One out of five British youngsters feels unhappy

Just under a fifth (18%) of British youngsters aged 15 to 25 consider themselves to be unhappy. About 55% however does feel happy. Nonetheless the British ‘Millennials’ seem to be the least happy of all their compeers in the entire world. Globally only about a tenth claims to be unhappy. This is revealed by the results of a large-scale new InSites Consulting youth survey amongst more than 4,000 respondents in 16 countries. The top 3 countries with the largest share of happy youth are Brazil, India and China, where just under 7 youngsters out of 10 feel happy. Sweden and Russia are the numbers 4 and 5.
You can definitely say that this Generation Y is an overall ‘happy generation. We did not find less than half the youth to be explicitly happy anywhere, but the larger share of unhappy youth in the UK was absolutely striking.” says Joeri Van den Bergh, Gen Y expert, Managing Partner InSites Cons and author of How Cool Brands Stay Hot – Branding to Generation Y.

Technology brands bring the most happiness to Gen Y
But Coca-Cola is still the king of happiness

More than seven out of ten British youngsters connect the emotion of ‘happiness’ with the brand Coca-Cola, which makes the Atlanta multinational the only food brand in the top 5.

Coca-Cola has of course been campaigning for a long time with the slogan ‘open happiness’ and both the highly imaginative ‘happiness factory’ commercials and the Xmas and music festivals activations clearly stick to our youth. Another remarkable fact is that the other brands in the top 5 linked to happiness – except the clothing brand Diesel – are technology brands.” says Joeri Van den Bergh.

Both Nintendo and Samsung (the number 2 after Coca-Cola) and Apple were linked to ‘happiness’ by more than 6 out of 10 British youngsters.

Generation Y is not called thé technology generation for no reason. Previous generations saw car brands as the unlimited freedom, whereas this generation chooses mobile phone brands, gaming, internet and computer brands. It is crucial for a current-day brand to appeal to the happiness emotion. Almost a third of the British youth think it’s important for a brand to make them feel happy. That turns it into one of the main brand characteristics for this generation of consumers. And that’s what Coca-Cola understood a long time ago.” says Joeri Van den Bergh.

Find out more country results in the full research report on SlideShare:

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