Media consumption of 14-19 year olds

Trying to find the best way to engage with ‘the yoof’ of today is, for many organisations, like searching for the Holy Grail.

In times past, you could bet that if advertising, marketing and PR execs thought something was cool, then the best way to target this tricky demographic was via television, radio or the press.

These days they’d be cataclysmically wrong. It would be the marketing equivalent of seeing your dad dance when MTV was on. Yes I did witness this awful occurrence once and will remain scarred for life.

I digress. At Freshfield towers we recently commissioned the good people at Carat to identify for us what was the best media channels to target 14-19 year olds as a significant part of our client portfolio lies in the education sector.

What came out of the research was, in some cases not so surprising, but when looking at the FE sector, what was baffling was the continued use of outdated and irrelevant channels by some colleges to engage with this audience.

Unsurprisingly the best channel was the internet, with this age group spending on average 25 hours a week online. Facebook was the most visited site with most accessing the internet through a laptop or PC. There’s also real growth in this age group accessing their favourite sites via smart phones and games consoles.

Television came second, cinema third, outdoor advertising was fourth, radio (commercial and national) was fifth, with magazines and newspapers trailing in behind at sixth and seventh respectively.

So, what does this tell us? Well one thing is for sure is that if any FE establishment is targeting 14-19 year olds via newspapers – they’re wasting time and money.

It’s fine to invest resources in this medium if a college wants to reassure parents that it’s a good place for their kids to go to, or for adult learners to be more aware of a college’s myriad of courses. However, if you want to get your core learners through the door, you’d better look at implementing an online campaign that gets you noticed.

If you’d like to know more about the research or our specialist education service, then please drop me a line. Now, what channel is MTV on? I’ve got some shapes to throw.