Youth Insight Agency Closes in Canada

In Canada, youth-focused full service market research and insights agency Youthography has closed down, after a decade in business.

The firm was set up in 2001 to use a range of in-person, quant and qual techniques to help clients understand, develop strategy for, and communicate with tweens, teens and young adults.

In a letter posted on the firm's web site, co-founder and Chief Strategic Officer Mike Farrell said that Youthography had been 'irreversibly damaged' by the demise of its sister advertising business Y Syndicate. All ad operations closed in the last quarter of 2009, when several major US clients reduced spending.

Back in 2008, the Toronto-based agency employed around 50 staff and reported nearly $9m in annual revenues - a quarter of which were generated by the research division. However, Farrell explained that income raised by the research team, was 'insufficient to deal with the ad division's debt load' when Youthography reduced to a 12-person research-only business.

'I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of our clients, vendors, employees, subjects, partners, panelists and friends for the collective role you all have played in contributing to close to a decade of our success here in North America,' said Farrell.

'With hundreds of happy clients, another hundred plus Youthography-educated staff now strutting their stuff in our national research and marketing industries, I'm heartened by the idea that there is a legacy here that will last far longer than any short term pain caused by our sudden departure,' he added.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.