Today’s Ypulse Guest post is from Maarten Leyts of Trendwolves, the youth marketing agency that produced Youthwatching ‘09, a European youth marketing summit, which took place on December 12th in Belgium. The folks at Trendwolves also presented findings from their first European Trend Report, which was based on results from a large scale survey conducted among 25,000 young people across Europe. We asked Maarten to write a recap of the event for Ypulse readers and he graciously accepted…

A Report From Youthwatching ‘09

Youthwatching ‘09 was not your conventional youth marketing event. A youth panel was set up for Twittering their thoughts about the statements and ideas presented on stage. Tagged #yw09 these were all projected on a screen next to the speakers, resulting in live feedback from the core audience, which more often than not appeared to be agreeing, but didn’t back off from occasional criticism.

The young people were also asked to introduce speakers. That way, there was no need for a moderator. Plus the young Twitterati and the youth who participated in the “young talent corner” — a small exhibit featuring some young creatives - were given stage time to shine some light on their work as well as on the next speaker.

All of this resulted in a highly relaxed atmosphere, proving that this wasn’t just a marketing summit, but rather a one-day “powershop,” introducing different aspects of the lives of European youth.

I reminded attendees: “Youngsters’ minds are mostly set upon three things: getting their driver’s license, finding out who they are and their first sexual experience.”

Some highlights from our report (you can watch more here):

- 28% of European youth say they order an energy drink when they go out

- 37.5% have befriended a brand on a social network

- 70% state it’s the kids who decide what new computer to buy in the household

- In Spain, 72% downloads movies

- In the U.K. 60% would want their mobile phone to have a chat option

- 36% of European youth has placed video clips on the internet

- 78% of Spanish youth declares having used whitening toothpaste at least once

- Less than half of Belgian youth use mobile phone for phone calls

- 54% of French youth has a student job

[De]friending

The age of friend collecting might soon come to an end as youth’s social networking methods are starting to mature. Quality is overruling quantity, introducing the “cut-the-crap” phase.

Quote from Joe (25, London):

“You do have to cut down on your crap friends, or the friends who’ve let you down. You have to be more selective with your time, friendswise, I guess. But that’s throughout everything, that’s life at the moment, because we have so many channels open to us, of information. You just have to put your filters on and be selective and choose.”

Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse.com for the rest of this post.

Lifestreaming

Many would say we haven’t seen the big boom of lifestreaming just yet. However the first signs are already detectable. When Facebook ran an update integrating the ability to comment to your friends’ status, the value of this network as a communication tool rose another notch. People who seemed very skeptical about the idea of “following your friends’ life” transformed into passionate followers and commenters on their friends thoughts and actions.

Quote from Kirsty (23, London):

“I’ve seen people taking their photo and then they’ll go: ‘Oh, my god, profile photo!’

In interviews one youngster stated she already kept a booklet with text messages she’d receives on her mobile phone that she thought of as very precious. The idea of the sms-booklet seems very likely to happen. When it comes to technology, European youth stated they could miss the internet for a day, but not their mobile phones.

You can watch some of these interviews here.

Personal Branding

As time passes, personal branding is moving from a marketing strategy of the self to a state of mind for youth. Society has learned youngsters tend to think in terms of winners and losers. They know that linking themselves to an A-list brand, might give them the panache of an A-list personality. This is why on social networks such as Netlog and Bebo, young people don’t mind befriending a brand.

When asked about who influences them when buying clothes, these were the results:

36% - brands

32% - the store

22% - friends

6% - the internet

4% - the media

Quote from Hector (19, London):

“You only brand up yourself because you’re aware of how brands work. With all the advertisments that are surrounding us, we know how to get the best of us across, as quickly as possible.”

Entertailors

Having entered the post-TV era for some time now, we’ve seen youth becoming tailors of their own entertainment. Not to say every youngster is a talented television producer all of a sudden, but a shift has happened. Asked about their media preferences 67% chose internet over television (33%). Thirty-six percent even said they had put video content on the web themselves.

Quote from Tao (20, Paris):

“I wake up with the radio news. Like that I have everything: music, news and my horoscope.”

Agents of change

European youth often find themselves trapped in the paradigm of being portrayed as troublemakers. Media concentrates on youth problems such as drug use and violence or they portray them as a new generation of leaders, who are capable of major changes for the future, but everyone assumes they are not making any contribution within their communities yet.

Young people often feel they are perceived negatively. They are often considered anti-social, where actually they have never been more social. They often feel as if they are “an inconvenient youth.”

Hop, Skip and Jump

For European youth, life is no longer lived on a linear path. The urge to know more, gain knowledge in many fields and develop skills on different levels of life, such as study, work and relationships, resulted in youth expressing a clear desire for what they want and do not want to be. The logical study/get-a-job/marry/get-kids/grow-old timeline is over. It is not unusual for a twentysomething to quit the daytime job only to go to university again for one more year, to obtain that precious masters degree.

- In Spain and Turkey more people live with friends than alone.

- Of the youngsters who live alone, 38% are studying, 18% are looking for work and 46% are working.

- Unemployment among the young is highest in Germany (33%), and the lowest inI Italy (8%).

- The percentage of studying youngsters is the highest in Italy (77%) and the lowest in Switzerland (36%).

Turkish Delight

Turkey is the new up and coming market in Europe and its economic development has global significance, given its size, role as a regional power and strategic location. Turkey is becoming more and more a bridge between East and West and its significance will only grow.

The country has an on a track record of years of stabilization, rapid economic growth, and declining poverty.

At least 22 percent of the Turkish population is between 14 and 25 years old. This is a big market opportunity for companies. Not a lot is known about Turkey, it is a country that clearly differs from other European countries, but how exactly?

Almost 7 out of 10 brush their teeth with a whitening toothpaste and 60% use moisturizers or make up. They have fewer tattoos/piercings (23%) and 28% rarely or never play sports.

Brands are very important for Turkish youngsters. Forty-five percent of Turkish youth have a brand as a friend on their social networks (compared to 35% in Europe). When buying clothes, 46% of young people say that the brand has most influenced on their buying behavior. This is a much bigger group than those that are influenced by their friends (26%).

Videos mentioned in this post

Youthwatching ‘09 from youthwatching on Vimeo.

European Youth Trend Report 2009 from trendwolves on Vimeo.

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At a time when teens are engaging in much more unusual (certainly more headline-grabbing) behavior, it was slightly perplexing to see an Op-Ed piece in the Times on the phenomenon of hooking up, otherwise known in the piece as “The Demise of Dating” (reg. required) among young people. For Ypulse readers, or anyone familiar with Gen Y for that matter, Charles M. Blow’s commentary on the trend of high school and college students forgoing formal courtships for less committal sexual encounters (at least, in the getting-to-know you stage of dating) will seem neither revelatory nor accurate. Frankly, from the way he discusses the subject of teens and twentysomethings, it seems like Blow (who appears from his pic to be beyond twentysomething) has had no contact with either demo for quite some time.

While not a scare piece per se — Blow did provide research suggesting that teens are actually having less sex and not hooking up with strangers  — I find this type of reporting dangerous nonetheless. What’s the point really? Neither by nor for parents or a professional in the youth space, the article just seems like a platform for badmouthing the younger generation for getting it wrong somehow and giving its author the chance to wag his finger accordingly. Rather than going directly to the source, Blow chooses to make his point by paraphrasing a professor who has studied hooking up among college students. Note that Blow doesn’t even differentiate between teens and college students. Now, if said professor had written the piece herself that would have been a different story. I’m sure she would have done a much better job of assessing the “way things are” than:

It turns out that everything is the opposite of what I remember. Under the old model, you dated a few times and, if you really liked the person, you might consider having sex. Under the new model, you hook up a few times and, if you really like the person, you might consider going on a date.

This idea of absolutes – the opposite of what he remembers, the old vs. new model – is troubling because it implies that the value system formerly assigned to dating has also been inverted. Not that things haven’t shifted - while dating now may not be the same expressway to marriage/domesticity that it used to be, love and committed relationships are still on the horizon. It also suggests that we, the young people, are a homogeneous group that have somehow come to a consensus on how to date — when I think back to high school yes, there were a decent amount of “hook ups,” but there were also crushes, flings and even some long-term relationships. Most infuriatingly of all, this limited understanding sets Blow up for coming to this contrived conclusion:

It used to be that ‘you were trained your whole life to date,’ said Ms. Bogle. ‘Now we’ve lost that ability — the ability to just ask someone out and get to know them.’ Now that’s sad.

Setting aside the absurd notion that it’s somehow less sad to spend your “whole life” learning how to search for another person rather than focusing on your own individual achievements, Blow’s suggestion that something has been lost in the process strikes me as especially ridiculous and narrow-minded. It just seems like he’s asking all the wrong questions. Furthermore, he’s asking them a couple decades too late.

So, what are the right questions to be asking right now about teen dating? Take a look at the post Anastasia wrote on the subject a couple months back. Rather than pointing at what’s been lost or forgotten about love and dating, she points to new behavior patterns and asks instead how dating has evolved, redefining the traditional concepts in light of their modern context. Extinction vs. evolution. Hmm… what seems more likely?

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