Research that goes beyond what young people say.
Ask a sixteen year old why she does something and you get an answer that is true andexplains nothing. Surveys measure behaviour. We look for the meaning underneath.Twenty years of fieldwork, semiotics and ethnography, backed by a signal platform that scans youth scenes from Ghent to Shanghai every week.
Let's work together
What we do
Trend research:
Which movements are coming, what's noise, and what stays.
Culture research:
What's shifting in values, codes and behaviour, and why now.
Audience research:
Who your audience really is, beyond the personas in your marketing plan.
Semiotic research:
What the images, words and codes your audience uses actually mean.
Strategy for youth brands:
From research to positioning, proposition and communication approach.
Quantitative research:
Representative surveys among Belgian and European youth.
Foresight and scenarios:
Where your sector will stand in five years once this generation decides.
Youth panel and youth councils:
Ongoing access to your audience, not one measurement a year.
How a research project runs with us
Focus
1 week
What do you want to know, and what will you do with it
What do you want to know, and what will you do with it
Fieldwork
[X] weeks
Interviews, observation, surveys, signal analysis
Interviews, observation, surveys, signal analysis
Meaning
[X] weeks
Analysis, patterns, implications for your organisation
Analysis, patterns, implications for your organisation
Translation
1 day
Working session with your team. No report left in a drawer
Working session with your team. No report left in a drawer
Proof
For AXA, we surveyed 600 young Belgians aged 18 to 25 about their fear of calling. The research was picked up by more than twelve national media outlets, from VTM Nieuws to RTBF, and became the basis for Dare To Call: phone booths on the coast, a dedicated platform, and an AI call agent to practise with.
Read the case
Featured case
Hello bank!: how a bank without branches still found a place
The question
Hello bank!, the mobile banking brand of BNP Paribas Fortis, was the first in Belgium to explicitly target digital natives aged 18 to 27. No other Belgian bank had a separate brand for this generation at the time. But a bank without branches also has no place to walk into. How do you build preference with a generation you never meet in person?
What we found
Young people don't hate banks. They don't find them relevant. That's a different problem, and it calls for a different answer. Banks also tend to look alike: similar products, similar communication. A twenty-year-old can't explain what sets their bank apart from the rest. And no one associates a bank with co-creation, with makers, or with change. What we did see moving: the young makers movement, the rise of phygital retail, and a generation combining digital convenience with a growing hunger for something tangible.
What we built
Phygital Labs. Temporary spaces where a digital brand became physical. No branch, no counter, no sales. A place where you'd have a coffee, work, join workshops, and get to know a bank along the way. We came up with the concept, wrote the strategy and programming, and brought together every partner needed to build it: interior design, sensor technology, interactive installations, coding and animation, hospitality, activations. Each part built by a specialist, under one concept and one direction. Three cities, three generations of the same idea. Antwerp first. Brussels sharper and more distinctly urban, with an interior co-designed by Brussels students and a floor open to start-ups. Liège third, further refined.We didn't make the pretty pictures. We figured out what needed to happen, and made sure it happened.
What it delivered
50,000 visitors to the Brussels Phygital Lab in six months3 cities: Antwerp, Brussels, Liège
Why this was a movement, not a campaign
Antwerp wasn't an endpoint but a prototype. What we learned there carried over to Brussels, what Brussels delivered carried over to Liège. Each version was co-built by the generation it was made for.
In their own words
Our interior design partner later wrote on their own site that the underlying concept and ideation came from Trendwolves, and that their assignment was the spatial translation of it.
