stepchanging our dialogue with youth

Beth Corte-Real, Coca-Cola Great Britain and Ireland, UK

Philip McNaughton, Face, UK

Project hijackStep changing our dialogue with youth

in 2008 Coca-Cola GB&I

identified a big challenge

what young people* told us

they were doing was

different to what they were

actually doing in market

needed to get under the

skin of this audience to get

insights that lead to

solutions with impact in the

market

business challenge

* male & female aged 16-20

as well as getting under the skin

of young people, we also needed

to get under the skin of the

stakeholder audience

so the name hijack was chosen –

to signify that we wanted to

‘hijack’ the stakeholder team’s

expectations and presumptions

about a youth audience

and to signify that this project

would aim to deliver direct, hard-

hitting messages about the

challenges that faced the brand

why

hijack?

real time, their world

stakeholder engagement

Coca-Cola ecosystem –

bottlers and brand teams

breadth of coverage and

depth of insight

action orientated

needed yesterday

research challenges

how to understand the world of

young people, when this….. becomes this….. In just 2

years

and working with young people in

research can be a little like this…..

so in 2008 Hijack

1 was born

originally intended as a standalone piece

of research intended to get deep

understanding into a youth audience and

develop a range of solutions for engaging

young people with Coca-Cola brands

has become an ongoing insight platform

allowing Coca-Cola to engage with young

people in research in an real time, social

& participatory way to help land real

business results

still running in

2010 (Hijack 3)

hijack in pictures

real time mobile phone

status updates

social media analysis

co-creation workshop

online community

video diaries

stakeholder workshopsonline focus groups

hijack in numbers

200 young people involved in the project (and counting)

3 initial phases of hijack, which has grown to become the

number of years hijack has been running

5026 forum posts and blog entries

16 ultra-creative young people who co-created with the

stakeholder team

and the most important number of all

infinity …. or the idea of an ongoing dialogue with young people, rather

than a hit and run project that is just about numbers of groups,

participants

real conversations = real

insightslisten to young people talking to each other,

not to us

playtime all the time‘game’ orientated & multi-media

ongoing and real timecapture real behaviour over time, not edited

highlights

create together for better

insightwork with them, don’t ask questions at them

consumer/shopper principles

limited formal debriefingcome on the journey or be left behind

removing filtersparticipate

findings straight to desktopyouth world straight to their world

borderless project scope

and outputsbusiness wide objectives, business wide

outputs

stakeholder principles

from insight to action

on pack promotion

(some tasters of things that Coca-Cola are

doing as a result of the hijack project)

because young people

consistently told us they

needed something

focused, simple,

everyone wins & in their

currency

from insight to action

helping develop a brand

platform

coming from video &

written diaries which

helped us understand

when they were most

engaged with the category

from insight to action

shopper strategy & the

vital role of getting it

right in marketplace

because all the shopper

video diaries showed us

how many and how often

young people changed their

minds at the point of

purchase

from insight to action

reawakened belief in the

full range of pack

formats

because we saw just how

young people loved and

engaged emotionally with

all our pack formats – not

just 500ml PET

gaming

fashion

tech

IMCtrends

music

extreme

youth

coherent audience-centred approach that cuts

across brands & types of output

consumers

observation

respondents

channels

silos

one-hit

people

immersion

partners

niche tailored

collaboration

adaptive

an approach designed to help step-change the business’

attitude towards research & consumer / shopper

brand/

bottlerinsight agency consumer

brand/

bottlerinsight

agency

consumer

approach applied to

different audiences

evolution

expanded geographic

footprint

development of new

tools and approaches

Thank You