Purpose of Media Products

Every media product is made for a purpose: the reason it exists and what it is intended to achieve. A poster in a leisure centre reception might exist to fill places on a beginners' swimming course, while a podcast episode might exist to walk you through pitching a tent for the first time. Neither appeared by accident. Someone made each one to do a particular job with an audience, and that job is its purpose.

The five purposes

• Advertise/promote — drawing attention to a product, event, activity or cause so that people take an interest.
• Educate — developing someone's knowledge or skills through teaching.
• Entertain — giving the audience enjoyment.
• Inform — supplying clear facts and information about something.
• Influence — shaping what an audience thinks or how it behaves.

You need to recognise and name all five confidently, because a question may give you a product and expect you to pick out the purpose or purposes that fit it.

One main purpose, sometimes more

Most products have a single main purpose that everything else serves, with other purposes present in a smaller way. An audio guide at a castle mainly educates: visitors are meant to understand how the portcullis was raised and lowered. It can entertain as well, because plenty of visitors listen for the pleasure of it as much as for the facts. Asked for one purpose, you would still say educate — explaining the mechanism is why the guide was recorded.

Products with two strong purposes do exist, but one usually leads. A quick test is to ask what the maker would most want the product to achieve if it could only do one thing.

Advertise/promote means drawing attention to a product, event, activity or service so that people take an interest in it. The response you are aiming for might be buying something, giving money, turning up, or simply finding out more.

Promotion is not only about selling. A media product made to advertise/promote can aim to:

• sell more of a product, such as a shop offering half price trainers for one week
• increase donations, such as a leaflet for a charity book sale
• raise public awareness, such as a poster about a new community garden
• encourage attendance, such as a social media post about a youth club open evening

Worked example: a radio advert for a leisure centre's new swimming lessons names the days, the price and a phone number, and finishes with a catchy jingle. It exists to advertise/promote the lessons, drawing attention to them and pushing listeners to book. The catchy jingle helps listeners remember the advert, but the reason the product exists is still to promote the lessons.

A poster for a school cake sale and a television advert for a new board game share the same purpose, even though one asks for donations and the other is selling. Both draw attention to something and encourage the audience to respond.

Educate means providing teaching or training that develops someone's knowledge or skills. A media product made to educate exists so that the audience learns something they can then use, rather than simply presenting facts.

A useful test is to ask what the audience should be able to do after using the product:

• An app that teaches you to read music, with short lessons, sound clips and quizzes that get harder as you improve.
• A museum's interactive water-cycle exhibit where visitors tilt a model to make rain fall, then answer a question at each station before moving on.
• A board game for eight-year-olds where players multiply numbers to move around the board, so times tables improve through play.

Content like this is built to be learned from, which is why educational products usually include explanations, worked examples and activities or questions that let the audience check their understanding. That structure is what turns plain information into learning the audience can remember and apply.

Educate is not the same as inform. An information product makes facts available; an educational one goes further and helps the audience understand and practise them. A poster telling you when the local pool opens informs you; a course of swimming lessons teaches you to swim. Some products do both, such as a recipe video that tells you which ingredients you need and also teaches you how to knead dough.

Inform means giving the audience facts or information about a subject, product, event or issue. A media product made to inform exists so that people can find out something accurate and useful, such as a date, a price, a rule or how an item works.

Clear facts, easy to find

Informative products are built around the facts. Their layout, headings and wording are chosen so the audience can find and understand the information quickly. For example:

• A bus company's app showing the next departure times from your stop.
• A museum label beside a fossil giving its name, age and where it was found.
• A school newsletter stating the date and time of parents' evening.
• A recipe card listing the ingredients and oven temperature for a cake.

These examples are not trying to sell you something or keep you entertained. Each simply makes accurate facts available, which is what a product with an informing purpose is designed to do.

Inform is not the same as educate: informing puts facts in front of the audience, while educating helps them learn and improve through explanations, examples and activities.

Entertain means providing enjoyment or pleasure. It is one of the five purposes of a media product and it is very common: it is the main purpose of most films and much television.

An entertainment product is designed to be fun, exciting or emotionally engaging. A sitcom exists to make viewers laugh, a fantasy novel exists to give readers an escape into another world, and a racing game exists to give players an enjoyable challenge. The main reason each product was made is to entertain its audience.

Entertainment is a purpose, not a genre. Horror is a genre, but a horror film's main purpose is still to entertain, and it does that by building suspense. A nature documentary can entertain you with dramatic footage even if it also informs, and a comedy sketch can inform you about a news story while making you laugh. A product can have more than one purpose, but it usually has one main purpose.

Influence means trying to shape or change an audience's opinions, choices or behaviour. The product is made to move the audience from one way of thinking or acting to another.

Adverts often aim to influence. An advert for a mountain bike might do more than show the gears and frame: it might try to convince you that riding to school beats being driven, and change what you actually do on the way to school each morning.

Influence is not limited to adverts. Other media products can be made with the same aim. A short film made by students and played in an assembly might try to persuade Year 11s to become reading mentors for Year 7. A podcast series from a football club's community trust might aim to change how young fans treat match officials. A poster in a skate park might try to change how older skaters behave towards younger riders. In each case, the product exists to change minds or actions, not simply to give facts or entertain.

Advertise/promote draws attention to something specific and encourages a response. Influence goes further: it tries to change what the audience thinks or does, not just make them aware of something.

A purpose is the reason a media product exists: what it is trying to achieve. When you are asked for a product's purpose, say why it was made. Do not describe what it contains, what genre it is or what platform it uses.

Content, genre and platform are not purposes

Words such as 'has' or 'shows' describe a product's content. Calling it a poster or a website names a format or platform, and calling it a comedy names a genre. None of these explains why someone made it. A purpose answer gives the reason first, then says what the product is trying to do to its audience.

Worked example

A flyer for a beach clean-up shows the meeting point and the equipment provided. 'It has a meeting point and equipment' only describes the flyer. The correct purpose is: 'It exists to advertise/promote the beach clean-up so that more volunteers sign up.' The second half matters because it explains what the flyer is trying to achieve.

Wording your answer

Answer with one of the five purposes — advertise/promote, educate, entertain, inform or influence — then give the reason. A reliable pattern is 'Its purpose is to ... so that ...'. For example, 'Its purpose is to influence readers to view street art as a proper art form, so that the town's new mural trail gets more support from local people.' If more than one purpose could fit, choose the one that best explains why the product was made.