Crowd DNA - April 2012
http://www.research-live.com/features/tribal-gathering/4007320.article
Channel 4 and Crowd DNA have been documenting the UK's various youth 'tribes' for seven years. Brian Tarran hears how the work is helping ease advertisers' targeting headaches.
Street Rats. Blingers. Townies, Geeks and Skaters. Rahs, Ravers and Boy Racers. You might think all young people are the same, but Channel 4 has an array of data to demonstrate otherwise.
For the past seven years the broadcaster has been slicing and dicing the 16- to 24-year-old demographic, working with former NME journalist turned researcher Andy Crysell to pinpoint and understand the various tribes that exist within youth culture.
Crysell and colleagues at Crowd DNA have identified 23 groups in all. For each tribe they have collected data on the brands they buy, the media they consume and the celebrities they admire.
Townies are the biggest group by far - a group the majority of the population are born in to, "unless, perhaps, your parents are artists, musicians or eccentrics", notes the website UKTribes.com. "It's your choice then if you want to become a Skater or an Emo, or whatever else," says Crysell.
The choice is yours
Picking a tribe isn't a one-time-only deal. There is a fluidity to membership now that would have seemed out of place in the days when young people fell into one of two bitterly divided camps, like Mods or Rockers.
Geeks, for instance, are heavy internet users, magazine and newspaper readers and cinemagoers, but are light on TV consumption. They like Twitter, Flickr and XFM, eBay and Converse, whereas Ravers are much better disposed to radio shows and magazines like MixMag, club brands like Cream and GodsKitchen, and fashion retailers like Diesel and Urban Outfitters.
Helping advertisers target these tribes is an area of considerable focus for Crowd DNA and Channel 4. The 2010 wave of the project took the form of a nationally representative survey of young people which allowed the teams to fuse their data with the Target Group Index planning tool. Advertisers can now easily find out which of five planning segments - urban, mainstream, aspirant mainstream, alternative and leading edge - their tribes of interest fall into.
For 2012, Taylor says Channel 4 is considering ways of improving the targeting capabilities. "The practicalities may prove difficult," he says, "but we're looking - and I stress, only looking at this stage - to see if we can offer realistic targeting on our video-on-demand platform based on our tribal segments."
4 on Demand (4oD) has upwards of three million registered users, says Taylor. "The idea is that we could say to an advertiser, 'If you want to specifically target the mainstream segment we can match that with our registered users and help you actually reach them there.'"
United tribes
The story of UK Tribes has been one of continual evolution. Over the years Taylor, Crysell and colleagues have shown a willingness to try new approaches and shake things up to make sure the research continues to grab the attention of advertisers - and internally at Channel 4, where the data might feed into the marketing, commissioning and scheduling of new programmes or channels.
"Advertisers need to understand which media is best for reaching which groups of young people. The internet and other forms of digital media has given them a lot of opportunities but it's also given them a lot of headaches"
No two waves of the project are ever the same. After the quant survey of 2010, last year saw Crowd DNA recruit 50 young people to keep a video diary for six weeks. The result was 32 hours of footage where respondents - mostly on their own, but sometimes with friends - discussed identity, gaming, hopes, fears, leisure activities and purchase behaviour.
It proved to be an ideal time to open this kind of personal window into the lives of young people. The tight labour market, the result of a sluggish economy, is hitting the younger generation particularly hard, especially school and university-leavers who are finding it tough to get a job.
Taylor said: "When we asked them the hopes and fears questions 20 or so of the 50 respondents - completely unprompted - used this term the 'university bubble'. They had this real fear about what would happen to them once they left university because of the poor jobs market."
The same pressures that threaten to burst the university bubble are also pushing the tribes closer together, says Crysell. The outward signs of tribal identity - clothes, music, hairstyle - remain in place, but there's a greater consensus among young people politically. They share common cause in being dissatisfied with the state of the world, says Crysell.
Under pressure
As yet, it's too early to tell whether these social and economic factors will lead to the birth of new tribes or the collapse of others, but the team at Channel 4 and Crowd DNA are hoping to embark on a full review soon.
Crysell explains that there are always new tribes "bubbling under", tribes that have been considered but have never quite made it on to the map (see boxout). "Every time we have a review we basically look to assess the validity of each tribe. We do desk research, get expert opinion and then we would look for evidence that the tribe actually exists."
Importantly, he says: "We want tribes that have sufficient size to them. We're trying to make sure this isn't just a London-focused thing; it should feel very representative of the UK as a whole. And we want tribes that are going to last a reasonable amount of time."
Channel 4 and Crowd DNA have been documenting the UK's various youth 'tribes' for seven years. Brian Tarran hears how the work is helping ease advertisers' targeting headaches.
Street Rats. Blingers. Townies, Geeks and Skaters. Rahs, Ravers and Boy Racers. You might think all young people are the same, but Channel 4 has an array of data to demonstrate otherwise.
For the past seven years the broadcaster has been slicing and dicing the 16- to 24-year-old demographic, working with former NME journalist turned researcher Andy Crysell to pinpoint and understand the various tribes that exist within youth culture.
Crysell and colleagues at Crowd DNA have identified 23 groups in all. For each tribe they have collected data on the brands they buy, the media they consume and the celebrities they admire.
Townies are the biggest group by far - a group the majority of the population are born in to, "unless, perhaps, your parents are artists, musicians or eccentrics", notes the website UKTribes.com. "It's your choice then if you want to become a Skater or an Emo, or whatever else," says Crysell.
The choice is yours
Picking a tribe isn't a one-time-only deal. There is a fluidity to membership now that would have seemed out of place in the days when young people fell into one of two bitterly divided camps, like Mods or Rockers.
"It's so easy to dip into other cultures now because of the internet," says Neil Taylor, Channel 4's senior research executive. "And I think youth lasts longer as well, so people have more time to switch between tribes," adds Crysell.
"In the days of the Mods and Rockers you were probably only one or the other for two years, then you got a job and you left your youth behind, whereas now youth is a much more extended period of time."
This extended youth - a period where most people lack responsibilities but have a sufficient amount of disposable income - is like the golden age for advertisers. As big consumers of media, young people aren't difficult to access.
"But it's the amount of ways you can reach them now that is one of the biggest challenges," says Taylor.
"Advertisers need to understand which media is best for reaching which groups of young people. The proliferation of the internet and other forms of digital media has given them a lot of opportunities but it's also given them a lot of headaches."
This is where the UK Tribes work comes into play, says Taylor. It's designed as a tool to help Channel 4's advertisers understand the youth audience in all its various guises. "They can come to us and we can tell them that a Geek or a Raver or a Boy Racer likes this type of programme, they all like this type of channel and so forth.""In the days of the Mods and Rockers you were probably only one or the other for two years, then you got a job and you left your youth behind, whereas now youth is a much more extended period of time."
This extended youth - a period where most people lack responsibilities but have a sufficient amount of disposable income - is like the golden age for advertisers. As big consumers of media, young people aren't difficult to access.
"But it's the amount of ways you can reach them now that is one of the biggest challenges," says Taylor.
"Advertisers need to understand which media is best for reaching which groups of young people. The proliferation of the internet and other forms of digital media has given them a lot of opportunities but it's also given them a lot of headaches."
Geeks, for instance, are heavy internet users, magazine and newspaper readers and cinemagoers, but are light on TV consumption. They like Twitter, Flickr and XFM, eBay and Converse, whereas Ravers are much better disposed to radio shows and magazines like MixMag, club brands like Cream and GodsKitchen, and fashion retailers like Diesel and Urban Outfitters.
Helping advertisers target these tribes is an area of considerable focus for Crowd DNA and Channel 4. The 2010 wave of the project took the form of a nationally representative survey of young people which allowed the teams to fuse their data with the Target Group Index planning tool. Advertisers can now easily find out which of five planning segments - urban, mainstream, aspirant mainstream, alternative and leading edge - their tribes of interest fall into.
For 2012, Taylor says Channel 4 is considering ways of improving the targeting capabilities. "The practicalities may prove difficult," he says, "but we're looking - and I stress, only looking at this stage - to see if we can offer realistic targeting on our video-on-demand platform based on our tribal segments."
4 on Demand (4oD) has upwards of three million registered users, says Taylor. "The idea is that we could say to an advertiser, 'If you want to specifically target the mainstream segment we can match that with our registered users and help you actually reach them there.'"
United tribes
The story of UK Tribes has been one of continual evolution. Over the years Taylor, Crysell and colleagues have shown a willingness to try new approaches and shake things up to make sure the research continues to grab the attention of advertisers - and internally at Channel 4, where the data might feed into the marketing, commissioning and scheduling of new programmes or channels.
"Advertisers need to understand which media is best for reaching which groups of young people. The internet and other forms of digital media has given them a lot of opportunities but it's also given them a lot of headaches"
No two waves of the project are ever the same. After the quant survey of 2010, last year saw Crowd DNA recruit 50 young people to keep a video diary for six weeks. The result was 32 hours of footage where respondents - mostly on their own, but sometimes with friends - discussed identity, gaming, hopes, fears, leisure activities and purchase behaviour.
It proved to be an ideal time to open this kind of personal window into the lives of young people. The tight labour market, the result of a sluggish economy, is hitting the younger generation particularly hard, especially school and university-leavers who are finding it tough to get a job.
Taylor said: "When we asked them the hopes and fears questions 20 or so of the 50 respondents - completely unprompted - used this term the 'university bubble'. They had this real fear about what would happen to them once they left university because of the poor jobs market."
The same pressures that threaten to burst the university bubble are also pushing the tribes closer together, says Crysell. The outward signs of tribal identity - clothes, music, hairstyle - remain in place, but there's a greater consensus among young people politically. They share common cause in being dissatisfied with the state of the world, says Crysell.
Under pressure
As yet, it's too early to tell whether these social and economic factors will lead to the birth of new tribes or the collapse of others, but the team at Channel 4 and Crowd DNA are hoping to embark on a full review soon.
Crysell explains that there are always new tribes "bubbling under", tribes that have been considered but have never quite made it on to the map (see boxout). "Every time we have a review we basically look to assess the validity of each tribe. We do desk research, get expert opinion and then we would look for evidence that the tribe actually exists."
Importantly, he says: "We want tribes that have sufficient size to them. We're trying to make sure this isn't just a London-focused thing; it should feel very representative of the UK as a whole. And we want tribes that are going to last a reasonable amount of time."
Social media usage amongst students - April 2012
Last month we told you how the internet has become key to student socialising, with the average student spending almost five hours a day online. But which social networking sites do they use?
Chances are you'll be using LinkedIn as one of your main social networking sites, keeping in touch with trends, competitor moves and networking, alongside Twitter and the ubiquitous Facebook.
However, it's interesting to note that LinkedIn hasn't really taken off amongst students. A survey from December by student internet provider CableCom found that only 11% of its customers used LinkedIn at least once a month, compared with 93% using Facebook and 85% logging onto YouTube.
Instead, it pays to target students on Twitter and Tumblr, which are most popular with the under 20 demographic. Even new kid on the block Google+ is struggling to break Facebook's hold on students, with it getting negligible coverage amongst the under 20s, according to CableCom.
So is LinkedIn a missed opportunity or an irrelevance to youth marketing? What do you think?
Social media sites used more than once a month by students
- Facebook 93%
- YouTube 85%
- Twitter 32%
- Google+ 30%
- LinkedIn 11%
- Tumblr 8%
- Vimeo 5%
- Other 6%
Youth internet use 2011 - March 2012
It's obvious that the youth market spends a lot of its time online, and new research by Opinion Panel on behalf of CableCom shows exactly how much. The answer is 'a lot'!
The report from December 2011 shows that on average students spend more time using the internet than they do studying, socialising, watching TV or at a job. 17% of those asked even spent more than 40 hours a week online.
The amount of internet use is consistent among most groups but females (34.7 hours), those between 21-29 (35.5 hours) and those living in student halls of residence (34.7 hours) use it more on average.
Breakdown of average time spent on various activities
- Using the internet - 34 hours
- Studying (in lectures, tutorials, seminars, lab work or self-study) - 30.60 hours
- Socialising - 22.80 hours
- Watching television - 7.50 hour
- Paid work - 4.20 hours
* All hours on average per week
Media Consumption - February 2012
We were recently sent this rather detailed infograph by MBA Online who worked on this with Magid Generational Strategies breaking down who's using what media at what time of the day. Without wanting to sound ungrateful but the exclusion of mobile seems rather odd and pretty disappointing. On the other side of the coin Radio raised a few eye brows amongst the team, as it is rarely discussed in any great depth in youth media consumption.
So we did a quick straw poll of 20 colleagues within ear shot plus 20 of our brand agents currently on facebook with two questions.
When did you last listen to the Radio?
This Morning: 50% | This Weekend: 20% | This Week: 10% | This Month: 20%
Under what circumstances do you listen to the radio?
My Alarm: 5% | In the Car: 80% | Getting Ready to go Out: 5% | On Journeys through my mobile: 10%
Created by: MBA Online
So we did a quick straw poll of 20 colleagues within ear shot plus 20 of our brand agents currently on facebook with two questions.
When did you last listen to the Radio?
This Morning: 50% | This Weekend: 20% | This Week: 10% | This Month: 20%
Under what circumstances do you listen to the radio?
My Alarm: 5% | In the Car: 80% | Getting Ready to go Out: 5% | On Journeys through my mobile: 10%
Created by: MBA Online
Sam Voulters - January 2012
It is interesting to see the rise in popularity of the "dramality" shows. Whilst Britain typically receives cinematic releases months after the USA openings, we always seem ahead of the curve when it comes to television; how many of our hit series, game shows and comedies are adapted to American or even worldwide formats? Think "who wants to be a millionaire?", "The Office", and "Big Brother". Yet when it comes to "reality" TV - we seem so far behind. Just as everyone is getting caught up in the excitement of TOWIE and Made in Chelsea, we forget that Americans have been churning out this kind of show for years with "The Hills" and "Jersey Shore". However Britain's creativity does always prevail and the clearest example of this is the cringe inducing "Dalston Superstars" produced by Vice Magazine, a spoof too far perhaps? Whilst commentators like to think it's real, it does need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
I went to the very same Public School in north London as the lead protagonist Sam, his older brother is one of my friends and whilst he IS "Dalston", he is NOT quite as the show professes. He also works at VICE. Which leads me to my main thought - its being seeded as a popular online contender but is nothing more than a smart marketing tool by VICE magazine. Whether this misleads the public or not, they simply won't care. If Essex can mock itself and Chelsea can reduce itself to a melodramatic laughing stock - then why not poke fun at the edgy, try hard, desperate to stand out youth of today?
Is this a fair representation of the media savvy youth? Is it perhaps no more than an updated version of Nathan Barley? Is it just smart marketing from VICE? Or is it, after all, no matter how ironic - still just a fish eye view on the trendy scene savvy young adults of this modern day? The mind boggles.
Nestle Water - December 2011
Finally Evian's record-breaking Roller Babies Viral has been knocked off the Global Arts Chart after a 26-month stay! And it is another wet one; Contrex Nestle Water's global water brand set up rows of pink exercise bikes lined up facing a building in Paris. Members of the public, intrigued by the bikes, jump on for a pedal, their cycling efforts are generating pink shots of light that travel up the building in front to form the shape of a male stripping! The neon monster stripper strips off as the women pedal, demonstrating how to burn 2,000 calories.
View the video on Youtube
On the face of it a very clever campaign. However using a building based in Prague, managing to find a neighbourhood where only the females are inquisitive who remarkably all spot the opportunity and climb on to the bike in unison seems rather staged!
JustEat - November 2011
Just-Eat to the Beat! As cheesy as the four cheese pizza we just ordered from Just-Eat, Rob loved coming up with the experiential elements to the marketing campaign for this national takeaway platform. We created a Just-Eat to the Beat University Tour nationwide to increase student awareness of the brand and get some instant activations. Barry the Bull joined us on this tour giving students a Just-Eat bucking bronco experience like no other launching his riders into a pool of inflatable Just-Eat beach balls! Highlight f the night had to be the hamburger phones we were giving away. Roll on Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow.
Wetherspoon - November 2011
Our campaign with Ogilvy on behalf of Bacardi and Wetherspoon is about to go into its second phase where we will be focusing on driving voucher redemptions. Fresher's saw us deploy over 1,000 hours of labour across 21 institutions to get the Wetherspoon unlocked app off to a flying start. 55,000 downloads and counting.
Unite - November 2011
Discussing accommodation opportunities with international students is the order of the week for our campus liaisons team. Headed by Jess they have been working with Unite Halls of Residence to discuss accommodation options for the next academic year using our team of social media networkers and our relationships with international societies.
Contiki - November 2011
It is with a heavy heart that we will see the last two Contiki Surf Tour events this term bringing to an end an epic national tour. Definitely one of the funniest tours we have been involved with thanks to a great relationship with Contiki (thank you Richard and Sarah) and thousands of receptive students, more than 3,200 posted a time on the surf simulator.
Asda - November 2011
Working with Mindshare on promoting a student discount, Daniel did such a good job convincing Asda that a digital campaign was perfect for the supermarket giant, that we then had to design the online artwork in house using our little army of interns! Fortunately they were happy and the campaign goes live this week with the hopes that students will embrace Asda and buy them out of fish fingers.