Issue 5, vol. 3 - May 2007

Birds chirping, flowers blooming and young people’s hearts and minds turn to getting away for the May long weekend and partying their ass off – it is May TWO-FOUR after all! And we don’t blame them one bit.

However, we at Youthography do make it our business to know what they’re up to… so here’s a little insight into the party and entertainment habits of your average LDA-29 year old (that’s legal drinking age, if you weren’t sure) as ascertained via newly released national survey data from our quarterly Ping survey of young Canadians.

The first thing you might want to know is how many of them like to drink alcohol: 15% of LDA-29 year olds claim to abstain, leaving the 85% to pick up the slack. Their preferred drinks, by percentage that have drunk the following in the last 3 months, fall out like this:

Over the past few years we have noticed a few new trends in the alcohol industry, specifically among younger drinkers. The first trend we’re seeing is a rise on the liquor store shelves of premium brands of spirits. We first saw this premium push with vodka, with the launch of brands such as Grey Goose, Belvedere. Recently, well known brands like Absolut and Skyy Vodka have also introduced premium brands: Level and Skyy 90.

Now we are noticing this trend in other spirits. Higher end brands of gin, tequila and rum are also hitting the market. We’re seeing venues trying to keep up with the tastes of consumers by diversifying their selection or specializing in one category of alcoholic beverage.

There is a great divide between males and females with regard to beer (lead by males) and coolers (or “alcopops”) dominated by the female drinker. When asked specifically about beer consumption, our surveys have tracked the same 6 brands in the top 6 for the last 9 months: (listed alphabetically)

Alexander Keith's, Budweiser, Coors Light, Corona, Heineken, Molson Canadian

You may be wondering about those discount beers you see advertised all the time. In our research with the LDA – 24 cohort we’ve found that less than 9% of these customers are buying them over the last 9 months. If those brands are successful, it would likely be due to smaller numbers of consumers buying higher volumes, not because of an explosion in popularity for these brands.

Another direction we’ve seen in the alcohol industry and young drinkers is the increasing popularity of wine. We found that 42% and 36% of Canadians who are of legal drinking age to 29 years have consumed red wine and white wine respectively in the past three months. Beer is clearly the most popular but the cumulative amount of wine drinking is a significant portion of their consumption mix, driven largely by females. Already, hundreds of groups dedicated to wine appreciation and wine drinking clubs have been created on Facebook. Young people who like wine can join the “Chicks Who Dig Wine” group, or perhaps the “Clearly wine is better than water” group.

Wine is also trying to nurture a more universal appeal: price ranges are very diverse and wine marketers are using more amusing names such at Fat Bastard or Bad Dog Rose to draw attention. Whether this rise in wine consumption among young drinkers is due to increased marketing, or whether saavy marketers have caught on to this increase, ads for wine can be found in publications such as Vice Magazine.

So, are our young adults developing more sophisticated tastes? We’ll keep an eye on this to see if this is just a fashion, or a trend in drinking among youth.