We are pleased to announced that we have been chosen to present at SXSW Eco conference in Austin, TX, October 6-8, 2014, regarding our research and sustainability strategies within youth culture markets.
The presentation is called #TheSustainables: Youth Culture’s DIY Future.
Today’s youth culture of 13-25-year-olds represent a new generation with different ideals from growing-up with recycling and a broader awareness about the environment, global warming, nuclear waste, and humanitarian issues affecting their world. They offer a fresh set of eyes, attitudes, and opportunities to engaging sustainability strategies for their future. Based on tracking a series of questions posed to 30,000 of America’s youth from 2012-14, we reveal their top concerns about the environment, humanitarian issues, greenwashing, brand transparency, music influences towards eco-awareness, fashion, thrift/vintage buying habits.
The DIY thinking and solutions from young people provide insights that creatives, industry leaders, and non-profits need towards creating relevant and viable sustainability plans for their future. The presentation is for those seeking insight from a new angle—from the lifestyle perspectives from the marketplace
The goals include the following:
1) Challenge attendees to see with the eyes of new, the eyes of a young person, towards creating eco-friendly and sustainable business solutions by understanding the motivations for change that come from a demographic that’s grown-up with the knowledge of finite resources, global warming, and humanitarian issues. Inspirational and tactical knowledge of what the marketplace thinks and expects is revealed, but it can only be seen through a different lens.
2) Redefinition is needed as to who the new demographic of young people are and why you should care. By examining the growing diversity of the population, new meaning of “success,” and power of happiness, we take to task old assumptions of apathy and fear. There is little fear of change because they are the change agents. Change is exciting, motivating, even an identifier. With more life ahead of them than behind them, they are the most hopeful segment of the population.
3) Shedding light which alternatives energy programs young people think should be utilized first and opinions on favorite non-profit organizations, volunteerism, and most critical future concerns reveal a fresh roadmap for sustainability. These riveting results not only illustrate that youth culture today is far more aware about such issues than any generation previous, but that they are already living within the framework of the situation they inherited and doing something about it.
4) Case studies from effective music sponsorship to ethical fashion initiatives, from food and beverage campaigns to buying patterns and brand-associations through changes in sports, we reveal what’s worked with youth markets and what hasn’t when it comes to sustainability. How and why some brands have connected from the bottom-up, within the entrepreneurial DIY spirit of the demographic itself, provides additional inspiration for creating signature sustainability solutions.
Stay tuned for more information regarding the time and location of the presentation.
For those attending SXSW Eco, we hope you will consider attending our presentation!
