Y!CON 2016: An opportune youth revelation

24 Mar 2016

Serving up brand-new research on how brands and youth connect, Student Village recently hosted its very first Y!CON 2016 youth marketing conference. With a focus on connecting brands and youth like never before, the South Africa's youth market specialists plugged into the minds of the coolest and most influential students, brand ambassadors and marketing gurus in South Africa.

Y!CON 2016: An opportune youth revelation

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This multiple youth insight platform touched on every pillar of student life from graduate employment dynamics to student trends and brand interactions. “This conference comes at a critical point where #Feesmustfall shook SA into a series of '#mustfall' cries, and students around the globe are more vocal than ever before thanks to SA youth’s influence,” said Kwanele Nomoyi, youth insights specialist at Student Village.

A Y!CON 2016 Multimedia Report will be published in coming weeks with running video footage of the amped-up presentations that crossed the stage at The Venue, Melrose Arch on 17 March.

The speaker line-up included the likes of Mike Stopforth, CEO of Cerebra; Richard Mulholland, founder of Missing Link; Masechaba Ndlovu (Lekalake) TV presenter and radio host; Refiloe Ramogase, co-founder of Maftown Heights alongside JR, SA hip-hop musician; Arye Kellman, radio host and founder of the #Kellman20 campaign; Khensani Nobanda, executive head of department for High Value, Vodacom; and Ronen Aires, CEO of Student Village.

Bizcommunity and Cliff Central were media partners to the initiative, alongside sponsors including PS Chocolate, Nescafe, Futurelife, Discovery and Always-On Wi-fi.

The conference featured speed-branding sessions – punchy slots with the most plugged-in students in SA, as they took questions and shared what brands should be doing to capture their attention.

“We offered brands an exclusive opportunity to uncover Afrillennial mindsets by probing students in a high-octane face-to-face forum and have all their youth-related questions answered,” said Marc Kornberger, co-founder and director of Student Village.

With an array of industry experts, celebrities speakers, research and stories from the hottest SA students, delegates received a rich insight into the elusive African youth market.

Ronen Aires, CEO of Student Village, also presented the research report on Afrillennials™ which focussed on successful integration and retention of graduates in the workplace, also unpacking how they fit within brands' framework.

While experts shared how brands are getting it right with the youth, delegates also got to hear the most impactful stories about how brands cracked it using non-traditional marketing methods from a host of top brand ambassadors.

Some topics covered at Y!CON 2016 included: