Issue 6, vol. 2 - May 2006

We talk a lot here at Youthography about media fragmentation and the “media-tasking” talents of Canadian youth today. We're witnessing teens listening to online radio while downloading a video Podcast, MSN'ing four friends at once, doing their homework, watching The O.C.with an episode of The Family Guy loaded up on their PC to watch during the commercials - and a copy of Skateboard Canada magazine open at their desk.

Canadian marketers often ask us how to best reach Canadian youth considering this challenge. What media choices are your best (safe) bet? And, how do you do it on a limited (gasp) budget?

For the in-depth answer to this question you'll have to be a Youthography client (and hey, don't hesitate to actually give us a call if you want to dig deeper in regards to our expertise in youth media planning). But for some insight on one of the better media choices right now, we wanted to talk about the MMVA's.

The 17th MuchMusic Video Awards will be going off Sunday, June 18 starting with the red carpet telecast at 7:30 pm on MuchMusic and Citytv. In 2005 the MMVA's saw over 6,000 youth descend on the CHUM City building in Toronto to see their favourite music artists and celebrities including Ashlee Simpson, Arcade Fire, Billy Talent, Black Eyed Peas, Ciara, k-os, Carmen Electra, and The Killers. Over 2 million people tuned into the awards last year most of them tweens, teens and young adults. Considering the media challenges with this demographic, those are pretty good numbers these days. Brands like Rogers, Coors Light, McDonald's, Nokia, Pepsi and Herbal Essences already know it. They've signed on as sponsors for this years MMVA's, unfortunately filling all six sponsor slots made available by CHUM for this property (although we've just received word that an HD partnership is still up for grabs).

But what we like best about the MMVA's is that after 16 years in market, and with a proven track record as “the gold standard in live television production”, the MMVA's have simply made it into the youth psyche in this country. Teens and young adults watch the MMVA's and they talk about it. As well, the event in Toronto takes over the city and creates a media circus and party-frenzy only trumped by the Toronto International Film Festival. With the party scene including the REVOLVER party (in its 12th year) competing with the Maxim party, Universal Music party, and MAXAMUS urban party, the after-the-awards experience can be almost as exciting as the awards itself.

The MMVA's are on the radar of Canadian youth en masse, and in today's troubled media environment, that's a consumer insight worth rocking out to.

Put This in Your Pipe and Smoke It

In honour of the Global Marijuana March on May 6th we're digging into our quantitative vaults here at Youthography to smoke out some appropriate data. So, all bad drug puns aside, here's a few interesting pieces of information for you to collectively weed through.

Based on national data of 1001 youth we collected just under 2 years ago (a new study is currently planned to field in the next quarter of this year) over a third of young Canadians (37.5%) admitted to having tried some form of illegal drug at least once in their lives.

For those that had admitted to “ever having done drugs”, marijuana was, by a huge margin, the dominant drug “done” with 97.6% of respondents noting usage here.

This was then followed by close cousin, hashish, and the other soft drug of choice, mushrooms; both with reported usage rates of 32.8%. Ecstasy, acid and cocaine rounded out this top 5 of sorts at 13.9%, 13.1% and 9.6%. Apparently, when young Canadians experiment with illegal drugs they continue to be more drawn to the soft basics made popular during the coming of age time of their predominantly boomer parents.

Surprisingly, BC/AB did NOT dominate in terms of reported illegal drug usage. Their reported usage rate of 32.7% is trounced by respondents in Quebec (with a rate of 43.7%) and The Prairies (SK/MB) with a rate of 42.2%. The rest of the regions all fall somewhere in between. No significant aggregate difference between males and females and, yes, rates move up as the ages do; from 28.8% for 15-19 year olds to almost double that figure (52.6%) for respondents aged 25-29.

On top of that, in a recent study of 994 youth we just fielded (January 2006) looking at smoking trends in general, national data shows us that fully 17% of young Canadians admit to having tried “cigarettes laced with marijuana”. Which begs the question; where does this leave the ‘gateway drug' argument now?

www.cannabisweek.ca.