In order to gain spontaneous, valuable insight and a better understanding of its most engaged audience demographic Channel 4 has launched Tribes Live, a new ‘real time’ online community of 16-24 year olds.
The activity is the latest initiative in the broadcaster’s ongoing UK Tribes project in collaboration with research and strategy agency Crowd DNA which was established some seven years ago.
Specialising in youth research, Channel 4 sent invitations to join Tribes Live to viewers aged 16-24 who were registered with the Channel 4’s online database. Upon joining, members were asked to complete a questionnaire to determine their ‘tribe’ (which youth sub-culture they fall into e.g. Emos, Hipsters, Scene Kids).
Head of advertising research and development at Channel 4, Sue Gray, commented: “Our Tribes Live initiative builds on the unique relationship Channel 4 has with young adults. Over a third of all 16-24 year olds in the UK have now registered with Channel 4 and our Tribes Live community enables us to engage a sample of these viewers and explore a broad range of issues with them in real time.”
Channel 4 will now pose questions to the tribes on a regular basis as well as assigning talks to its Tribes Live online community, with the aim of collecting the key age groups opinions on a range of topics including media, lifestyle, brands, aspirations, and current affairs.
The insight gained will also be shared with advertisers and agencies interested in working with Channel 4, there is also scope to conduct bespoke projects with the live community. Video contributions and ‘citizen journalism’ blogging reports from community members are encouraged in order to provide Channel 4 with feedback on trends and attitudes among groups.
Gray added: “We’re looking forward to working with agencies and advertisers by extending the use of this immediately available community to our commercial partners to give them significant insight into the entire spectrum of young adults – an often elusive demographic for traditional research.”