are you’ll either be laughed out of it, or just flat-out dismissed (unless that’s what they had in mind of course). And ultimately, our best advice would be to just not waste their time. Make sure when speaking to them not to beat around the bush – tell them your ideas and virtually make them notice you. If you blab on for half an hour non-stop trying to make a simple point – the odds are this won’t go down well with them.  Let them know your ideas upfront and go from there – you generally want to talk long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep it interesting for them.

And finally, how should a new manager like yourself deal with the bugging pests known as the press? The media can be the most difficult team of people to deal with depending on the circumstance. If you've won a match it’s easy enough to give your evaluation, but if you've lost – it can prove to be a dreaded task. So how should you look to im-press?

My investigation essay (without evaluation)

How do football magazines ‘Four Four Two’ and ‘Match!’ use different language to maintain and further develop their audience?

Nowadays, a lot of the British public seem to have turned their attention to the use of the internet in order to find out the latest news and reviews in the world of football. But despite this, there are still the regular magazines managing to maintain their sales figures. ‘Match!’ with a current average weekly circulation of 72,861 in the UK[1], and “Four Four Two” magazine, as of June 2012, had 631,000 readers worldwide[2], in countries including Malaysia, Brazil, Vietnam and, of course, Great Britain.

So for my investigation, I have compared these two magazines – ‘Four Four Two’ and ‘Match!’ for several reasons. From my research, I have found that first and foremost, they are the two highest-selling magazines in the UK[3] and as well, they are both aimed at different age-ranged audiences(Four Four two – 18-40[4], Match! – 11-14[5]). However, there are also some good similarities between them that make them even more suitable to compare, such as the fact that both of these magazines were released within a couple of days of each other (with Four Four Two being a monthly magazine, and Match weekly) so I expect that they will contain the similar/the same stories, but in their specific way of presentation. Also, according to both of my sourced websites, both of these magazines are primarily aimed at boys/men.

The theorist that I am looking at is ‘David Ogilvy’, who was hailed as the “father of advertising”, said that certain words can be used to attract the audience’s attention. I believe that this will be useful in my investigation as I can look at how these two different magazines use the techniques in Ogilvy’s theory and if one tends to use it more commonly. Prior to investigating this, I’d expected to find that ‘Match!’ had a significantly higher use of these words as if they are offering free goodies/toys to children (their readers) – the child will be more easily enticed than an adult. Away from language, I also will look at the use of graphology in the magazines, to see how consistently they use images – and how effectively they use them.

Also, to compare the difference between the two in terms of language used, I decided to find a couple of articles that are the same/very comparable within them and quantify the number of polysyllabic words used. I did this with three articles so that I obtained reliable data. I had originally expected that as a result of doing this, I would find that ‘Four Four Two’ had a significantly higher use of these words - compared to ‘Match!’

So overall the majority of what I do to compare them will be by finding similar stories in the two of these magazines, but seeing at how they present them differently and how they speak to their audience. As said above, I will also look at the language and grammar used, how much they use both graphology and possibly even phonology, the seriousness of the texts/use of humour and also I will compare their front covers to ultimately see how their magazine is meant to be seen.

In terms of the deciding which two magazines to use/compare, I feel that both of these magazines are good representations as they are both the two highest selling regular football magazines in the UK [3]. In this sense, they seem the two best, more reasonable choices to investigate. In terms of the magazines themselves, they are both good representations of their companies as they are presented in the same manner as previous issues and contain similar content, just with updated news stories of course.

Do I have enough data to test my hypothesis with? Well, from looking within the magazines, I have found that they certainly do have enough data as I have looked at a number of different features in both of the magazines that I am able to compare, such as the use of language and grammar, the use/consistency of graphology, and also something I will look at is the front cover of both magazines to compare how their magazines are meant to be represented as. These are the main aspects that I will be investigating, but if I am still short of things to compare, I could possibly also look at the use/consistency of humour to compare the seriousness’s of each text, and even the use of phonology.

Furthermore, from reading the magazines briefly, I feel that one thing I can do is look at two similar articles within both of the magazines and compare the number of words used that are polysyllabic. I shall also do this numerous times with a number of different, comparable articles in the magazines for more reliability. I will expect to find that one of them will have a lot more usage of higher lexis than the other.

In terms of my theory, the theorist that I have decided to look at is 'David Ogilvy', who was an advertising executive, and hailed as "The Father of Advertising".[6] He said that certain words can be used to attract the audience including qualifies like 'new' and 'free', with also verbs like 'buy' and 'free'. He said that you can also tend to find the use of puns, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia and rhyme for entertainment.

So I can use these statements and compare if the magazines use these methods, and if so how they use them differently, which will likely be on the front cover. This could also count as another thing to quantify, to see how much they use these conventions.
I can also look at how the magazines try and use influential power to persuade their readers to do something e.g. buy the magazines, subscribe to the magazine, buy merchandise advertised within the magazine.

Comparing Articles – Merchandise Page.

There is a specific article in the magazines that has caught my attention as it is a perfect example of how they are different. The article is about football merchandise that the magazine is trying to sell. Firstly, beginning with the article titles, and you can already see a clear difference in approach here. ‘Match!’ magazine in general, as demonstrated here tends to use informal lexis – the heading reads “Hot Stuff!” in orange and red writing, with a picture of a flame within the letter ‘O’ to symbolise the ‘hotness’ of the items. Whereas the ‘Four Four Two’ heading reads “Suit up for the new season” which is a more formal, dignified title, which is also in black to further show its seriousness.
Going into the articles, and again you can clearly see the difference in lexis used by the magazines. Using the ‘box-out’ section of the column, you can see that they use different techniques to advertise. Match has a sub-heading of “Get a load of these footies!” and just tries to sell the item simply on the image. Whereas Four Four Two tells us that the advertised items are “Essential Accessories” that you presumably ‘must have’. They also give a short, but clear description about each item. For example ‘TruSox’, one of the many items on sale here, is said to “Use non-slip pads”, “prevent unnecessary movement inside your boot” and “Prevent blisters”, so it gives you good information of what to expect.

Also, when talking about their boots, similarly Four Four two goes into more depth for detail. They describe the ‘Mizuno Moreila Neo Boots’ by saying that at just 170g, they increase the boot’s ‘flexibility’ and also hence the owner’s ‘mobility’. They give similar detail to their other pairs of boots on this page, unlike Match, who do their advertising differently. They, like before in the box-out, try to advertise a number of products with just a hook line, “Check out Nike’s latest indoor and astro-trainers! From the awesome Bomba finales to the slick Elasticos, these trainers will help you bust nets in courts and cages all over the place! Class!” This is accompanied by large pictures of the products, with a wide variation of colours which will in particular attract children, hopeful of obtaining their parent’s money. So in this sense, you feel that Match magazine believes that the picture itself (of the item) will be a good enough selling point.

Quantifying Data

When dealing with quantifying data, I set out to compare three articles in the magazines as to receive more reliable information. Before quantifying the number of polysyllabic words (words over 2 syllables), I predicted that ‘Four Four Two’ magazine would feature significantly more due to its advanced vocabulary and language used over the kids magazine, “Match!”, which I believed would tend to stick to a more basic, primary language, and wouldn't use (that many) “big words”.

So to back up what I've said above, that Match have included not many words and Four Four Two have go into a lot of description, I decided to quantify the number of polysyllabic words that the two articles use. Firstly, I looked at the ‘Four Four Two’ magazine and looked at the merchandise page and expected to find many words with more than two syllables. Whereas in the ‘Match!’ magazine article, I expected to find a lot less use of polysyllabic words than my other magazine, as: a) It is aimed at a fairly younger audience, and therefore you can expect to find much simpler, easy to read words – with the odd exception, and b) As from briefly looking at this article, there appears to be significantly less writing, I believe this is because they know that children (who will be reading this magazine) will not be as interested in reading descriptions and detail about products, but they would much rather just gaze at pictures - and the results are as followed:

Magazine                  Number of polysyllabic words used
Four Four Two                                101
Match!                                              15

After looking through Four Four Two’s article in detail, I have found that in total there are one hundred and one different examples of polysyllabic phrasing within this article – which includes three letter acronyms. And similar, I read through Match! magazine, but in total I only managed to find fifteen uses of polysyllabic words. This is a lot lower than the magazine, ‘Four Four Two’, and it appears to be mainly because, as said above, a lot of the page space is taken up by pictures of the merchandise as they are trying to sell the product purely on the image, rather than including a description with it – like ‘Four Four Two’ have.

I decided to read another article I have found within these magazines which are very similar is an article based around their report of a newly signed player for a premier league club. These are both one-page articles – Match’s is based around Chelsea winger Willian, whereas Four Four Two give us an insight to Swansea’s new striker Wilfried Bony.

Before I quantify the number of words in these articles for my investigation – I can clearly see from the differences of these magazines which magazine is more serious and detailed. For Willian’s article in Match! The page is dominantly covered up by a large picture of the new Chelsea man, with also underneath this picture, an in-game shot of him in action for previous team ‘Anzhi Makhachkala’. They introduce the page by having the title “WICKED WILLIAN” in bold writing, and then telling us to “look out for the Brazil winger”. From there they only give a brief 57-word analysis on his qualities – “Dribbling”, “Finishing”, and “Vision”. After not giving us clear detail of what to expect from this player, they then go on to jokingly compare his stats to singer “Will.I.Am” due to their closely-spelt names. For example, they compare their “previous clubs” - with Willian’s being ‘Anzhi Makhachkala’ and Will.I.Am’s being ‘Black Eyed Peas’.

But Four Four Two’s article on Wilfried Bony sees the magazine give us an in-depth analysis of the player coming to our country so we know who he is and what we can expect from him. Here we can see the title of his name, previous and present club, position, and transfer fee – accompanied by a large picture of the player, with two small pictures elsewhere on the page. But as well as the use of illustrations, there is a lot of writing in a small font which actually covers the majority of the page. Amongst their report of the player, they provide us with a number of statistics about him, including his scoring tally from previous seasons, how he tended to play at his previous club ‘Vitesse Arnhem’ and also his “European Golden Shoe Rating”. They also supply us with an interview from the striker about his thoughts on the transfer.

So after analysing the two texts, I quantified the number of times that they both used polysyllabic words (including three letter acronyms), and these were the results:

Magazine                            Number of polysyllabic words
Match!                                                      16
Four Four Two                                          59

As you can see, it is once again Four Four Two who have a substantially higher use of polysyllabic words due to their detailed analysis in the article in comparison with Match! Who evidently are more focused on giving minimal detail, but attracting their readers with eye-catching pictures and short, snappy segments of writing.

[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_(magazine)
[2] http://www.mediauk.com/magazines/42220/four-four-two/readership-figures
[3] http://www.w3newspapers.com/magazines/soccer/
[4] http://magazineindustry.wikispaces.com/file/view/foufourtwo+case+study_Alex.doc
[5] http://magazines.bauermediaadvertising.com/magazines/detail/match
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy_(businessman)