Our Youth report makes it to the pages of Marketing magazine

Yes it's true, our work is featured in the September edition of Marketing, with a particular focus on the subject of Social Media.


To see a pdf of the article, please click here.

What do young people actually think about social media?

Q: “How do you think your generation will be defined by other generations to come?”

A: “Maybe people will say we were more creative, more driven, definitely more competitive…more willing to create different identities just for social media... the creation of fake people, probably not genuine people either”

A: “Like you can live your life with Facebook, you can be a completely different person, you can be whoever you want to be as long as you are on the internet and you have got a Twitter account and you know how to say the right things. You have got Facebook and you can make your life look fantastic.”

What do young people actually think about social media?

Today, they are linked inextricably to the phenomenon of social media and attaching a virtual component to their lives is done almost without thought by brands who seek to define them and to engage them. And why wouldn’t brands do that? When we spoke to over 1,500 young people this year, 78% of them said they were using social media ‘often’ or ‘all the time’. It makes sense to attach a digital arm to this generation and it makes sense for brands trying to connect with them, to reach them via these media channels.

Or does it?

The thing is, social media has exploded onto the scene and the uptake of social media by people has happened so fast that we’re still reeling. Brands have scrambled to climb atop the wave and push out their message via this new platform using a ‘tick box’ kind of approach. Reach target number of ‘likes’ on Facebook? Tick. Adapt core advertising message to 140 character nugget? Tick. Try and “have a conversation” with consumers online? Tick. Sort of.

The thing is, by using this ‘tick box’ approach to show that you “get” social media in the most elementary way, you may be missing the point. Are these ticks actually useful at engaging your target audience beyond surface value recognition? To determine that, you need to unpack why young people are using social media and to understand how they see it fitting into their lives.

Why you ask? Let us tell you.

Sure, young people are online a lot and use social media a lot but as everyone knows, this media channel is fundamentally different to the media platforms that came before it in that it is a platform for having a conversation rather than taking in information without comment. Can you imagine if a phone call you were having with a friend was interrupted every five minutes with an advert that mimicked the way you talk to your friend? It’s a jarring thought isn’t it? It would annoy you, wouldn’t it? Accordingly, when brands try to spread their message across this media channel they need to understand the social graces, the cultural codes that dictate appropriate behaviour.

So, we decided to try to expose those codes and to unpack what young people actually think and feel about their social media use. This is where it got interesting.

Our research exposed a sense of ambiguity among young people over the role they feel social media has to play in their lives. They were inclined to be disdainful of over-reliance on social media and of people who showed that over-reliance by sharing too much personal information online.

They did not like addressing the extent to which social media impacted their social lives. Even though most of them are on it all the time and 47% agreed that they use it to stay in touch with friends, only one in five of them agreed ‘if you don’t use social media, you’re missing out on socialising’ and 27% strongly disagreed with the statement.

Similarly, while only 18% agreed with the statement “I use social media to showcase who I am and what I care about” 64% of those surveyed felt that other young people share too much information on social media and 51% felt that other people show a fake version of themselves online. Virtually nobody felt that they were doing it, but over half felt that other people were doing it.

Brands that try to mimic the behaviours young people exhibit online might be missing the mark. Young people might not like being confronted with those behaviours and it might not make sense to them, for a brand to try and occupy their social media space. We know young people use social media, but until we “get” how they think and feel about this channel, we’re shooting blind trying to reach them through it.

An area for exploration, we think… 

Understanding the Trend Towards Customisation

When we spoke to over 1,500 young people, two key stories emerged across the board. 

The first story these people were telling us was that they don’t feel a connection to big companies or societal institutions. The financial sector, the government, school, universities, media, religious institutions, companies, brands… you name it, most of the young people we spoke with said that could not trust at least one, if not all of them. 



The disconnect ran deep; only 30% of them said felt proud of Britain. This story links in with other research; the ONS for example, revealed that in 2012, young people’s belief in British democracy as one of the strongest in the world was lower than all other age groups!

The second story is a well-known one. Everyone is talking about it; today’s young people are increasingly self-reliant, individualistic and willing to take risks to forge their own destinies. When we spoke with young people, they confirmed this story with us; 54% believed that it is ultimately down to you as to whether you succeed in life and 40% said that to be successful, you have to take risks. Very few of them actively disagreed with this standpoint and most of them keenly felt a greater need to distinguish themselves from the crowd in some way or another.

A way in which these two stories have manifested themselves in their consumer habits is the almost zeitgeist trend towards customer-customisation of products. Today’s young people want to craft their own clothing, coffee, shoes, cars and general experiences. 

Look at Nike ID shoes, and the popularity of vintage clothing and vegetable allotments for it; look to the BBC mobile website; Look to Barclays LifeSkills campaign and HSBC’s First Direct option for it; Look at Coke putting people’s names on their bottles , Starbucks writing names on cups and McDonalds eschewing their logo on posters for it; the brands with their ear to the ground are finding new ways to distance themselves from large scale, corporate behaviour and to make their products ‘personalisable’ for people who want to get away from big institutions and create their own niche life; while continuing to use big names.

Understanding the back story to what our young people are feeling about the ‘big issues’ helps contextualise them as a target audience. Don’t forget the big stuff, when looking   to the little stuff. If you want to know how to reach them, first, you need to get where they’re coming from.

Substantial Opportunity for Brands to Connect with Young People

When we asked if they knew a brand or company which could help people like them in an area of their lives they spent most of their time thinking about, 50% of the young people we spoke to said they couldn’t name one!

The aspect of their lives that they spent most of their time focusing on and trying to improve included:

Which of the following are you spending most time thinking about or spending time trying to succeed at?

There is a gap here, between the way in which brands are trying to reach young people, and the way in which young people want brands to connect with them.

(Some brands they did mention included Nike, Guardian Jobs, Superdrug, Weight Watchers, Topshop, Timeout, Kayak, Student Finance, The NHS, YouTube, Thomas Cook, Apple and others. These brands are helping young people live their lives.)

To connect, brands must understand. Successful brands have connected with young people by listening to their interests, listening to what they care about and filling the void left by traditional institutions, be it by providing sports training like Nike does, equipment for learning new skills like Apple does or pointers on future careers like Guardian Jobs does.

Our exploration threw up exactly what it is our young people are looking for today…