London's a real dream for teens: Lounge MD James Layfield talks to the Evening Standard about teens and brands

Our MD James Layfield appears in today's Evening Standard, interviewed for 'London's a real dream for teens' by Jasmine Gardner.

In the article about the Underage Festival, James tells The Evening Standard:

“Teens are in a position of power, because they have grown up with social media and computers,” says James Layfield, head of The Lounge, a London youth marketing agency that has conducted extensive research into the social lives of teenagers. “They can get more out of life because they are more aware of everything that is happening. They can be at one event in Covent Garden while receiving pictures uploaded by a friend somewhere else. It's a life of 'augmented reality' with an additional level to it.”

What Layfield and The Lounge discovered — and what no parent will be surprised to read — is that teenagers conduct their social lives primarily and wholeheartedly through Facebook.

It's where they develop and alter their identities, join groups that interest them and stay in touch with their favourite bands, brands and products. As a result, every brand out there is vying for their attention, seeing, as Layfield puts it, “the long-term value of young consumers. Brands really do want to get under the skin of these teens, because if they do, then they can make a lot of money”.

This is the reason we now have brands such as O2 and Orange doubling up as entertainment companies, sponsoring music arenas and half-price cinema tickets. And why Red Bull, one of the teens' most popular fan pages, pulls stunts such as Formula 1 pit-stops in Parliament Square.

But it's not an easy job. “In London teenagers are overwhelmed with opportunities,” says Layfield. “There is something happening every minute of every day that they could go to, often for free, but the hardest part is to get them out of their bedrooms in the first place. Because of the internet, a lot of them are a lot less imaginative than they might once have been. Teens want to be more entertained and that entertainment is much easier to come by now. So it's about creating something so engaging and exciting that they get interested.”