Street cred

Next up was a small ethnographic study with girls and guys aged 18-24 to see how they experience shopping for clothes and their relationship with some of the leading fashion brands for this age group. We took pairs of friends on shopping trips and then followed this up with a casual interview in one of the participant´s homes.

For the shopping trip we visited some of the most popular stores for this segment, Berhska and Pull & Bear, and we also included Adolfo Dominguez´s U and Caramelo Jeans or CRMJ. These latter stores target older shoppers but could also be aspirational and accesible for this younger age group.

We expected the girls we interviewed to have a strong relationship with Bershka and this turned out to be true but we also discovered it was a more complex love/hate relationship for some due to their almost traumatic experiences dealing with the crowds Bershka stores attract and the apparent bad attitude of sales staff. Though it doesn´t look like these negatives will cause Bershka to become a victim of their own success for a long time yet.

These interviews also provided an opportunity to discuss their communication habits which for the girls could best be described as frenetic. Yet this constant activity, mainly through text messaging and instant messaging, doesn´t appear to be fatiguing, just as earlier generations could apparently spend endless hours sitting on the phone discussing important social issues such as which legwarmers are the coolest. Middle aged executives around the world now share this addiction but instead gossip and plot on their “Crackberries”.

For Spanish youth, the ‘always-on’ communication trend has jumped platforms in the past 18 months as MSN Messenger has caught on. They may soon jump back to greater use of mobiles phones if Messenger´s mobile version is packaged well with new mobiles. Another potential platform would be the walkie talkie services enjoying some success in the US but little news locally yet on this. The people we interviewed certainly were ready for a device such as the Blackberry with some low cost 3G thrown in to provide bandwidth for lots of messages and the occasional photo or video. This shouldn´t take long, certainly not as long as it took to liberate mobiles from being exclusive to 80s businessmen in pastels and big hair.

The Spanish media environment has some particular national characteristics but the habits of 18-24s reflect global trends and epitomise the challenges facing major media players around the world. Print media are largely ignored with the exception of some occasional reading of free newspapers or newspapers in bars. Instead the Internet plays an important role in providing entertainment and information and this is growing quickly with the current boom in online video through sites like YouTube. Radio retains some relevance because of the attraction of music programming as does TV through the popularity of sports programming and series such as “House”.

There is always a part of the day for ‘kicking back’ on the couch but now some of the day is better spent ‘leaning forward’ to participate in online gaming, updating your blog or sharing your interests on MySpace. Advertising of all sorts, all day is part of life´s wallpaper. Brands that ‘kick back’ and lurk in passive media such as TV and magazine advertising had better have massive budgets and some great creative to avoid getting lost in the background. Better value can be found in getting out to participate in communities of interest in the streets and cafes, blogs and spaces, concerts and clubs, beaches and mountains.

We saw how brands like Puma, Apple and Bershka have won a prominent place in the hearts and minds of Spanish and global youth by delivering accessible style, design, attitude and quality. These brands are perceived to ooze value and authenticity, sometimes with a big advertising budget, sometimes without. I guess to get the 'real thing' we learn to put up with those nasty sales staff and those not so great Apple features (buggy iTunes updates, poor support, dodgy ipod batteries, incompatible file formats…). Nobody's perfect.