Channel 4 Debuts 'Tribes Live' Youth Community

UK broadcaster and media group Channel 4 has launched a real-time online community of 16-to-24-year-olds called 'Tribes Live', through which it will provide its ad clients with insight into what it describes as this 'elusive audience demographic'.

The initiative is the latest in the broadcaster's youth research UK Tribes project, created in collaboration with research and strategy agency Crowd DNA seven years ago.

Invitations to join Tribes Live have been sent to viewers aged 16 to 24 who are registered with Channel 4's online database of more than six million viewers. Upon joining, members complete a questionnaire to determine which one of 25 'tribes', or youth sub-cultures, they fall into - for example Emos, Hipsters, Scene Kids - and members will be encouraged to submit videos and 'citizen journalism' blogging reports, in order to uncover attitudes among their 'friendship groups'.

Channel 4 will regularly ask questions and assign tasks to collect opinions about a range of topics such as media, lifestyle, brands, aspirations and current affairs. There will also be scope to conduct bespoke projects with the community.

Sue Gray (pictured), Head of Advertising Research & Development, explains: '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. We're looking forward to 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.'

Web sites: www.channel4.com , www.uktribes.com and www.crowddna.com .