Vice – the try-hard news site beloved by stoners and guys with tattoos – is considered revoltingly uncool by young people, a major survey of US teens has found.
The “edgy” media outlet came second-last in a survey of 123 different brands, being thrashed by the likes of Sunglass Hut, Target and, erm, United Airlines.
In fact, the only brand that Vice managed to beat was the Wall Street Journal, which hardly counts teenagers as its target audience.
Vice’s diabolical approval levels with its next generation of readers was revealed by a survey by YouGov of 1,500 Americans aged 13-17.
The data was published earlier this month by Google in a document it referred to as its “Cool Book” – but lay dormant for around a week until media types on Twitter started using the results to mock Vice.
In fairness, the survey showed that teenagers have a pretty low opinion of all media, especially compared to tech brands like Netflix and Amazon, or food like Oreos and Gatorade.
The coolest outlet – by some distance – was BuzzFeed, followed by People magazine, TMZ, then Vice, then the WSJ.
Equally galling for Vice will be that it was among the least known of all the brands – scoring a 2.5 out of 10.
Even if teens aren’t, for some reason, spending their free time studying bond market reports in the pages of the Journal, at least they know what it is.
