First published in 2004, ISBN 1-904860-02-08

Introduction

In early 2002 ENCAMS commissioned Marketing Works, a market research agency, to carry out face-to-face interviews with teenagers to inform future campaigning to this target audience. The brief was simple; give us independent research so that the ENCAMS’ marketing team can construct campaigns to change teenagers’ littering behaviour for the better. At the same time we carried out a number of anti-litter pilot schemes in schools and asked Marketing Works to analyse their impact. 

To our disappointment the results were terrible; the pilots made litter or no impact on litter deposition and the segmentation work was inconclusive. The research makes interesting reading and could be of use to teachers or local authorities that wish to tackle litter in and around schools. After all, it’s better to learn from our mistakes than to start from scratch, and although our pilots did not have a significant effect there were some small improvements.

The second commissioned research involved Dale Southerton of Manchester University, and explored the sociology of ‘teenagedom’. This was a necessary second step for ENCAMS to gain a better understanding of the intermediary state between childhood and adulthood. We followed Southerton’s research with an analysis of teenage and litter semiotics. Arguably the foremost practitioner in this area, Greg Rowland, analysed teenage mass cultural influences and gave us a list of guidelines to follow when constructing campaigns aimed at this age group. It was the final part of the jigsaw, giving us, at last, sufficient clues to develop a marketing strategy to change youth behaviour.

Both of the above areas of research will be of use to any organisation that communicates or aims messages to teenagers. It is not just pertinent to litter behaviour but also anti-social behaviour, and arguably gives much ‘food for thought’ in relation to buying behaviour too. We believe our findings are as relevant to the private sector as the public sector, and we hope that by publishing them it will help socially-responsible organisations to learn from our work.

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