Matt Britton''s Most Impactful Millennial Trends, 10/31/17, New York NY

Our next speaker is Matt Britton. Matt has focused on connecting the dots between the business challenges of today and the consumer trends of tomorrow, having consulted for over half of the Fortune 500 over the past two decades. Matt's best selling book, Youth Nation, debuted as number one on Amazon's best sellers list and has created a modern day roadmap for businesses focusing on connecting with tomorrow's consumer. In 2002, Matt founded Mr. Youth, now named MRY, which he built from his New York City apartment to over 500 employees. MRY was acquired by the Publicist Group in 2011. Matt joined Crowdtap, an emerging ad tech company, in 2017 as CEO. Can you please join me in welcoming the stage? Matt Britton.

What's up, guys? So when I was walking in here this morning, I realized a couple of things. First of all, when you do a lot of these speaking gigs, you never really know what you're walking into. Sometimes they're like, you know, just show up. And I didn't know this would be this whole elaborate production. So that was one and two. I think 38 slides in eight minutes might be a little bit overkill, but we'll see how it goes. All right, what I'm going to be talking about today is the millennial generation. Are there any millennials in the audience? All right, a couple. So you guys are not that young anymore. In fact, the youngest millennials are 21. So it used to be, wow, shit, there's a millennial in the audience. They're super young. Not really the case anymore. Gen Z is coming in. We all know it. Millennials are going to be the mainstream consumer, not the disruptive new consumer segment. So as they kind of age out, and age out might not be the right term, it's time to look back at the millennial generation, see what are the lasting legacies, what are the things that this generation is going to be known for, just exactly how they change the world. So in really quick fashion, I'm going to basically go through the eight ways in which I think millennials most change the world heading into 2018, and what that means for Gen Z and the future. Sound good? So let's just roll into it. Number one, status update is the new status symbol. The status update is the new status symbol. What does that mean? It means in the 80s 90s, early 2000s, people would build their brands by cars, watches, houses, and sneakers. It was the brands that were social currency. They would buy the stuff as a way to represent who they are to the world. But now, in a World where experiences are a new social currency. If you think about it, before Instagram, if you went on an amazing trip, snuck down to the front row, traveled to a far amazing place, the only way that you could share that at scale was actually showing people your photo album. Right? But now you could share it at scale. Experiences are what people are pursuing, which is driving a whole new trend which I talk about in my book Youth Nation, called diffty, which stands for did it for the Instagram. Which means that experiences are so important at building one's personal brand that they will actually pursue it, not even so much to enjoy it, but to prove to everybody that they were there. Case in point, Mission Peak in Fremont, California. Who's been in Mission Peak in Fremont, California? Nobody. Okay. But a lot of people have. Mission Peak has been around for a very long time because it's a mountain, okay? But in the last two to three years, Mission Peak has been plagued by overcrowding, complaints from local visitors, pollution. Why? Because Mission Peak is very conveniently located off of two major highways. And while it looks like these three women climbed Mount Everest, they really just had a quick, easy 12 minute hike up. And last but most importantly, there's a pole on the top which creates the ultimate selfie opportunity. Now everyone's a hiker. Now everybody's rugged and outdoors. Now there's not my slides on the screen anymore. So now everybody wants to actually pursue those experiences. They want to show everybody that they're lifestyle oriented, et cetera. Number two, the inner city will be dominated by the creative class. The version of the American dream has changed. The whole version of moving out to the suburbs with a white picket fence, two car garage, one and a half children, one. When we were growing up, Gen X, meet somebody out of college, move to the suburbs, well, that's actually taken a U term. The city is where millennials and generations after it imagine living. Parks are becoming safer, schools are becoming better, and the 24 hour news cycle when people are looking at their phones constantly. The action is not happening in the suburbs, it's actually happening in the cities. And what's happening is the whole version of America, the footprint of America is actually taking a U turn, where the inner city blue collar worker is actually now being pushed out to the suburbs. The, the creative class is coming into the city which is creating massive gentrification. We all know Brooklyn outside New York, and we all know San Francisco, Oakland outside San Francisco, and so on and so on and so on. The livable boundaries of cities continue to be pushed outwards and creative class comes in the cities, and that will change America forever. Number three, services are making us buy less stuff. Real estate prices are going up in the cities because millennials don't want to leave. Traditional businesses can no longer afford to have Main street prices. New miles are becoming created. Since people are living in the cities, they no longer think that they need to ever own a car. The cost of owning a car combined with the cost of gas, tolls, parking, insurance, versus the easing ubiquity of Uber makes young people and perhaps every generation in the future not looking at owning a car as a rite of passage. Same with owning a house. Think about it. Cars, housing are two places where consumers traditionally would spend the most amount of discretionary expenditures. Well, now they'd rather access their car over Uber and access their house over Airbnb. They no longer actually want to consume these items. Since real estate prices are coming up so much on mainstream, there's a whole new class of services that are coming up which actually don't have physical locations like Glam Squad. Bunch of women actually want to get their hair done, blowout makeup before going for a night out. They no longer have to go to a salon on Main Street. The salon on Main street no longer needs to pay rent. Glam Squad comes to your house at the push of a button and actually does that in your apartment for you. We talk about access over ownership. It's not just cars and houses. It's things like clothing. Rent the Runway, which you're going to be hearing more and more about a lot, allows women to rent a dress that's $1,000 for $75, where for a night out. Take that insta with it. No one's going to know that you actually don't even own it, right? Return it the next day. Great margins for Rent the Runway. Great experience for the consumer. Number four, the global middle class is rapidly evaporating. We all know it's all well and good here on the coast, right? In New York, in San Francisco, but when I go to places like Cincinnati and in the Westin and the bathroom in the lobby, you need a code to enter the bathroom. But because there's too many homeless people, you know that we are living in a tale of two countries right now. Jobs are being offshored and outsourced, and we are living in a barbell economy. For the first time since the 20s, 0.1% of the population controls nearly 25% of the wealth. It's a huge socioeconomic and political issues. But for brands, it really actually Creates a very binary decision they need to make. Are you going to be a luxury brand or are you going to be a value brand? On the value side, Dollar Tree, Dollar Store, Dollar General Value, Vizio that sells flat screens for $199. Those value brands are winning. Walmart everyday low prices. Right. They're winning by supply chain innovation. Lowest possible price for the consumer with the best possible product. The luxury side of the equation, JetSmarter, a private jet rental club blade that shovels people back and forth to the Hamptons for $600 so you don't have to sit in traffic for two and a half hours. Guilty. Okay. The luxury side of the equation is doing incredibly well. Who's not doing so well right now? Gap. Why? Well, let's think about it. The value side of the equation, they're buy jeans at Walmart for $20. The luxury side of the equation, they're going to buy J brand or citizens, right? Gap falls themselves in the middle, which is why they're closing 40% of their stores. Do not be caught in the middle moving forward. Because the lasting legacy of the millennial generation is adoption of digital, which has created a digital divide in really two different classes. And while there's tremendous issues behind it, for a business, you need to make a choice. Five brands are built direct or not built at all. You are no longer walking down the shopping aisle at Walmart or Target to load stuff into your SUV to roll back into your cul de sac. Right? You're ordering on Amazon. In that world, you don't see the packaging, you don't see the logos, you don't see the brands. The power of brands is getting diminished for consumers because it's not in front of their face anymore. And they're buying low category products, low involvement category products because it doesn't actually build their brand. They're less concerned about what that brand is. Which is why you see people, Walmart, Target, the big retailers, really investing in private label. And for a consumer, especially on the value side, you better believe that they're going to buy the great value brand for cheaper than French's mustard, right? So in every single category, especially the low involvement categories, you're going to see erosion of brands. Unless. Unless brands can somehow understand how to build a direct relationship with consumers. Like what Warby Parker is doing to disrupt an 800 million million dollar industry and $800 million business with Luxottica. Right? They're coming into a space and saying, we're going to build direct relationships with consumers. We're going to have great customer service. We're going to be a purpose driven brand. We're going to start off digital and then we're going to build a physical ecosystem in sophisticated urban areas. What's amazing about Warby park, if you walk into their store here in Soho, it's actually a mirrored retail environment. Same products on the left and right hand side of the store. Simplicity. That's another side note I got from them. And then there's brand list that just raised $50 million, which basically says Google consumers want the best possible products with the best possible ingredients. They actually don't even care about brands. And this is super interesting to me. 6. We now see gigs instead of jobs. So freelancers and the whole freelancer and creative movement is for real. When we were growing up, it was get a job, work your way up the corporate ladder and land a role in the C Suite, right? But the reality is in the 60s, a company in the Fortune 500 was around about 30 to 40 years. And now a company in the Fortune 500 is around 8 to 10 years. The companies you work for, you're not even guaranteed they're going to last anymore. It makes much more sense for people in specialized skill sets to be a freelancer and actually service people. If you're deep into an art or deep into a science, you have limitless opportunities to serve companies directly, which is driving a huge boom in collaborative workforces. And companies like WeWork, which is now valued over $20 billion, which lets people rent a desk for a month for $250, sitting across from the snazzy guy in a blue shirt. And people are all different industries and you have a culture that, that rivals Google. And companies are taking suit. They're moving from these huge suburban enclaves like Microsoft and Redmond, Washington or Pepsi in Purchase, New York or Visa and Foster City back into major cities. They can be close to where the millennials are. They're attracting their workforce and that's where they're becoming closer. Number seven, Typing will go the way of hieroglyphics. I got into an argument with a school teacher. Wasn't too mean, I promise you. But I told them you should not teach handwriting in school because kids are not going to be handwriting for much longer. And I'm going to be arguing in two to three years. You shouldn't even teach typing anymore because 90 to 95% of your input into a new mobile device in three to four years from now will be via voice. And in the voice driven world, what's really interesting is if you have an Alexa and you actually try to buy batteries, the only batteries Alexa will sell you were Amazon Basics batteries. Because Amazon is betting that the ubiquity and ease in ordering over a voice driven device trumps the power of a brand like Dorcel, which has billions of dollars behind it. So think about what that means for the future of our industry and the future of branding. And I think the future of the phone is something like this where for most use cases you're going to talk into it, get the information you need. But when you search and you're not typing in Google and you're not asking for Google, what's the power of Google? Or if you ask where the best pizza place is and you're not actually seeing the brand, what's the power of brand? Really fascinating times. The movie Her I think is actually very emblematic of the future of what our relationships with devices are going to be. Besides the fact that you won't be falling in love with device with the voice of Scarlet Johansson and eight number eight. And I think probably the most important thing for the advertising industry is TV is going to become a giant iPad on your wall. I've been saying this for 10 years and I'm shocked that not more has been made about the fact that both Apple and Amazon are for the first time producing physical TVs which are going to be rolling out this holiday season. What that is going to do is combine the TV and the computer into one device. Eight year old kids go up to TVs and they try to swipe them or why they should be swipeable, right? And In a swipeable TV world, and also these same 8, 10 year old kids, they have no idea what ABC, NBC, CBS even is. Does Time own one of those networks? I hope not. But anyway, it's true. They do not know what TV networks even are, right? So while the future of TV might look like Apple TV right now, where you actually have individual networks, I actually do not think TV networks are going to be consumer brands for much longer. I think, I think the future of TV is going to look a lot more like this. There's going to be influencers. Because while young kids aren't tuning into NBC Must See TV, they are certainly tuning into their favorite YouTube stars. Those are the content brands that matter to them. Live sports isn't going away anytime soon and shows themselves, shows like billions are going to go direct to the consumer. But in the barbell economy, if a consumer is asked am I going to pay for the show and not watch commercials or get it for free and be subjected to commercials. Does that only mean the value side of the equation is going to be subjected to TV commercials moving forward? That's another interesting thing I quite often ponder. I'm definitely out of time. This has been a 45 minute presentation. 8 minutes. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Great seeing you guys.