question hour. The third place is where the youth are

Do you spot youth trends? How do you do it?

Jayesh Ratna

Hyderabad

Jayesh, youth and trends? That’s really an oxymoron. Isn’t it?

The youth today is irreverent. But is that a trend? In-the-eye, in-the-face, in-the-gut is really the way they talk. “Hey, dog!” is an affectionate greeting. A side hug that follows that could get your shoulder dislocated due to impact strength is a way of bonding with you and telling you we are one. We come from the same generation, and we are headed to the same hell as well.

The young in this country are difficult to understand. Youth and trends are words that don’t necessarily go together. The youth as a category and genre defies trends. The moment something sets in and looks like a trend, the category moves its cheese and chips and Coke. Trend is for the old. The young believe in change. Change that is forever, and discontinuous. A discontinuous trend is really not a trend. Difficult thing to track with method, science and meaning as well.

Those who believe they are trend-spotters, who have arrived, live in a fool’s paradise. The trend you write about is as old as the day it was written. It is jaded now, and there is something new around today. Let’s wake up and smell the young sweat!

As trends are difficult to track, and once having been tracked, have this yen to change, there is a great way of keeping in touch with the youth and what they do, what they wear, what they speak, what they eat and what they drink and how they party. Just watch them at it.

Track them. Track them without them knowing you are tracking them. Catch them in their natural surroundings. By the way this is not their home, their school, their college or their spanking new entry-level offices. Instead, it is the third place where they are letting their hair down. Catch them in their gyms, the beauty-parlours, the cafés, the pubs, the discos and more. It is here that they are themselves.

Catch them as well on twitter and Facebook. Catch them on Tagged. Catch them with their pants down with their second and third digital handles that run as ‘HotArun’ and ‘HawtGAWD’ and ‘CoolKHIMCHI’ and ‘KoolKHICHDI’ alike. Catch them on sites you never thought guys and girls like them would ever be. The footprints you track today must be both physical and digital. And just as there are “physical third places”, there are “digital third places” where they hang out as well.

And then when you have watched them 1:1 in myriad “third place” locations, build that pen picture of theirs. This will change in three months flat. Therefore, keep building those pen pictures every month, month on month, and keep calibrating your mind, mood, language, tone and tenor of the youth at large. You just might be on the right track then.

(Harish Bijoor is a brand strategy expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Mail your queries to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in )