Label Networks subscription service attracts cutting-edge clients and subscribers from Fortune 500 to the most intuitive youth market trendsetting brands based on the authenticity of the company's inspiration which comes from the bottom-up, the streets, and working with people who seek insight about global youth culture outside of traditional resources.
With our primary data at the core, we also create custom research programs for events, brands, and sponsors, which help connect brands with the youth marketplace.
In addition, Label Networks offers branding strategies, utilizing our own data and/or custom research, and analysis and consulting based on more than 10 years creating programs in global youth culture markets. Such branding strategies range from campaign planning and testing, to sponsorship programs, targeted demographic marketing, cause-marketing programs and branding, and new category product launches. (See our Case Studies.)
We believe in providing an opportunity for everyone who's interested in global youth culture markets. This in turn has created not only a vast diversity of subscribers and clients seeking what we deliver, but a network of people inspired to be a part of the delivery of information that Label Networks' seeks. The results equal higher quality and timely insider information, primary data and analysis, leading-edge visuals from new global sources, and the tools from which smart, relevant, and sometimes unconventional, brand strategies are created.
We call this Branding through Youth Culture Intelligence.
Principals behind Label Networks:
Kathleen Gasperini
Kathleen is internationally acclaimed as an industry leader when it comes to global youth culture marketing intelligence, research, and branding strategies. Based on 15 years experience from running grassroots to global campaigns, event production, branding, and visionary writing about various youth market trends, her work and that of Label Networks has appeared in the New York Times,BrandWeek, Advertising Age, Yahoo! Financial News, the AP, Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Petersburg Times, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Sports Illustrates, Red Nova, Elle, Vogue, Spin, Vibe,Bread & Butter Bulletin Magazine, Transworld Publications' Surfing, Skateboarding, and Snowboarding, among others.
Formerly, Kathleen worked among leading youth culture magazine titles, including positions as the Senior Editor of Powder and Snowboarder Magazines under Surfer Publications, and the editor of Women's Sports & Fitness. She was the technical writer for the IMAX movie "Extreme," and is the co-founder of the non-profit youth-focused foundation, Boarding for Breast Cancer, for which she received a Humanitarian Award from Snow Sports Industries of America. Kathleen was the publisher of the original, music, fashion, sports, and youth lifestyle magazine, W.i.g. Magazine--for Women in General, and has been published by Harper Collins for her book "Pretty Good for a Girl-the Autobiography of Tina Basich, a Snowboarding Pioneer."
Kathleen is often asked to speak and consult about leading-edge marketing intelligence as it pertains to global youth culture trends in fashion, action sports, music, technology, and lifestyles, including a number of Label Networks' top clients. She has presented at the Volvo Sports Design Forum in Germany; E3 Expo on New Media, Ad:Tech Conference on Youth Culture Technology + Advertising; Ziff Davis Electronic Gaming Summit; the EuroSIMA Summit in France; SIMA Surf Summit in Mexico; U.S. Department of Education; Keynote at the Outdoor Industry Summit; BRE Architectural Summit on the Future of Youth Culture, Technology, + Design; and has been a presenter at the MAGIC International Fashion Trade Show for the past 3 years for Label Networks' highly anticipated presentations on Global Streetwear Trends, among other various conferences and branding summits. Traveling extensively to various leading-edge youth markets, Kathleen is the primary trend forecaster representing Label Networks' Global Youth Culture Consumer Research Studies and marketing intelligence, working with brands, agencies, designers, and thought-leaders regarding trend forecasting from youth markets across North America, Europe, Japan, and China, as well as Label's humanitarian research work on environmentalism and Africa. Kathleen is a graduate of St. Lawrence University and the University of Nairobi with a B.A. in Economics and Third World Studies. She is fluent in Kiswahili.She is the Senior Vice President of International Marketing + Development and a founding partner of Label Networks.
Tom Wallace
Tom has more than 17 years of experience producing interactive platforms and marketing and advertising solutions for entertainment, sports media, and fortune 500 companies, and was an early internet content pioneer. He produced one of the first online magazines MedioNet.com in 1994, then produced and launched the first websites for the National Basketball Association, NBA.com, and NASCAR's NASCAR.com while working for Paul Allen's Starwave Corporation in the mid '90's. While Director of Interactive Services for the advertising agency Think New Ideas (Seattle), he created interactive solutions, marketing, analytical trending tools, and online media campaigns for Fortune 500 companies, including Hewlett Packard and Westin Hotels.
Throughout his career, Tom has been noted for creating scalable content publishing systems and online advertising and permissive marketing solutions, including development and production for Cox Media's seattleinsider.com, MountainZone's skiresorts.com, and Outback Mountainboard's mountainboards.com. While Director of Program Management for the sports fan network Rivals.com, Tom developed ground-breaking platform architecture, including demographic market trending and advertising reporting methods and systems. Tom travels worldwide observing various youth markets and establishing international field trending teams and marketing intelligence strategies. These teams use Label Networks' research strategies and methodologies-among Tom's latest productions--including global remote surveying and trending techniques using wireless and internet communication systems for face-to-face interviewing and trend gathering in the heart of youth environments. Most of all, as a key analyst on global youth markets, Tom connects the dots between global youth trends and businesses needing information through the creation of marketing intelligence and trending studies on Label's international publishing platform. Tom has a BA in Visual Communications from Western Washington University. Tom is the President of Label Networks and a founding partner.
Our Manifesto
Trends are not for sale...
Trends are new cultural movements that follow their own course of birth, life, + death. They can be created, analyzed, enhanced, + propagated. Yet too often, once trends are "defined" corporations, agencies, + media make the mistake of trying to force their way into them or worse yet, "own" them in their attempts at being cool. Historically, this has rarely ever worked without access to exorbitant budgets. And unfortunately, the faster trends change, the more carnage to marketing, branding, + advertising budgets lay in their wake. Ourgoal is to find out what's truly going on inside the youth cultures of 13-25-year-olds on a local, regional, + global level. We work from the inside out, organically identifying the most influential components of new trends by being in the environments such trends are taking place, + then looking at it from different viewpoints + across cultures. You can walk past a big idea if you have your cultural blinders on. Through insightful questions + a network of passionate knowledge seekers around the world, we record answers based on face-to-face question, + scientifically, analytically, + intuitively, put it altogether. The idea is to provide the tools from which to inspire others to make their own, most intelligent, decisions; to provide new correlations + ideas to the pieces needed most-but not to own a trend, rather, to become a part of it, + to shape it for yourself. It is this philosophy behind what we do that makes Label Networks stand apart.
