Every year the Sunday Times Generation Next event brings together the top dogs in the youth marketing space to announce the year's coolest brands as polled in an extensive brand preference study of urban South African youths between the ages of eight and twenty-two years of age. The study is conducted by HDI Youth Marketeers in partnership with Sunday Times and support from Monash South Africa.
Last night at the fourth annual Awards ceremony the who's who in the industry (including a few costume-clad characters from Cartoon Network and Chicky KFC) gathered at Montecasino to find out which of them are considered über cool by South African Youth. Yes, these are the brands they admire, the ones they love and the ones they want to buy when they have their own money to spend.
An opening performance by the 2007 winners of SABC's ‘Famous' talent search, Atom, set the mood for the much anticipated event on the local youth calendar. In keeping with the spirit of urban cool, MTV Base presenters, Sizwe and Fix, took to the stage to announce this year's coolest of the cool.
Adding more excitement to this year's event line-up was Sunday Times editor, Mondli Makhanya, who dished out the prizes of the lucky draw which included: 3 x R1,000 Billabong gift vouchers; an Apple iPod and a Samsung J750 cellphone with stylish 3G slider and Google search function.
Enver Groenewald, General Manager, Advertising Revenue and Strategic Communications at AVUSA Media gave those in the audience the low-down on the importance of Sunday Times Generation Next Study and its value to marketers.
Also making an appearance on stage was two of the members from HDI Youth Marketeers Junior Board of Directors (JBoD), Nicky Rawhani and Alma Dlamini. These two lively and opinionated brand-savvy individuals represent a group of hand-selected individuals (tweens, teens and young adults) that were also present at the event. These key influencers in their peer groups keep HDI informed of the latest trends unfolding and erupting in the forever-changing youth space. At last night's event, marketers and industry professionals had the opportunity to meet these youngsters - the youths who critique and rate them - face-to-face. Generation Next 2009 here we come!
Results
COOLEST BANK 1 ABSA 2 FNB 3 Standard Bank
COOLEST COMPANY 1 BMW 2 Coca-Cola 3 Nike
COOLEST BRAND 1 Coca-Cola 2 Billabong 3 Adidas
COOLEST BRAND SLOGAN 1 Just do it-Nike 2 It's finger lickin' good-KFC 3 I'm loving it-McDonald's
Visit our PRESS OFFICE: HDI Youth Marketeers works to create value for brands while relentlessly looking out for young people's interests in all three youth markets: tweens, teens and young adults.- more....