The lounge brings you a round-up of some of the most interesting and informative articles and blogs about youth culture and marketing. Adage document the debate surrounding the drop off of 18-24 year-olds on Facebook. We say: don’t believe the hype, Facebook is here to stay. ...Bearing that in mind here are a few tips for engaging teens on Facebook This is The Next Generation, a marketing blog written by Millennials, looks to explain their demographic to older marketers, educators, and researchers. Sparxoo debunks a few myths about generation Y.

Buzzword Alert – ‘Engagement’ Engagement has become a bit of a buzzword recently. This came as a surprise to us as we’ve always put engagement at the heart of everything we do. And our experience has taught us a thing or two – here’s a taster: • Build a dialogue by providing an opportunity and a reason to respond. Take the time to understand your audience and then use this knowledge to add something relevant/interesting/useful/new/cool to their lives and they will want to engage. Then give them the tools to communicate this to their friends.

Miller Genuine Draught - ‘This is My Glasgow’ photographic mural • Understand their passions and how your brand could help them in the pursuit of these in a relevant and credible way. For EA we created ‘Big in the Game’ workshops in all aspects of hip hop, inspired by EA’s titles. For Miller Genuine Draught we captured 18-24 year old Glaswegians passion for their city through ‘This is my Glasgow’, a consumer-generated photographic celebration of Glasgow. • Be long-termist in your engagement strategy. You will be considered more genuine, and credible and thus build a far deeper connection. • Create real authenticity online by building relationships with, and getting endorsements from online influencers - bloggers and influential social networkers in the relevant sector.

How to use Insights to Effectively Engage Text-Savvy Youth through Award-Winning Marketing Campaigns Last month our MD, James, spoke at the Haymarket Digi-Savvy Youth Conference. He wowed delegates with Insights into our Insight - a look at how we tap into our unique resource, our Peer Network - 8,000 under 35s - to deliver real results, showcasing this with our award-winning ‘Inspired Choice’ campaign for Alliance & Leicester, a campaign built using our immersive insight methodology.		Lounge immersive insight study
Lounge Vox Pops We believe that to truly understand under 35s you need to go beyond traditional surveys & focus groups. Our Peer Network becomes our eyes and ears on the ground with brands’ target audiences documenting their everyday reality. Using this methodology we have helped; Lynx to uncover the passions of the ‘Lynx man’ and how to connect with them, Canon to understand the influences on student photographers and how and when to build a relationship with them, and most recently The Anthony Nolan Trust to understand young people and how to motivate them to join the bone marrow register. If you would like to hear how The Lounge Insight could help your brand then drop us a line at Lounge HQ.

foursquare

foursquare Here at The Lounge we like to think of ourselves as the sort of Mystic Meg of marketing - we identify trends before they happen (apologies for the paradox) and new social networking app foursquare is set to become your new obsession! The concept is based around letting your friends know where you are at all times – stalker’s heaven! It’s also about competing with your mates. The user goes about their life, clocking into every venue they visit, posting reviews through a mobile app. The most frequent visitors become mayor of that venue, encouraging friendly rivalry and offering opportunities for retailers to reward repeat custom. Although relatively new to the UK (London is the only registered city so far) businesses are already taking note. Hummus Bros have spotted the benefit of this localised, super-targeted marketing channel, rewarding the Mayor (clearly a loyal customer) with 2-for-1 on meals. So, a social networking game that’s fun, allowing brands to reward consumer loyalty and showing you what’s hot in your city. Soon it’ll be a case of be on foursquare... or be square!

New Recruit!

We like to nuture young talent here at The Lounge... introducing Sara's son JOSH...

... and after a pretty hectic morning of artworking and spinning on his chair it all became too much for young Josh, and he is now making the most of his lunch break with a bit of a kip!

Lynx Fever!

Ingenious use of Facebook

The SKYN Revolution is here!

Our video for Mates new SKYN condom went live on YouTube last night... it already has over 12,000 views!! Join the revolution on Facebook...

THE LOUNGE GROUP HELP MATES NEW CONDOM ‘SKYN’ REVOLUTIONISE SEX

We are delighted to announce that The Lounge Group, has been appointed to conduct a fully integrated European marketing campaign for Mates’ new premium condom, Skyn.

We will launch a campaign across the UK, France, Italy, Poland and Hungary beginning in November which will seek to revolutionise the way people view condoms and inspire consumers to join the Skyn revolution.

We are all very excited and have been working hard to come up with some great ideas so watch this space.

We also got a mention in this week's Marketing magazine!

It was all happening at The Lounge yesterday, with actors and models lining up to audition for an exciting new campaign we're working on. Watch this space – all will be revealed soon...