"This report paints a totally new picture of British youth today. If you want to understand the future, you have to read, understand and take on board the lessons of ‘Young Blood’."
Stephen Rosenthal – Head of Social, Google
Why Young Blood?
Young Blood is Amplify’s follow up to our critically acclaimed 2012 thought leadership film ‘FanCulture’.
Over six months we interviewed 2,506 13-25 year olds, generating 7,000+ hours of interviews. The result is a white paper, a seven-part film series, a collection of talks in collaboration with The Soho House Group, and a companion book.
Our research was born from our continued desire to understand the hopes, fears and realities of growing up in Britain today. We’ve all heard the stats, but it wasn’t enough for us just to know that ‘they spend four hours a day on their phones’.
13-25 is a broad age span. As the age gap widens the differences increase, reflecting new and varying influences. To truly understand the behaviour of our young audiences, their attitudes and motivations, we needed to know ‘why?’. Importantly, we wanted to find out what this means for brands and marketers, as it’s vital we understand these nuances for today’s campaigns, and those of tomorrow.
We truly believe this generation gets a hard time in the media. Through having created collaborative campaigns for brands including Converse, Red Bull, PlayStation and YouTube, we know what a talented, positive and pragmatic group they are, despite some of the tough challenges they face.
Through Young Blood we wanted to give Britain’s youth a platform to say what they really think, helping them challenge the stereotypes they face and going beyond generic labels like ‘Millennial’ or ‘Gen Z’.
The Research
The Young Blood project started with a UK-wide questionnaire involving over 2,500 young people aged 13– 25. We then added depth and richness to the big data by running workshops, one-on-one and peer-to-peer interviews, auto-ethnography and digital life tracing. All of this was brought to life through our films, where we spoke with young people and their influencers- from yoga ambassador Jessica Skye to Sick Chirpse, who has been described as the editorial voice of this generation.
The Influencers
In addition to the 2,506 people we spoke to during the course of our research, we spoke to young people who are starting their own businesses, media empires and collectives. Meet our Influencers here.
The White Paper
The academic backbone to the Young Blood project, the white paper (written by Head of Planning Krupali Cescau) is an in-depth analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data gathered. It pulls together the assumptions and stereotypes attributed to young people and directly contrasts them to our research findings and quotes from the people themselves.
The white paper is presented under 7 topic areas with the most relevant general stats highlighted. The data, however, can be cut by age group (13-15, 16-19, 20-25), gender, region and city on request. Our five top findings for brands can be found here.
The Book
In May, we released Young Blood: The Book. Breaking down all our key stats, it includes interviews with our influencers and a run through of all the themes explored in the films.