Matt Britton Keynote, ILEA LIVE, Calgary Alberta - 8/10/17

Thanks for taking the time. My name is Matt Britton. I spent my entire career focusing on the younger generation, helping brands kind of decode all the changes that are happening. When I started my career in 2002, when I started my first agency, the Internet was actually first invented on college campuses, which makes me feel super old when I talk to people. Not maybe old to people in this room, no offense, but to kids that basically say, what do you mean when the Internet was first invented? And I say, well, the Internet is actually a pretty new thing. And when I started my agency, brands did not know any. They had no idea, no context in terms of how to use the Internet. So I started an agency called Mr. Youth in 2002 for my bedroom in Manhattan. And over the course of 15 years, I built a pretty sizable business that grew up to 500 employees, worked with half of the Fortune 500. I had offices all around the world. And the agency was acquired by a French multinational holding company called the Publicist Group. I worked there for a couple years, and I wrote a book called Youth Nation, which is a bestseller, which basically is about what I'm talking about today, which is how the changes that young people are adapting right now, their cultural and lifestyle changes, is changing the future of the society and the business landscape forever. And that's kind of something that I think is a massive opportunity for anybody in business right now, because for the first time in history, big business decisions aren't made from the boardroom. They're actually made from the sidewalk. It's the consumer that's now in control. And the younger consumer who disproportionately adopts technology and new trends are the ones who actually have the ability to take. To take down massive institutions. Think about the year that Instagram got acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars. It was actually the same year Kodak went out of business, who was in business for over a century. The fact that Instagram was acquired was incredible for a billion dollars because they only had eight employees, and they actually were valued more than New York Times, who was in business for 100 years, started by 20 something, right? So that's just one of so many examples of the power that young people have. A lot of people ask me, millennials, Millennials, why do people care so much about this generation? And the reason why is Millennials were the first generation to ever grow up with the Internet in the household. And if you think about it, that kind of makes them a different species than every human that was born before them. The access to information, the speed the Ability to communicate and the overall exposure they had to the world around them is unprecedented. And everyone's also asking me, well, what about Gen Z, the next generation? It's just going to be more Gen Y ness, or millennial ness, if you will. But because they were also born with the Internet in the household, so they're not gonna have as much of a seismic change on society as millennials did. Millennials really came into the workforce, and now they're shaking up everything. And sooner or later, millennials are gonna be in the C suite. And when that happens, you're gonna even see more change. So I talk pretty fast. I have a lot of energy, maybe too much for 8:45am presentation, but hopefully you guys can kind of roll with me here. My presentation today is called Millennials A to Z. I basically go through every single letter of the Alphabet and every letter of the Alphabet. I have a different trend that is associated with this generation and how they're actually changing society. It's gonna actually go very quickly. It's gonna feel like you're drinking from a fire hose. So if you need me to slow down, take a deep breath, let me know. But I believe in high energy. You're not gonna see any words on my slides, and I'm gonna try to engage you guys a lot. If you have questions, you can either spit them out, you can tweet them. My Twitter handle's on every single social media slide, so I'll try to address them at the end. Or if we have time, we'll do quick Q and A. All right, so let's roll. A stands for access over ownership. Okay. What? That means that this generation does not want to buy the cars and the houses. The rite of passages in terms of buying things to define yourself, they would rather actually rent things or access them. Look at Uber. They're accessing a car. Airbnb. This is actually a very cool Flintstone looking house. And California, which you can actually rent on Airbnb. This generation wants to be mobile. They don't want to be stuck in one place. And since they don't want to be stuck in one place, they have no interest in actually buying a home and being stuck there. They'd rather rent an apartment, sublease it to other people. When they travel and rent other people's places all around the world, they'd rather access their music. The one thing Steve Jobs said wrong is that people want to own their music. Turns out they don't. They would rather just access their music because music changes change so much. They'd rather pay a monthly fee to, to rent or be able to access the music, but they don't want to actually buy a song, which they're gonna get tired of listening to. Apple bought Beats, which was a streaming service attached to it, because they finally figured out that was wrong as well. And you're gonna see it happening over and over and over again. The ability to own things just isn't as important anymore. It's all about access. So the access over ownership kind of trend is also called the sharing economy, which is about consumers sharing things with one another. There's also a variety of services right now that allow consumers to share, whether it's fancy clothing that they might wear once or fancy fine china they might get for a wedding that they're going to use once. It's really a communal state that's going on right now. The Internet is connecting buyer and seller or supplier and the person that's demanding it. And it's really creating a lot of efficiencies in our economy. Now, there's a big kind of gotcha here, which is that, yes, consumers are spending less money on buying things, but. But it's not like they're spending less money. They're actually shifting those dollars towards experiences. So the status symbol is now the status update. Status update over status symbol. Experiences are now defining this generation. It's no longer the brands that they're actually wearing out there. It's the experiences that they have when they're posting on Instagram. It's not their new Toyota Camry. It's that they're at Coachella, that they're front row at a Knicks game. Whatever it may be, they. That's what defines them. Experiences. B stands for the barbell economy. What is going on in the United States especially, but it's actually a broader global trend, is that the middle class is quickly eroding. Right now in the United States, there's four companies that are driving the ecosystem. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google. Those four companies are worth $3 trillion. People that work for those companies or touch them or in their ecosystem are on the right side of this wealth disparity that's going on. So for the first time in 50 years since the roaring 20s, I guess it's 60, 70 years. 0.1% of the population controls nearly 25% of the wealth. Okay, eight people control more wealth globally than 50% of the bottom population. So this disparity is spreading out and out and out. The middle class is quickly withering away. Not a great thing, but it's the truth. Jobs are getting outsourced, things are getting offshored. So. So the jobs that used to exist for middle America are kind of going away and the wealth is getting pushed towards the coast. So what does this mean for big companies? It means you actually need to pick a side. You either need to be a luxury brand or a value brand. You can't be in the middle. Look at the Gap. They just announced they're closing 40% of their stores. Why? The value side of the equation. They can't afford to shop at the Gap. The luxury side of the equation. They don't want to shop at the Gap. They find theirself in the middle. Target, they used to be about low prices and they tried to move into the middle with fashion deals with Isaac Mizrahi trying to be a fashion, lifestyle brand. Disenfranchise the value shopper. Walmart, everyday low prices. Walmart continued to grow. Target said, oh, maybe we need to actually go back to the value side. And they did on the luxury side. So look at the value side. Dollar Store, Dollar Tree, Dollar General Vizio that sells flat screens for $199. Kia that has an entry level car for $14,000. These companies are doing incredibly well. Sponsored Spirit Airlines is saying we're going to drop costs or WestJet as low as possible. On the luxury side, you have a company like Blade that shuttles people back and forth to the Hamptons from New York City for $600 or JetSmart or a private jet rental company or Four Seasons hotels or Amman Luxury Resorts Group. These companies are doing incredibly well because they're on the luxury side of the equation. So in this new world, in this millennial driven economy where there's such a big divide and what the digital divide is doing right now is it's withering away the middle and, and it's making brands in every category decide, am I going to be a value brand that's going to win on supply chain innovation and giving the lowest possible price or a luxury brand that's going to win through innovation and branding and understanding how to actually differentiate who they are. So watch out for that barbell economy. And as you actually look at companies, you're going to start to see companies that are going to pick a side. Delta and Airline, they are going to the luxury side. They launch Delta one, they're upping their prices, they, they're going towards the business sector. So you're going to start to see brands say, hmm, I don't want to be in the middle because I see what's happening to other businesses in the middle. It's time for actually me to go one way or the other. C stands for cities. And cities is fascinating to me because the version of the American dream for this generation has taken a U turn. So it used to be go to college, then go to a city, meet somebody, and then move out to the cities for your. I mean to the suburbs for your big house or white picket fence, two car garage, lovely lifestyle in the suburbs. But this generation now has access to what younger people are doing. And they live in a 24, 7 news cycle and news feed, and they have no interest in going away from where the action is. So instead of driving out to the suburbs, the American dream is taking a U turn back into the city. And cities is where millennials imagine themselves building their lives. Schools are becoming better, there's more parks, they're becoming safer. And again, the access is so strong that they'll give up the space and the privacy for convenience and connectivity. They'd rather be close. And if you actually think about it, you don't need as much space anymore because you no longer have books, right? They're all in the cloud. You no longer have CDs, they're all in the cloud. There's services that will actually store your stuff in cities, that will take things actually away from you and bring it back to you when you need it. You don't need a car anymore because you actually could hit a button, have a car wherever you want. You actually don't need to go go to a supermarket or store anymore because you can get everything delivered to you. Amazon can have anything to you within the day. So it used to be living in cities was a very hard thing. Even walking your dog, there's Wag where you hit a button and it's an Uber for dog walkers, which is exploding in major cities. You can very conveniently live in cities right now. And what's starting to happen as a result is that the prices are skyrocketing in real estate in major cities. Look at Brooklyn, New York. In the last 10 years, prices are up over 125%. But the neighboring suburbs, like Long island, is basically up only 2 to 3%. So it's becoming way less affordable for young people to be able to buy real estate. So they're renting, but that fits into the kind of rental economy mentality. This is also driving a ton of gentrification. So the livable boundaries of major cities all around the world are being pushed further and further outward. Brooklyn My example, Bed Stuy, an area that was crime ridden five, 10 years ago, is now selling $2 million townhouses. The since consumers are staying in cities, the populations are growing, it's pushing outward and outward. And the notion of the blue collar inner city worker is actually being flip flopped and now the blue collar workers actually out in the suburbs and the creative class is taking over major cities. So cities has a reverberating impact on so many industries and companies are taking note. So Microsoft, instead of having a huge suburban enclave in Redmond, Washington, is moving back to Seattle and Visa's moving from Foster City to back to San Francisco. And Pepsi's moving from purchase out in the burbs in Westchester back to New York City. Because why? The millennials are there. They want to attract the talent they no longer want to push further out. So really fascinating. D stands for difty, which is something I talk about in the book. Of course, the Biebs make its appearance on slide 4. Diffty stands for did it for the Instagram. What does that mean? It means that experiences are so strong in people building their overall personal brand that people are pursuing them not. Not so much for the ability to enjoy them, but to prove that they were there to actually put it on Instagram and show people, I hiked this mountain. I'm rugged, I went to the beach, I'm adventurous, right? I'm flying a private jet, I'm a baller. So people look at it and they think, wow, this person is something that they actually want to be. And people are dying to get the perfect Instagram shot. Unfortunately, they're falling off cliffs because they actually want to be like, hey, take a picture. Really sad. But it's, it's what this generation is doing. It's how they're building their brand. In the 90s and early 2000s, they'd want the Lexus or the Mercedes or the big house and car that was the status symbol. But again, the new status symbol is the status update. And Instagram is where the status updates build personal brands. This is a mountain called Mission Peak in Fremont, California. Okay, it's been around for a very long time because it's a mountain. But in the last few, five years, there's been complaints from local residents about lack of parking, pollution, noise. So many people all of a sudden want to hike Mission Peak. Why? It's right off two major highways. It's actually a pretty short hike up. It looks like these guys just climbed Everest, but they actually really didn't. And at the top, there's a pole that you can climb up to get the perfect selfie. So now all of a sudden, Mission Peak is all the rage because everybody wants this image, everybody wants to share it and have people think that they're actually really rugged outdoors. The real people who really like outdoor lifestyle aren't doing it for the picture. They're doing it because they want to get outdoors. But now everybody can kind of portray that that's what they're doing. You're finding this go on over and over and over again. So for businesses, what does this mean? It means that you need to make your business an experience. It doesn't matter if you sell pizza or you sell children's toys or you're a laundromat. You have to figure out a way to make your business shareable and have the interaction with your business and and experience that actually people want to share. And it's the businesses that are living on the edges that are doing things really as far out as possible in their category are the ones that are actually winning. E stands for E Commerce. And I mean, what can I say? But Amazon really is obviously eating up the world right now for this generation. It's the de facto way they're buying everything. You all know that Amazon recently bought Whole Foods in the grocery space, which was the number one kind of retail for groceries for the millennial generation. And as they stay in cities, as they don't have cars, they take the SUV out to Target a Walmart and load up the trunk, they're hitting a button, they're using prime and they're getting things actually delivered to them. And the shift is going to continue and continue and continue. And as real estate prices go up in cities, then it really hurts businesses abilities to have stores on Main Street. So really stores are going to become showrooms. Look at Tesla Texas. Tesla doesn't have these huge dealerships in the suburbs where you have big parking lots like you have, like Ford has and what GM has and what Chrysler has. They have tiny little 2,500 square foot showrooms in major metropolitan areas where consumers can come if they want to buy a car, which most of them don't want to anymore, but if they did, they actually see there's one car on display and there's people that are getting their information and shipping the car to them. It's a showroom model. Warby Parker, who I'm going to talk about a little bit later, where which is an emerging eyewear brand that's taking on Luxottica. They have a 2,000 square foot showroom model where it's the same products on both sides of the aisle. Simplicity, ease. And a showroom model. That's the future of retail. Because having a huge retail complex isn't going to work anymore. My office is in Soho and Manhattan and I lost my Bose earphones and I don't like holding the phone next to my ear. So I had a big conference call and I tried to go get a pair across the street and they had them we but I was in line for 5, 10, 15 minutes waiting to actually be able to buy the earphones because the person in front of me was fumbling through to try to find the rewards information. So I said, you know what, I don't have time for this. And there's a huge two, three story complex that Best Buy has in Soho on Broadway. And I just left. And as I'm on my escalator down to leave the store, I went on Prime, I ordered it and I knew I'd get it tomorrow. Sure, I didn't get the same day, but with prime now, I actually could get it the same day. And as I'm walking out, I'm thinking, this huge three room factory that Best Buy have, it's gonna be an apartment complex in two to three years. And my experience is exactly the reason why. And if I don't have patience, but people are like, well, why don't you have 15 minutes? It's not that I just don't have 15 minutes. I don't have 15 minutes to wait in line. Right? I'd rather be spending my time doing something better. And Amazon makes it so easy. So E Commerce, mobile commerce, that's just the default now. And you're gonna see it happen more and more and more. S stands for Facebook and a lot has been made of, oh, Facebook isn't, you know, millennials aren't on Facebook anymore. And I can tell you all firsthand that's just simply not the case. First of all, Facebook owns Instagram, so they're all on Instagram. So that just eliminates that argument. But what Facebook has become is really the universal identity layer for the web. So if there's a marriage, if a baby is born, if somebody graduates, if God forbid, somebody dies, they're gonna go to Facebook to look and they're gonna commemorate people and they're gonna look for pictures and that's kind of where you go. It's the dial tone of the Internet and nobody is leaving it anytime soon. I go on CNBC all the time. And when Snapchat Went public. There's a lot of other talking heads saying Snapchat's the latest entrant in the social media sector. There is no social media sector. There's just Facebook. They are the sector. There's no other social media companies. They've won. They have 1.2 billion users. They've logged over 3 trillion posts from consumers. It's the largest, most powerful communication tool that's ever exist in the history of humanity. And if you're an advertiser that's advertising anything, you need to figure out how to actually leverage it. Okay, from a practical standpoint, log on. How do you run ads? You can target ads towards seven people that live within one mile of Duluth, Minnesota, that, like Beyonce and pizza. And you could target that, or you could target every female in the world that's on Facebook, which is, you know, 50% of all female content consumers actively and everything in between. You need to understand this. And I tell advertisers, I put 100% of my advertising budget into Facebook and Instagram right now. 100%. Why? Because it's not spray and pray. It's not the 18 to 49 generic demographics. You can reach exactly who you want, measure and optimize in real time on mobile, on desktop, where consumers are. G stands for Glam Squad, which is one of the very many services which is kind of taking on the sort of like uberfication of society, if you will, meaning that people don't want to leave their apartments, they live in cities. And it's also very hard for a lot of services, as I mentioned earlier, to afford to have business models on traditional retail locations. So Glam squad is a service where you hit a button and you have a team. One, two, three, stylists. Come on. So if you and your girls are getting ready for a night out to do your hair and your makeup and your blowouts before you go out in your apartment. So they don't have the infrastructure costs, they don't have to pay real estate. They just have a roving team of stylists that going into people's apartments by hitting a button. There's cleaning services where you can actually have somebody come in and clean your apartment. Like Handy, where you hit a button and actually come in and clean your apartment. Task rabbits. You can have handyman and people who can come in and do basically anything you want in your house easily. So the uberfication of society is real. And the next generation of service businesses are. Are not going to have physical retail layers. They're going to be coming to you which is convenient for the consumer, more cost effective for the consumer, and frankly a better business model for these businesses that don't have infrastructure costs. They can actually be a roving type of business the same way Uber is. H stands for housing. It's funny because I mentioned kind of gentrification a little bit earlier in terms of cities sort of expanding outwards. And the housing market is very interesting right now because what you're finding is that this generation can't afford to buy a place in the major city. And as I mentioned earlier, they really don't want to. They don't have the wherewithal. They'd rather put their money towards experiences. A lot of people say, well, isn't that the traditional form of savings? Yes, but now it's out of reach. And now there's huge companies coming in doing major developments. Gentrifying. Just Philadelphia, the city where I grew up in. I remember that block and there's nothing that looked like that when I was 15 years old walking around Philadelphia. But. But now there's beautiful apartments popping up everywhere right now. And what's interesting is when gentrification happens in a city and unfortunately the Amazon effect makes local businesses go out of business. One of three types of stores always pop up, more often than not. A Starbucks. And Starbucks is emblematic of sort of an experience. You need your coffee. Amazon's not gonna deliver coffee yet. You need it right away. At least I know I do. Or a restaurant or something that people can actually experience. A bank. Because there still is a lot of consumers that feel like they need their cash or they want a bank in person. Although I definitely see that going away. Or a pharmacy like a CVS where you can actually go in and get your convenience items that you actually need right away, which actually might be going away. Well, those are, those are the ones that always pop up in major cities because those are the things that you actually need now. Everything else you don't need now again, it's either a showroom model or you're just going to order from Amazon. So that's the gentrification impact is actually. It's hitting all on cities is the complete landscape of cities is gonna change over time. And in a suburbs, shopping malls, forget about it. Over time, the shopping malls and they're already starting to go out one by one by one. Unless they integrate experiences, whether it be like rollerblading or bowling or something where you can bring the kids. It's actually more of an experience. It really just. The business models don't add up. Anymore. I stands for influencers. So lots of made about influencers in terms of the new path to reach consumers. And the reason why is that as, as consumers spend more time on their phones and they're looking at their phones, they're doing one of three things. One is communicating, texting, messaging, et cetera. That's how Snapchat kind of blew up, is through the messaging layer. Two is gaming. Not enough attention is paid to gaming, but people spend so much time or waste so much time gaming on their phones. And the last third is content consumption, reading, watching videos, et cetera. And when they're consuming content, they're doing so more often than not in a social newsfeed. Mostly Facebook or Instagram, but also Twitter and some other platforms, Pinterest, et cetera. And when they're consuming content from a social platform, they're looking at content not from companies, but from individuals. Individuals are the new networks. The people now actually have the audience. So it's not the actually NBC, ABC, CBS, it's LeBron James, Kim, Kardashian, Justin Bieber, they're the ones that have the audiences. And it goes all the way down. If you sell fishing rods, there are people that are experts in fly fishing, and that's what they do when they take pictures in Montana in the greatest fishing places ever. If you want to sell a fishing rod, you should work with that guy and actually have him use your fishing rod because he'll talk about and he'll get it sold. That's why influencer marketing works now. It's kind of becoming a caricature of itself where you have all these Instagram models who say they're basically famous just for being famous, and they really don't move the needle. But if you know how to do it right, if you know why somebody's influential and you tap into them for it, this could be a very, very powerful channel. J stands for jobs and the future of jobs. And the future of jobs has changed. When I was growing up, my parents said, be a doctor, be a lawyer. That's the path to make six figures and be successful. Or work for a big company and work your way up to the C suite over 30 years. A very clear path. But now the reality is the average age of a company on the Fortune 500 is less than 10 years old. And in the 1960s, it was 50 years old. Companies used to be around for a lot longer, but there's so much disruption that nothing is sacred and nothing is guaranteed anymore. Also, companies are downsizing. They're looking in the freelancers. And because of that, individuals know that maybe they shouldn't be looking for a job, but a series of gigs. So we're entering something called the gig economy, okay, where people are searching for gigs, not jobs. What that means is if you have a marketable skill set, like you're a Ruby on Rails coder or, or a YouTube search engine optimizer or a humor writer, right, something that people actually really need, you can put up your services and if you're smart about it, you can make an enviable income, have the freedom and flexibility that you actually need. And this freelancer economy is for real. And more and more young people are saying, I don't want to go work for a big company where they don't care about me. They can lay me off at any time. I want to be the CEO of me. And there's tools out there like WeWork, which is really. It's the number one commercial real estate tenant in 10 major cities around the world. I wish I had this when I started my agency where I can rent this desk for $150 or $200 a month, sitting next to a designer, sitting next to an engineer, sitting next to a writer, you name it. And I have a culture that rivals Google, but I just rent a desk. We all share a receptionist. They come in and give you massages. You can rent conference rooms. So WeWork is exploding. It's catering to the gig economy, allowing individuals to become the CEO themselves. And as companies contract when they move into cities, they'll realize I want a smaller full time workforce. And I'm going to tap into freelancers to deal with the fluctuations and evolving needs of my business. So as a result, full time job is no longer kind of where it's at. The freelancer movement is for real. And I think it's great for individuals, I think it's great for companies. And I actually think it's where the society and our economy actually needs to move towards. K stands for the Kardashians. And it's funny, I do another presentation called Instagram Killed the Television Star. And one of my points I always make is that the Kardashians have a bigger impact on culture than the Beatles did. And I get hate mail and hate tweets and people are like, you don't like real music? And I'm like, I never said I want them to play an acoustic rendition of Let it be. Let's be 100% clear. What they've done is they've essentially built a media network that has a bigger reach than News Corp or Viacom. They started with a TV show where they got young women to really care about their lives. And they went to social media platforms and they shared every aspect of their lives. And now when they recommend a makeup or when they recommend a new hairbrush or you name it, shampoo, anything, it sells out instantly. Sites go down because people. Yes. Do you have a question? No, it's. You're agreeing. Yeah.

Kylie Jenner May is set to make a billion dollars.

Yep. In two years. I almost put that in there. She has a fragrance line. Kylie, who's the one at the bottom, who's 19 years old, has a fragrance line that this year did $420 million in revenue. She's 19 years old. There's companies that have been around like Tom Ford, like a very prestigious fashion brand. They're only at 500 million. They've been around for 12 years. So it just shows how quickly, you know, if you build an audience, how powerful you can be. Again, it reinforces the power of influencers, but it shows, you know, the power of really individuals as the new network. And that's going to change everything. Where these guys are going to be a network now. It kind of started back in the day with like Martha Stewart and Oprah, but they were TV based brands and they didn't have social media. They still rely on traditional channels and traditional TV networks. These guys don't have to rely on anyone. If they want to reach somebody, they could do it. And you know, it's funny. Kim Kardashian makes $500,000 to put one Instagram post up holding a product. She doesn't have to leave her house, she doesn't fly anywhere, doesn't need hair and makeup teams, nothing. Because she has production and reach in one. You actually get the image and you get the audience with one check. And it moves products. I mean, think about how lucrative that is. And that's why. And consumers are on Instagram all the time. It's just so very powerful to reach consumers. L stands for live, which is kind of the next iteration of where social media started. If you think about it, social media started with text with Twitter, then it went to and Facebook, then it went to images with Instagram, and then it went to video with Snapchat. Really ushered in the social video era. Now we're at live, where consumers are actually turning on their phone and far less interesting with consumers to see what they're doing live. But when Justin Bieber is laying in bed and he puts his Phone on. He just stairs. He'll get 400,000 people just watching him pet his dog. Because people are so obsessed with the celebrity lifestyle. So going live for celebrities in terms of broadcasting their lives, almost like the Truman show, the movie, if you guys have ever seen it. Or there's a new movie with Tom Hanks that came out called Circle, which I'd recommend. That's kind of like where we're headed right now. Katy Perry's last album, she's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. For 24 hours before her album came, she broadcast her whole life live. And people were love that because we first started to see it with reality TV with like the Real World and Survivor and Apprentice. Right. That people were way more interested than scripted characters. And social media kind of started and we all realized that we all like people versus scripted characters. Well, this is kind of pushing it to the nth degree. And it's kind of social media and TV kind of coming full circle. So live is a big evolution in where social's headed. M stands for marriage. The notion and the institution of marriage is changing dramatically right now. People are getting married far later in life. Why? They're staying in cities. It's more expensive. Kids are expensive. There's Tinder, which doesn't help marriage. Right. People getting married earlier. And for all those reasons, the notion of the American family is actually getting older and older and older. So for brands that target the millennial mom or new families, you're going to see families getting older. People are living younger far later in life. It's not crazy anymore to see somebody roll up the Burning man in their 50s, because that's just how people live right now. And it's a big change. N stands for Netflix, which is really emblematic of the future of television. Television is changing dramatically as we know. It's no longer tuning into networks. There's 10, 11, 12 year old kids that have no idea what a TV network is. They've never heard of NBC or CBS. They want programs directly. The TV's going to be a giant iPad hanging on your wall. That's the future of the tv. You pick programming on what you want to watch. When you do, you actually can say, I want to get it for free. I'll be subjected to commercials and those commercials will target towards me as an individual because I'm going to be logged into Facebook, so my TV's going to know how old I am and if I have kids and what brands I like. And the TV spots I see are going to Be for me, right? Or I can pay to get it for free. So in a barbell economy, does that mean only the value sides are going to see TV spots because the luxury side is just going to pay? What does that mean for the future of tv, where brands are plugging so much money in? Fascinating to see what's going to happen with television. O stands for Oculus Rift, which is a company that Facebook bought for a billion dollars, which is a virtual reality company. Has anyone done VR in this room? Okay, obviously, as you know who've done it, very jarring experience. I think that virtual reality has a big role in the future of gaming and communications. It's not going to impact everything, but in certain verticals it is live sports viewing. And you're going to start to see this hit mainstream this holiday season because Oculus finally has a product that they can market to a much broader audience. P stands for privacy. I get that all the time. Is this audience concerned about privacy? No, because they're sharing their lives, because they're volunteering to do it. No one's actually forcing them to do it. So how can they be concerned about privacy if they're actually acting this way? For them, privacy is what they're texting to their Significant other At 2 o' clock in the morning. That's what privacy is not is someone going to steal my credit card or my Social Security number? And that's why Snapchat took off, because you could text and it would disappear. That's the privacy they actually really want. Social privacy. Not financial, Social Security number type privacy. So that's just a big distinction between this generation. It's much more experience focused than financially focused. Like prior generations. Q stands for Q score, which is basically a way that brands is obviously hard to come up with a Q in this thing. Actually, I'm going to wrap it up and we'll do questions at the end, if that's ok. Cool. Q stands for Q Store, which is like when brands work with influencers, they want to know which influencers have an audience that matches their equity. So it's more and more important. Celebrities are more important than ever before. So if you have fame, if you can create content, it's never been a better time to be alive. Because it used to be the big network executives or studio executives ran stuff. Now you have kids that are 12 years old that are making a million dollars a month on YouTube because they're posting videos. It's absolutely bunkers, because there's no middleman. And now you can go directly to consumers. So celebrities are in control. And brands need to figure out a way where they can partner with the people who are driving the audiences. I talked about gentrification and the changes that are happening to retail. Our Rent the Runway. So I talk about the sharing economy. I don't know how many of you guys know what Rent the Runway is. It's basically a high end clothing store that you rent clothing instead of buying it because most women will buy expensive dresses and wear once and it'll sit in the closet. So now you can rent it for a fraction of the price. Take the Instagram with it. Nobody knows. They actually don't own it. Right? You'll never tell no one's business, Right? And you return it and you still get the benefit. And with all that money you save, you can go out to a great dinner or a great nightclub or whatever it may be. So that's another version of the sharing economy hitting an industry where people would think no one would ever want to share clothes. Well, guess what? They do. It's just done in a very fancy way. S stands for Obviously, the future of retail is a storefront. And you're going to see it go on over and over and over again. At first it was the small mom and pops. Now you're going to see the bigger retailers go out of business as real estate costs increase. So what does the future of Main street look like? It's much more experience based than retail based. T stands for travel. So as I mentioned earlier, they're not spending as much money on the cars and houses or even the watches. Right. Or the luxury items. And with those savings, they're spending money on experiences. And travel is at the heart of experiences. I did a panel for Citibank a couple months ago with eight millennials and I asked them all, what are your favorite apps? And every single one named the travel app is one of their three favorite apps, One of which is gtfo, which stands for get the flight out. Okay. And what it does is on any day, it shows you the farthest place you can travel for the cheapest amount of money. Oh, Budapest for $199 round trip. Guess we're going to Budapest. Let's roll. And they just jump on the plane because it's about the bucket list going to different places. Most of us, we never got to Europe until we were 30 years old. This generation, travel is so accessible. You can see the cheapest price, you can book it the same day. Airlines want to get rid of the seats. If they can't sell it because it's Renmin inventory that goes away. You can use hotel tonight to book a hotel the same day where hotels want to give away the rooms if they don't think they're going to sell them. And if you actually know how to use all these tools, you can travel incredibly affordably and get those experiences. And this generation would so much rather do that than spend the weekend going to Bed, Bath and Beyond and getting their plates and cups for their new house that they're outfitting. And that's why companies like Home Depot and Lowe's, they have to rethink their models because it's just changing. These people are not moving into suburbs or they don't want to. Hasn't happened quite yet, but you're kind of starting to already see it in the real estate costs. But moving forward, the city's just going to keep going up. I mean, that's basically where this world is headed. U stands for Uber. Yeah, I can't even stress how this has changed and supported the city based urbanization driven lifestyle where if I'm an auto company right now my main focus would be either obviously you want to have a battery powered or efficient sustainable model like Tesla's doing, go in that direction because that's where the world is headed. And secondly, I would build cars for Uber because these people don't want to buy cars. So Uber is going to basically take over in New York City. It used to be all yellow cabs. Now it's like no yellow cabs, all Toyota Camrys. Toyota is doing very well from Uber because they're selling cars directly. You know, this really empowers this generation to be mobile without buying a car. And it's not just buying a car. You have to pay for parking and tolls and gas and insurance and all those things. It's just not worth it. They don't really fancy to own one anymore. V stands for voice, which I think is the next big thing. So I got into an argument with an educator at Lincoln center when I did a keynote a couple years ago and I said they shouldn't teach handwriting in schools anymore. Everyone's typing, we're teaching our kids handwriting, and Japan is teaching their kids how to write algorithms. They're going to Crush us in 10 years. What are we doing? And she got really upset and she said, well, there's something about hammering. Well, guess what, I'm going to go back to that same woman who's incredibly smart and lovely and say they shouldn't even teach typing anymore. Because I think in Two to three years. No one's going to type anymore. They're just going to talk into their phone. Okay. Voice recognition is becoming better and better and better type. Anything that saves a consumer time, they're going to do. Amazon saved time. People are like, oh, shopping so fun. It's really not. And there's a lot of other things you can do for fun, like travel to Budapest for $199, apparently. But it's about convenience for the consumer. Voice gives them convenience, and voice recognition isn't there yet, but it's getting there. You look at the best companies in the world, Amazon, with their Alexa, which is by far going to be the number one gift this holiday season. Everybody wants an Alexa in their home. It's $50. If you don't have it, you should buy it because it'll tell you a lot about the future of where this world is headed and what's interesting about Amazon. If you want to order batteries on Amazon, they the only battery on Alexa. So you say, alexa, order me batteries. The only one Alexa will send you is Amazon Basics batteries, because they know it's a low involvement category and you don't really care about the brand of batteries, so why buy a Doracell? And that's their own brand. So they're actually using that convenience to actually drive their own product sell through. Which is why Jeff Bezos is now the wealthiest man in the world. And it's only going to continue. But it's not only for the and Google is Google home, but it's also just typing Siri. The new iPhone 8 is going to come out. Siri is going to be 50% better. And two to three years, it's just going to be perfect. And your voice recognition is going to be better from a phone than how a human can actually hear you. And one day you'll be much more likely to have a typo than you will with voice recognition being wrong. And that's why I think voice is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger in the years ahead. And I would really understand the impact of voice on every single industry. W stands for Warby Parker, which is kind of like the new breed of brand building. So Warby Parker took on two guys who went to Wharton Business School, took on a massive, massive sort of monopolistic company in the category called Luxottica, that owns Pearl Vision. And basically every single company that sells eyewear went through luxottica. And they said, you know what? Glasses are way too expensive. Sunglasses are way too expensive. We can do it Better. So they source great products. They had a cause based mission. They went direct to consumer. So they don't go through a retail channel. They, they have the best customer service that existed. If somebody wants to send it back, they take it back right away. And they've created a multi billion dollar company called Warby Parker, basically by just understanding the consumer. And they got around Amazon. So it is possible there's another company called Away, they sell luggage, $200 luggage that has an iPhone charger in it. And basically that company now $50 million in revenue. Two people in their late 20s started it. Direct to consumer, not going through third party retailers. Understanding their customer, getting, getting the consumer to love actually what they do. And then Warby Parker was so successful. Now very choicefully, they're dropping these very small, incredibly placed retail locations in major cities all around the country. Again, same products on both sides of the aisle. Right. But it's actually just to support their.com structure. It's not the inverse. Right. Amazon as well, they're having physical bookstores now. They're not gonna make money from that. It's a marketing channel. It's a way that you can touch the consumer. Same with Warby. Their business really lives online. It's really the future of sort of new brand building. X stands for experiences. Has anyone ever heard of color run? Great. So color run, people show up, for those of you who don't know, wearing all white. And when you get there, all white T shirts, you're doused with colorful powder. Creating the perfect Instagram moment. Everyone's got their phones out. People usually don't have their phones out at a marathon like that. Right. But they're doing. Because it's about the experience. The races are untimed. It's about the experience. When you're at the end, there's a DJ that has a concert for everybody. It is one big experience with fitness in the middle. There's Tough Mudder, which a bunch of the people who work for me did, where you pay 300 hours to climb through freezing cold water under barbed wire for the luxury of doing that so you could take a picture. And everybody thinks that you're rough and rugged. Who's out of business right now? Bally's. Remember Bally's huge gym? Why? They were just a gym. You walked in, you basically had equipment and you went home and it was a membership. Out of business. SoulCycle, Flywheel, Barry's Boot Camp, the list goes on and on. The future of fitness is about experiences. The future of every category is about experiences, restaurants. There's a company in New York City called Sugar Factory. It's like the kid's ultimate dream. The sundaes are this big. They all take pictures of them. People wait in line for overpriced burgers. That's what people want to do. My friend started the company, Tao Group. The restaurant Tao, it's like this huge Pan Asian palace, right? It's an experience. It's like nightclub meets restaurant. That's the future of dining. Not just going to a nice restaurant with good food. It's not enough anymore. Y stands for YouTube. And for the younger generation, especially Gen Z, forget about it. This is where they're spending their time. This is the new television. These YouTube stars. There's one, a guy named Logan Paul, he had an amazing video I watched on the way here. He took. Well, it was kind of mean. But I'm telling you what he did. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm trying to be politically correct. He took a vertically challenged human, put them in a suitcase, checked them, checked him on a flight from New York to Paris and he made it. He came out of the. It was insane. Tens of millions of views. This guy LOGAN Paul makes $2 million a month from YouTube because every video he has, YouTube, which is owned by Google, served advertisements. There are kids, there are young kids, I'm telling you, 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, that are making $200,000 a month, $50,000 a month. Crazy numbers. Because these young kids identify with other young kids who are sharing their lifestyle and they're just sitting there watching them all day. That's how big YouTube is. There's this whole world going on that people have no idea about. And if you're exposed to it, it's absolutely mind blowing. So if you look up YouTube stars, teen YouTube stars, and it's really amazing because it really democratizes opportunity. You don't just have to have connections or have a mom who knows a fancy Hollywood agent. If you're good and you have talent and you're dedicated, and the same thing goes for B2B. There's a ton of people in the business world that aren't the most talented, but they just create content, they share content, they give value to their audience and then people think that they're an expert and they get more and more business. Right? That's how I'm fooling all you guys right now. I put up a lot of content. Just kidding. So YouTube is huge. Z stands for Gen Z. So Gen Z is the Future. I'm starting to shift a lot of my dialogue to Gen Z because more and more brands want to know what's next. I think Gen Z, the big drivers are voice. I think it's mobile commerce. I think it's the end of television. There's one thing holding up television right now, which is live sports. It's the only thing watch that scale, scale live. And the National Football League is one of the biggest drivers as well as FIFA soccer globally. And in National Football League's instance, their contracts with major networks is going to end. And I can tell you that Google, Apple and Microsoft have more money in the cushions of their couches than the companies that are currently paying for their ongoing licenses. And when the NFL shifts to a streaming only model, cord cuttings are going to happen. And that's when the TV does become a giant iPad on your wall. That's where abc, NBC, CBS and these huge networks really cease to exist. And by the way, those are where big brands are spending 80% of their dollars. And then what are they going to do? So in the advertising media world, which I live in, it's just fascinating. But for consumers in general, the TV world's going to change and TV's a big deal. So people talk about the end of tv. Gen Z is going to be driving in and ushering in the end of tv, the end of traditional retail. I think education for Gen Z is really being questioned because in this free freelancer world, people don't want to go into debt to go to college anymore. They just don't see the value. They see all these stars. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college. I'll be at Harvard. But a lot of people who created these incredible companies, they dropped out of college. Some of them didn't even go to college because they're just smart. They get it, they can learn through the web. They don't really need to go instead of going through and getting debt, et cetera, and that's a big thing. So I think higher education is to going going to have to take a turn. Education in general in this country needs to evolve because it's really romantic on things of the past, but we need to prepare our youth to be able to kind of compete on a global basis. And right now we're not. And on a global basis there's consumers that are much more technologically savvy. So that's my Z and that is my Alphabet. So if we have time, I'd love to see if you guys have any questions. I know we had at least one right there. Yes.

I have two comments actually.

Great.

When it comes to privacy, there was a panel, young 8 year olds that were questioned, can you explain privacy? And not one of them could.

Right.

Not one of them knew. And then secondly, and I have this thought all the time, is when you see commercials on TV about the DNA, send your DNA in, we'll tell you where you're from.

Ancestry. Right.

What happens to that? You have voluntarily sent in your DNA.

I did a couple weeks ago.

Who knows who gets it, what it does. Can they splice it, can they dice it? Can they do whatever? You have voluntarily given up your DNA.

But can somebody really take your saliva and make another clone a baby from it?

I mean, what can happen?

I mean if that's the. I mean, who knows?

We're talking about all so many possibilities.

Right.

We as human beings are giving up our DNA voluntarily.

Yeah.

So I have to question what happens to it after that.

Yeah, that's interesting. I never thought about that. Yeah. But they did tell me my ancestry, which was pretty cool. So maybe that's worth it. But it's a great point. Yes. Question. Anybody else, raise your hand. Anything else? Right here in the front. What's the biggest pushback you get when.

You'Re advising consultants and clients to all of this fear?

People work at big companies. A lot of people that work at big companies do so because they don't want to get fired and they want to go the route up. And they say no one ever got fired for hiring IBM. Well, no one ever got fired for bucking tv. It's just fear. Everybody knows that this generation is not watching TV commercials besides doing live sports. They just know it. No one's watching it. Everyone's streaming whenever they want, yet they're spending all their money and doing it because they're just scared. That's really what it comes down to. What's happening out of fear is their companies are going away. Literally going away. Look at this company called Dollar Shave Club, started by a 20 something that basically took 20% of the razor share and sold this company for a billion dollars to Unilever. I worked with other companies that make razors and they all. They've been talking about subscription services for years. No one ever did it. So that's really why. So you're saying companies almost would rather go out of business than. Well, there's a difference between what they say and what they do, you know, because the reality is that most major companies, they basically have to appeal to Wall street and their investors and in order to actually disrupt your model. Like, look at Netflix. Okay. Reed hastings saw that 95% of his revenue was renting DVDs. But he saw the next generation wasn't going to use DVDs. 5% of their revenue was streaming. He pivoted away from 95% of his business. The revenue plummeted to go towards streaming, and now look where they are. Right. Did Blockbuster do that? Of course not. Because they didn't want to drop their sales because the CEO would figure he'd get fired. And he's retiring in two years anyway, so he doesn't want to lose his stock option. So that's really what happens is it's fear and it's individual myopic thinking. It's stopping companies and individuals from disrupting actually what's going on. And young people don't have fear, and that's why it's really. And they also understand it much better because they grew up with it back here. Yes.

I consider myself more millennial minded.

I can tell.

Do you think that that is really the.

I mean. Yes.

We're talking about the millennials.

100%. Yeah, it should. Of course it is.

I think that that really. That's a misnomer.

It is, it is. Thank you for saying so. My book I wrote is Youth Nation, and it's basically about the millennial mindset. It's exactly right. Because it's about understanding and being progressive. Yeah. Embracing it and understanding where it's at. And of course, I mean, it doesn't matter how old you are. It basically matters. You understand where the future is going. Don't hold on to the path. I mean, when the airplane was invented, people were like, it's going to bring people away from their families. And it does. I live in New York, plus my brothers live in Los Angeles. It sucks. Right? But I wouldn't be able to be here talking to all of you if there was no airplane. I wouldn't be able to get home tonight if there was no airplane. So with every progression in society and technology, there's obviously downsides. I have people saying they're staring at their phones all the time. They're not talking to people. Well, maybe in the past they actually really didn't want to talk to people. It was just awkward. They had to fill the sound. Right. Maybe it's okay that the couples that are after dinner on their phones are looking at each other, because maybe if not, they would just be complete silent. So at least they're doing something. So obviously there's downsides. But yes, 100%, you nail that. It is the mindset over here to the left.

You kind of answered that. But my children are going to be the Gen Z. And so everyone's a little hesitant on embracing it because they're like, we don't want our kids on our phones. I know, but you're saying probably shouldn't.

Well, I think that there needs. I mean, I don't give parenting advice. I am a parent, but I don't like giving parenting advice. But I do think that there needs to be a balance because you need peace, you need calm, you need serenity, you need nature, you need fitness. There's things that you need not having your phone. So for a parent in this day and age, it's very hard to strike their balance because the kids will say, all my friends are on it. You take my phone away, then I'm not. I have no friends. Like, I'm out of it socially. Right. How can. How could you take my phone away as I take my oxygen away? But at the same time, it's a very powerful tool. So hard.

We were, you know, raised old school and we read encyclopedias and all that.

That's right. It's an incredibly hard. And I think there's a huge business opportunity for companies that can help technologically invent that. You know, that moderation in terms of like what you look at, I mean, kids can look up anything too. Headings, I mean, porn, you name it. There's literally nothing that they can't see. And that's so scary because their minds can't. Don't know how to kind of figure out how to modulate that information. So it's very challenging times in that regard. And I wish I had the answer, but it's just, you know, it's. I guess it's all personal preference in terms of what's best for the kids.

You know, you can actually now a parent can control a certain time frame and completely shut the phone down.

Awesome.

Between like 6 and 8pm for dinner time or at 9:30 when you know that there should be.

It's great.

So T Mobile has just started to announce.

Yeah, in the front right here. I don't know. Yeah, they do. Yeah, everyone hacks it. Right. But you know, all you can do is try, I guess. Right.

So, yes, going back to the gig economy and the freelancers, how are those millennials essentially, like paying for like health insurance? Is that like through what was.

So it's funny because we're in Obamacare, which I guess is still hanging on in the U.S. you know, because most of my work I do is in the US I'm starting to do more global work. But I go so deep, it's very hard to do all this globally. My brain can only process so much. But it extended care to up, I think 26 years old, you can be on your family's program. So it actually extended it. Now wework is offering insurance, health insurance, if you actually for a little bit more money. So instead of the company paying for it, the organization where you're working out of pays for it. So there's all these alternative sources. So that's usually a big thing. What about health insurance? You just pay for it. But you also have tremendous tax advantages because you can write off so much. You get paid, you don't get everything withdrawed. So you can actually write off a lot of your expenses that support your business. So it actually evens out. But that's kind of how they're doing it. And I get asked all the time from parents too, well, what should I tell my kids to do then? Where should they focus? And I think the answer is very easy. Go very deep in an art or very deep in a science. So very deep in art means you have to be creative, a designer, a writer, somebody who can ideate. Right. Because computers will never be able to really do that, hopefully. Right? So go very deep or very deep into science, meaning you know, how to operate the machines, because the machines still need to be turned off and on and operate it. But everything in between, being in middle management, being in liberal arts, being a jack of all trade, masters of none. If you have to wait for a boss to tell you what to do every day, the boss is going to tell somebody to do it. In India or Costa Rica, where it costs a tenth of the cost, jobs are going to be eliminated. Companies have to make additions to the traction, they're cutting costs, Middle management's getting eliminated. Moving forward, deep in art, deep into science. That's how you run in a gig economy. That's how you win working for a big company. And that's really what you need to understand, which is why I don't think, you know, some of the things that we're being taught right now just make a whole lot of sense. Because I think it should. And I think you're going to see a resurgence of trade schools and specialized skills sets because nobody's great at everything. Like the notion of a straight A student just doesn't make any sense anymore. You have to be an A in one thing, right? Like LeBron James does quite well for himself. He was an A in basketball. Right. So if you're an A in fashion design, do that. You don't need to be a historian too. Right. So I think that's another thing is go deep and be great. Figure out what you're great at and just do that one thing. I'm okay if my kids get an A in one thing and all. S. Right. I just am. Because if they're good enough that A plus thing, they're good to go. And we always kind of try to, you know, romance has the whole notion of a straight A student. I just don't think it makes sense in this day and age. So tell your kids to go get Fs. See how that works out. Yes.

I think from the talk yesterday, the opening comment yesterday and from you today, I think it boils down to a lot of innovation right over the.

Sure does. Generation.

I mean, ideas are forced. You have to come up with new ideas to stay on top of everything. You have to be a part of the conversation. You have to be contributing new ideas.

New facts and be willing to change.

And willing to change and go with it.

Right.

People aren't staying at the same job for four years anymore. People are changing their careers five times in our generation.

That's right.

So you have to be willing to go with the flow and change and adapt and.

Yeah, I mean, where would the economy be in North America without Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook, without those companies? Really, what is that? You actually start to think about it like what those companies have done to our economy and the future of innovation. You eliminate them. And really it's just who can get the cheapest supplies. And China makes people work a lot harder for a lot less money. They're way more productive at outputting supplies. So really the only hope in other countries is, is really just innovation. That's all you have is to change things and use technology to bring it forward. Otherwise, a lot of the countries who were successful in the last 50 years are just going to, from an economic standpoint, just get withered away. What else are they going to win on? How do you see some of these factors affecting the event industry specifically? So events are huge because experiences drive personal brand. So now for brand marketers who want to get behind events, it's all about content creation and scaling because events are expensive. I used to produce huge events at like spring break and all this stuff for brands. But the issue is it was so expensive and you'd only have 400 people come to your event a day or 500. Because it's just the law of physics and space. Right. So how do you get roi? The way you get ROI is you turn that event into a platform to create content which then you can use social. So say I have 500 people I capture content from. I can go on Facebook and target all their friends. Right. And pay to do that. Now all of a sudden, Instead of reaching 500 people, I've reached 500,000 people for a little bit more money. But I think events are huge. They're not going away. People still need to come together. And I think it's just how you execute that. Right here. Yes, of course. Yeah, I worry about that the same morning. It's funny you say that. Yes. In the back. My millennial in the audience. Yes.

25% of all marketing is now event oriented. And that's why the event industry is.

Going through the roof.

And the other thing is we talk about, we are in the era of the temporary marketplace.

The pop up shop.

Sure sounds like a trade show. Sure sounds like the event industry is.

You're 100% right. And people you look at like south by Southwest, Coachella, Burning Mountain, all these huge events like edc, which is a huge electronic dance festival in Las Vegas, has more people that go every year than went to Woodstock.

Music Land in Holland had 60,000 people a day for six weeks and they streamed it. And 30,000 people in other markets watching the stream.

Yeah, it's massive because this generation isn't stuck to their houses and cars and they're going there and they want to be together and they're seeing everybody else is there. If you think about it 20 years ago, 15, 10 years ago, if somebody was 40 years old, they had no idea what 20 year old people were even doing. So they were just locked out. Now everybody knows what everybody's doing. Everybody just wants to go to the best stuff. And with the population density right now. Right. Events can be so much bigger because people are in cities, they're not as spread out. So any other questions? Cool. Well guys, you've been an amazing audience. If you have anything else, come ask me. And it's my information. We want to get touch. Thanks.