The Youth Lab

SEEK & FIND - THE RISE & RISE OF ‘THE SPARK’

SOURCE: RTÉ

Ireland’s Euro vision Future is in good hands.

We LOVE the attitude, the energy and the vibes from Ireland’s young rappers behind the song, The Spark. Filmed over one day, it was created by 30 nine-to-12-year-olds including refugees, who claim to have ‘searched for their SPARK and found it’. The song, created by The Kabin Studio and GMC Beats, is an anthem for Cruinniú na nÓg, (Gathering of Youth), an annual series of events encouraging creativity in children and teenagers across Ireland. The song has amassed over 10 million views in the last week, and is setting the scene for what will no doubt be an energetic day of creativity for this year’s Cruinniú na nÓg on June 15th. We’re super pumped at THINKHOUSE to be working with Creative Ireland and RTE on a full #DareToCreate campaign rollout for Cruinniú that includes TV and social media over the next three weeks. Stay tuned for more…

LAND OF ETERNAL YOUTH OPEN TO ALL

SOURCE: EMERALD PARK

Another big news splash from Ireland - Ireland’s biggest theme park, Emerald Park, opened its first fully themed and immersive land, ‘Tir Na nÓg’, encompassing 6.5 acres of Celtic-themed amusements including two landmark intertwining rollercoasters and a wave swinger. The roller coasters, which earned the title of Europe's largest intertwining rollercoasters with a combined length of 1200m, are likely to attract a lot of young theme-park enthusiasts this summer, not least as sixty-five of the biggest rollercoaster enthusiasts from around the world, who sampled the new rides this week, put thrill seeking the top spot of young people’s social feeds.

CHARACTER AI - A TEEN’S NEW FRIEND?

In contrast to the fun and meaningful engagement of actually making a rap video or plunging down a rollercoaster with friends, the world of virtual friendships is taking a new twist with AI-generated friendships. No longer a virtual friendship with a human, this is literally an artificial type of friendship with teens opening up to AI chatbots as a way to explore new friendship and the rewards of friendship - timely advice, fun, support and answers to questions. As the Verge reports, Character.Ai , the second most visited AI after Chatgpt with 3.5 million daily users who spend an average of two hours a day on it interacting with their ‘friends’ - characters from books, films, and video games. While teenagers may get the real-time return of fun, timely advice, and tailored responses to their questions, worryingly (according to their Reddit conversations) their virtual interactions is causing some to claim they prefer engaging with chatbots over human beings, with huge consequences for young people’s ability to engage with real people in the real world. This comes on the back of an interesting week in terms of global policy development on AI safety measures. In a “historic first”, on May 22nd, 16 global AI companies signed new commitments to safely develop AI models, with an EU AI Act due to be implemented next month. What regulations will we see in a world where young people (and humans in general) are becoming more emotionally reliant on chatbots?

THE GREAT BUMBLE FUMBLE

Out of Home, or out of your mind…This week has also brought some interesting out of home (OOH) advertising our way. As part of their brand refresh, dating app Bumble launched Bumble 2.0. Dubbed chapter one of the new bumble, the launch featured interesting plays on the frustrations of dating apps, and their ‘exhausted’ users. However, for some, this tongue and cheek advertising went a step too far in launching a billboard stating “you know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer”.

The launch of the now withdrawn campaign was criticised online with many claiming that the ad choice undermines women's choices, with others claiming ‘tone-deafness’ from Bumble given the the online conversations happening right now, with Audrey Dahmen telling The Drum;

“It totally missed the mark launching during the ongoing conversation of women’s safety like the ‘Man v Bear’ discourse.”*

* The ‘Man v Bear’ discourse refers to the recent viral TikTok debate in which women discussed whether they would feel safer encountering a man or a bear in the woods. The timing of the campaign, combined with the removal of the ‘women message first’ feature (which gained the app over 100,000 downloads in the first month after launch) has made users question whether women’s safety is really the app's main concern.

BRIDGERTON’S BEHIND THE SCENE QUEEN

The hotly anticipated part one to the third season of Bridgerton launched on the 16th of May and our timelines have not been the same since. The fanfare surrounding the period drama reached a whopping 45.1 million views during its opening weekend on Netflix, with “Bridgerton season 3” amassing 95.9M posts on TikTok alone. But one TikTokker shines above them all, Florence Hunt. The seventeen year old British actress who plays the role of Hyacinth has kept fans updated on all of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans to much fanfare with one video reaching 15.8M in just two days. The content is exactly what fans needed with TikTok user @lolablade stating:

“and this is why hyacinth is the superior bridgerton!!!!! come through with the BTS tiktoks”

Fans, as usual, are crying out for more, but this year the tears are real. In contrast to previous seasons where all episodes were released together, Netflix is releasing the final four episodes on June 13th (fans take note: now only twenty days away!). Tik tok indeed.

BRAND TAKEOUTS

FOSTER YOUNG TALENT: With youth culture core our DNA we know what youth can do, but every so often we are taken aback and reminded just how powerful youth voices can be. We can’t wait for this year’s Cruinniú na nÓg on June 15th and #DareToCreate to shine a bigger light on the creativity of Ireland’s youth.

BEHIND THE SCENES WINS EVERY TIME: When you create something good your audience will only want more, and what's better than the behind the scenes content to bring life to a project? As exemplified by Florence Hunt, this works particularly well when there’s a significant gap to ‘Part 2’.

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE IS EVERYTHING: If the backlash over the bumble campaign, dubbed ‘The Great Bumble Fumble’, can tell us anything, it is that successful campaigns can only happen when those who execute them are listening to young people and truly connected to youth culture. And as we saw with Tir Na nÓg’s launch, youth culture is truly global - rollercoaster fans the world over will travel to pursue their passion. See you in the queue at the land of eternal youth….

NEWS FROM THINKHOUSE:

LOVE THAT KEELINGS FEELING:

We’re excited to partner with Keelings and help them bring their vision of a world where more people fall in love with fresh fruit and veg. Our energised marketing campaign went live this Monday 20th May including TV, OOH, DOOH and Radio. Featuring iconic Irish group B*Witched and their infamous track C’est La Vie, it is designed to bring fun and enjoyment to the category whilst focussing on the great taste of Keelings’ fresh produce. This new campaign coincides with a refreshed brand identity with shoppers now able to pick up a punnet of their favourite Keelings’ products in store with a refreshed packaging look and feel. Keelings will also feature at this year’s Bloom Festival taking place 30th May – 2nd June in Phoenix Park, Dublin, with a retail stand selling seasonal fresh produce and a show garden including plants from their farms. Read about our work on all things Keelings HERE.

YOUTH CULTURE UNCOVERED 2024 - FUTURE OF NEWS:

The Youth Lab is gearing up for Youth Culture Uncovered 2024 - the seventh in its series - exploring young people’s attitudes and behaviours towards news; news creation, news media and news consumption. It’s excited to invite its clients to its ‘FUTURE OF NEWS’ event on June 11th where it will explore emerging behaviours and expectations of the next generation of news consumers, and unlock what it means for content creators, brands, businesses and news producers. With a keynote presentation from George Montagu, Head of Insights at FT Strategies, The Financial Times, and panellists including Journalist and Storyful Founder Mark Little, RTÉ’s Mark Coughlan and Professor Colleen Murrell, DCU (Irish Research lead for the Reuters Digital News Report); plus some of Ireland's young content creators and TikTok stars including Andrew Nolan, Seamus Lehane, Aideen Lanigan and Fiona Frawley, it’s set to be an insightful morning. Reach out to theyouthlab@thinkhousehq.com to secure your invite.