YouthNation: Building Remarkable Brands in a Youth-Driven Culture by Matt Britton

Matt Britton is known throughout the marketing industry for his expertise in the Millennial generation.

Matt currently serves as founder and CEO of New York-based MRY – a social media and youth marketing agency. Since founding the agency in 2002, MRY has worked with some of the world's leading brands – including P&G, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, & Visa – to help them connect with today's rapidly evolving and highly elusive consumer.

Matt has grown MRY from a one-man startup to a company with over 500 employees worldwide. It was named the "Social Media Agency Of The Year" by Mashable. And Fast Company has named MRY one of advertising's 10 most innovative companies.

Matt often speaks at conferences and trade shows on trends and issues on Millennial marketing. He has been featured on CNBC, Mashable, Forbes, Fortune, The Financial Times, New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and most importantly, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

The Host's Perspective:

This book is a lot more than just another marketing to millennials handbook. And it’s more than just a marketing book. It walks you through all the technological and cultural changes in the Unites States that are being quickly adopted by what the author calls YouthNation.

YouthNation is the 80 million Americans born between 1982 and 1998 and nearly all of them cannot remember a time when they did not have the Internet. And they have become a massively influential movement of people with disruptive power over cultural, business and political issues in the United States. But even if you don’t market to millennials, this book is a road map of how customers of all ages are changing.

It explores trends such as:

• How status symbols are a lot less important, having been replaced by status updates
• Why customers’ experience with the product is more important than the product itself
• Why the desire to access products is now preferred versus owning them
• Why renting is the new owning
• Why the days of mass TV audience are over and the future of advertising is fleeting
• Why traditional spray and pray marketing or blasting out messages to as many as possible has forever lost its potency
• And why getting your message out is now more important than the message itself

And my favorite part of the book was the very end where he offers 14 predictions on the next 5 years. They are worth the price of the book.

Even if you don’t buy the book, go to the bookstore or library and open the book up to page 251 and read his predictions. Doing so will do one of two things - it will excite you or terrify you. 

Listen to the Interview:

Show Notes:

YouthNation: Building Remarkable Brands in a Youth-Driven Culture by Matt Britton

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead by David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan (Marketing Book Podcast interview)

Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith

Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Matt's Website (MattBritton.com)

Matt's Twitter (@MattyB)

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