George Nguyen on Youth & Access

George Nguyen is the founder of Untapped, a youth culture research and brand consultancy in Brooklyn. Through participatory research he has helped companies like McDonald’s, Nike, Jordan Brand, Gatorade, and HBO uncover insights from Gen Z consumers. Early in his career he held senior strategy roles at R/GA, Translation, and Saatchi & Saatchi.

So I start all my conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine who helps people tell their story. It’s a big question, which is why I use it, but I tend to over-explain it, like I’m doing now, because it is big. Before I ask it, I want you to know you’re in total control. You can answer or not answer however you want. It’s impossible to make a mistake. The question is: Where do you come from?

Yeah. I was reading a couple of the other responses, and funny enough, this is probably the question that makes me the most nervous. Mostly because I don't have a clean answer. But in some ways, that’s the foundation of who I am. My parents came here in 1975 as refugees from Vietnam. Looking back, I now understand how unsettled they felt.

I was born in Colorado. I’ve lived in California, Oregon, did high school in Seattle, some university in Boston, then New York, Southeast Asia, Toronto. I don't think I went to the same school for more than two years at a time until university. So to that end, it's funny—I had a friend once say to me, "You can't cheer for every baseball team, George." And I said, "I don't. I cheer for all the teams in the places I've lived."

That was part of what made this question tough. I don’t have a clean hometown answer. But that instability made me comfortable with chaos. It shaped how I work now—especially as a microagency founder, constantly doing business development, always looking for the next project. That feeling of being prepared for instability comes directly from never knowing where I’d be going next. It’s touched so many parts of my life. So the cleanest answer I have for “Where do you come from?” is everywhere and nowhere.

You said you now understand how unsettled your parents felt. What were you thinking about when you said that?

As an adult, and now as a parent, I have much more sympathy for them. As a kid, I kept wondering, “Why do we have to move again? Why do I have to go to another new school?”

I got really good at introducing myself and standing in front of the class every couple of years, all through grade school—something I wouldn’t wish on any child. And like any child, I blamed my parents. But in hindsight, I understand they’d been ripped out of their country. They were trying to figure out where to settle.

Now I realize they were looking for the same things I was—and probably felt even more lost than I did as a kid. I had them. They didn’t have anyone. In 1999, after I graduated from university, I went with my mom to Vietnam. The country had only opened up in the mid-80s. We saw where she went to high school, her childhood home—now occupied by other people.

She went up to a random house and rang the bell. She told me, “My best friend lived here.” She didn’t know if the friend was still alive or had escaped Vietnam. The door opened, and they recognized each other. They hadn’t seen each other in 25 years.

There wasn’t a going-away party back then. It was: “Tanks are rolling through the cities—get out.” That moment gave me perspective. Everyone is just doing the best they can. As a kid, I thought, “Why did you do this to me?” As an adult, I see they were trying to put down roots in a world that had been pulled out from under them.

My dad eventually settled in Orange County, where there’s a large Vietnamese population. He tried to recreate something familiar. My mom kept moving and didn’t settle until much later. She was consistently searching for something—some place that felt like home.

Yeah. Do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up—like young George as a kid?

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a copywriter. I really loved commercials. I’m that odd person who went into marketing and advertising having actually graduated with a degree in advertising—and with ambitions to go into it. Strategy and planning was unexpected. That path came more from laziness, frankly—luck, circumstance, and laziness.

Tell me about the laziness. What do you mean? How did you end up in strategy and planning because you were lazy?

Pretty much. I got out of school, and my mom said, “You have to get a job. You can’t just hang out at home.” My plan had been to hang out at home for the summer, look at grad schools, and figure out the next step. But I had no idea what I really wanted to do. I'll be the first to admit I felt woefully unprepared for the world after university—especially with a liberal arts degree. I’d been trained to think critically, but I didn’t walk out with a practical, applicable skill set.

If I’d studied a skilled trade—where you learn how to physically do things, like plug A into B or turn the right bolt—I might’ve felt more ready. Instead, I graduated without a clear sense of what I could actually do.

Is there anything you feel you missed the most? If you could time-machine back and plug something into that education, what would it be?

A roadmap. That’s something I’m still seeing today in my work with young people: there’s a lack of clarity, of a consistent and understandable, measurable roadmap. No one gives you KPIs for a liberal arts degree. There are no defined success metrics, let alone a clear career path.

And then, coming from a traditional Asian family, there’s that extra layer. Those jokes about becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer? They’re rooted in something real—those are practical, comprehensible careers. The idea of a degree, let alone a career, in the creative fields was completely foreign.

My university had two major schools: agriculture and communications. I wasn’t going to be a farmer, so I went into communications. Like I said, I had aspirations of being a writer, maybe even a copywriter, and ended up in the advertising school.

But I graduated unsure of what to do. So I came home, planning to hang out and figure things out. My mom wasn’t having it. She said, “You can’t just hang out on boats and go swimming all summer,” which, to be fair, was great when I was 16. Honestly, even now in my 40s, I think we should be allowed summers where all we do is go swimming.

You mentioned being drawn to advertising and commercials early on. What role did ads or TV play in your childhood? I had a similar experience—I just loved ads and TV. Why do you think that was the case for you?

It modeled what I thought life in America was supposed to be like. My parents had no idea. And even though I was born in this country, you'll hear a lot of first-generation and second-generation kids say the same thing—our home life didn’t reflect what we thought life in America was going to be.

Every child or teenager probably thinks their family is the weird one. But when you add in cultural differences—like bringing food to school and other kids saying, “What’s that? What’s that smell?”—it’s even more pronounced.

At home, I’d be like, “Can I have a corndog?” And my mom would go, “A corndog? No, we don’t eat dog.” And I’d be like, “No, no, it’s a hot dog wrapped in a pancake.” And she’d say, “Why would you do that?”

So advertising, in its 30-second snippets, became my window into what I imagined as iconic, idealistic American life. You're too young to watch late-night television, so you get bits and pieces—but ads are everywhere. They're intrusive, unavoidable, and always full of joy.

They're designed to make you want something. And as a kid, I didn’t just want the product. I wanted the entire lifestyle they were selling. Then I realized—oh, you can actually sit around and make these things and have fun doing it.

All right, so catch us up. Where are you now and what are you up to?

I ended up going into advertising. So that first summer—when I talk about laziness—my mom said, “You’ve got to get a job.”

I was sitting with some friends at the time and said, “I need to find something.” One of them, Colleen, said, “I just got an internship at DDB. They’re looking for more interns—want one?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll go meet them.”

I got an internship in the media department. Thirty days in, they offered me a job in the strategy group. I said, “Sure, why not? I’ll check it out. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s just an internship.”

I got hired out of that internship, and one thing led to another. Fifteen years later, after working in agencies around the world, rising through the strategy ranks, and even opening and running offices overseas for the TBWA network, I came back to the States. About ten years ago, I decided to strike out on my own.

We saw a gap that existed right between the personal and the professional for me—helping young people as they leave school and figure out their next steps in life, and, at the same time, improving youth market research and trend work.

So we created Untapped as an approach to youth market research. But instead of using young people as traditional respondents—where you put them on a panel, ask questions, and pay them for answers—we built infrastructure that empowers them.

We hire young people to be our cultural reporters—photographers, videographers, storytellers. They go out, conduct research, and bring back insights. Then we work with them to interpret that research and shape it into brand strategy. It closes the gap between brands and the audiences they’re trying to reach.

Over the last ten years, we’ve done everything from conventional market research to ethnographies—often using innovative ways to enter people’s homes and lives. We’ve co-created new product ideas for Nike, helped Google understand why young people prefer social media scrolls over search bars, and worked on UX and UI projects.

What we’ve found is that this methodology gives us a uniquely deep perspective. It cuts through traditional assumptions and helps uncover insights that lead to more interesting and effective brand solutions.

Can you tell me a bit more about how you work with these reporters? What does that process look like?

The process itself is actually quite conventional. What makes it different is who we work with, not how we do it. When a project comes in, we review the subject matter and look within our network—which was built through partnerships with NGOs—spanning across the country. We identify the right group for the project, whether it’s qualitative or quantitative, and then we give them a brief.

We think of this more like casting than simply selecting respondents. We ask: “What kind of personality are we looking for?” And usually, someone will say, “Oh, I know someone just like that.”

This diverges from the traditional approach where a CMO might say, “Well, I talked to my neighbor’s niece, and she says all the kids are into Skibidi Toilet. So let’s build a brand strategy around that.” That introduces bias.

Our approach is grounded in an academic framework called community-based participatory research. Unlike traditional ethnography, which is mostly observational, this model involves entering communities and collaborating with them rather than simply studying about them.

The difference in our approach is that we hire a young person as a cultural reporter to go interview their friends, their parents, their family—to really understand something from the inside. What they bring back is a much richer perspective.

One of my favorite scenes was from a project we did for e.l.f. Beauty. One of our reporters, Zoe—she was 13 at the time—had filmed this incredible moment. I’m watching the footage, and she’s berating her friend, saying, “Look, I know you have a TikTok. I know you tell your mom you don’t, but I know you do. Just tell me what it is and how you use it.” She was getting right to the heart of it.

And what we learned from that project was really eye-opening. The numbers on platform usage weren’t telling the whole story. The kids were watching TikTok content on Pinterest. So Pinterest’s engagement numbers were inflated, while TikTok’s were deflated. They were using Pinterest as a workaround during school hours—still accessing the content, just hacking the system.

I want to go back. When did you first discover you could actually do this kind of thing for a living? We’ve been doing this for ten years now. I wouldn’t say it was a single discovery—it was more of a realization.

When I was with TBWA, I got sent to Vietnam after they opened a new office there. They asked, “Who wants to go?” and I jumped at the chance. I didn’t want to go to a traditional market like Europe, Hong Kong, or Singapore. I wanted something more raw—Shanghai, Jakarta, or, ideally, Vietnam. I wanted to connect with my roots, not as a tourist but by actually living and working there.

And what I realized—something I think I always knew but had to confront fully—was that everyone is talented if you give them the right opportunity and the right environment. The key is letting go of rigid expectations about what the output should look like.

After Vietnam, I moved to Canada to run TBWA Toronto. I expected a leap in the quality of work because I had come from New York. But that leap didn’t exist. The thinking, the creativity—it was all on par. Maybe the polish or “fit and finish” differed, but the raw creativity was just as strong. And now with AI, even those craft differences are being flattened.

That was the realization: talent is everywhere; the barriers are what hold people back. My co-founder in Untapped—who’s since returned to leading Stoked Mentoring—shared the same conviction. We’d sit around asking: how do we help kids who’ve aged out of structured NGO programs or school systems?

When these kids graduate, the infrastructure disappears. Some thrive. Others don’t. And often the difference isn’t the kid—it’s the tools they were given. If a kid succeeds in college, it’s likely because someone at home emphasized education from day one.

I’m a good example. I always knew I was going to university. That expectation was clear from the beginning, reinforced by a family that deeply valued education. So I had structure, support, and tools.

But many of these kids didn’t. So the idea behind Untapped was: How can we artificially create that kind of infrastructure for them? How do we give them the tools they need to succeed?

And what’s the one job where a young person can outperform any adult? Being a youth market expert. What kind of training do you need to describe life as a 16-year-old? You are the expert.

As for me, the older I get, the less qualified I am to speak to youth culture. My job is to facilitate and support. Steve Stoute used to say, “Look for the guy in the leather jacket at the party—that’s your guy.” Mine is: look for the guy in the khakis with the tucked-in shirt.

That’s the person who recognizes, I’m different from the audience I’m trying to reach. I’m not pretending to be young and cool. I’m here to build the bridge. So, to your question—how did we know this could be something real? It was the realization that youth don’t need intermediaries to speak for them. They need platforms and tools to speak for themselves.

Before we even started, we knew this could be a viable business model. The talent was out there—young people who were hungry for opportunities. And brands were desperate for authentic, real-time feedback that helped them understand what their audiences actually wanted.

How many times have you and I sat in a meeting where someone confidently says, “This is what the audience wants,” and then you go out into the world and think, You were so off base. Did you actually talk to anyone? And more importantly, did you listen when you talked to them?

Going back 10 years, thinking about the kinds of clients you dealt with and the research they relied on, how would you describe the conventional approach you were walking away from with Untapped?

It was box-ticking. That’s really what it was. The core issue we were trying to solve was that young people weren’t invested in the responses they were giving. They’d say whatever they needed to get the $100 or the gift card.

“Oh, these people are here from Pepsi? I love Pepsi.”“These people are from McDonald’s? Big Macs are my favorite.”Just tell them what they want to hear, grab the money, and move on. It became a game.

Ask them if they’ve participated in research recently, and they’ll say, “Of course not.” But meanwhile, they’ve already done five studies that month. And if you’re a parent who hasn’t been scammed by your kid—let alone by a recruiter working a phone bank—you’re the exception.

Everyone’s just trying to fill quotas, hit the number of interviews, tick the boxes. And the kids are looking at each other going, “Here’s another $100.”

So we flipped the model. We said, “We’re going to pay you a living wage for this.”

One of our points of pride is that we pay our reporters more than the New York Times pays for freelance articles. When I found out what the Times was paying, I thought, Okay, how do I beat that and pay a fair, decent wage?

And beyond just compensation, these young people know their work is being taken seriously. They've worked with major brands. They get excited—and they start holding their peers accountable. They know they’re going to be in a conversation where someone from the brand is actually going to listen. So they don’t pull any punches.

One of my favorites was sitting in a session with McDonald’s. One kid said, “I hate this stuff. It’s garbage. I’m not eating that.” And his friend shot back, “Really? Because at 4 a.m., you seem to like it a lot.” It completely changed the tone of the conversation.

So, how is your approach different?

The methodology isn’t new. We’ve always done dyads, triads, friendship groups. What changed was how we shifted the input—and how we engaged with the sources of information.

You call them “reporters.” How strategic was that label? And this idea—community-based participatory research—is that what you called it?

Actually, I was sharing the idea with a friend, and his wife—Dr. Kenwell Kaleem, an academic—overheard us. She walked in and said, “That’s a great idea. There’s already a term for it.” Then she sat down and schooled me on it.

She explained this academic framework—community-based participatory research. It's not just observing; it’s co-creating with someone from within the community. You're not studying them; you’re working with them. You’re in the tribe.

I had always struggled with how marketing latches onto academic terms. Like “ethnography”—which is technically observational. But when have we ever stopped at just observing?

So no, none of it was strategic. The only intentional decision we made was: they’re not respondents. They’re associates. They’re partners. They’re co-creators.

And one of the first things young people ask us is, “Can I put this on LinkedIn?” Absolutely. You should put this on LinkedIn. You should put this on your résumé. You’ve done market research for major brands—e.l.f. Beauty, for example. The work you’re doing is no different from what I was doing as a junior planner when I was 25. Why shouldn’t you get credit for that?

We actually stumbled onto the term “reporters” because one of our first big, ongoing clients was Nike. We started working with them through a trend newsletter, and that’s when the idea of cultural reporters really clicked.

Interestingly, it was essentially ongoing qualitative research—but disguised as a newsletter. We’d send it to them, and they would circulate it widely within Nike. Our day-to-day client would always follow up with an hour-long session, sitting down with four or five of our reporters to talk about the articles they wrote and why they wrote them. That monthly check-in turned into a kind of panel—a recurring touchpoint. It became his secret weapon.

What do you love about the work? Where's the joy in it for you?

I feel good about it. That’s the simplest way to put it. Over the past 10 years, the most powerful, most memorable projects are the ones I feel good about. I didn’t always feel that way. I mean, I’ve stood in plenty of rooms pitching fabric softener. Sure, I could sell it—I think any of us could in a pitch—but it didn’t feel meaningful.

This does. This is authentic to me. I’m trying to create opportunities for people. I don’t mind asking for projects or asking for funding because I know where that money is going. Someone said something to me recently that really stuck—it was probably the biggest compliment I’ve ever received. They said, “Your superpower is that you genuinely want other people to succeed.”

That summed it up. It’s not self-interest. The entire business model, our whole approach, is built around creating opportunity.

Yes, it's a business. It’s put food on the table for my family. But it also builds something real. It creates long-term relationships with people who may not be “young” anymore, but who started with us years ago—and who still reach out. I’ve written graduate school recommendation letters for a few of them. That’s what makes it special.

When people come to Untapped, what are they really looking for? What’s the core question they need answered?

The questions vary. But what they really need—what they’re looking for—is access. For example, with e.l.f. Beauty, they wanted to understand young people’s first experiences with makeup and skincare—those early rituals and how they differ across audiences.

We’ve worked on a wide range of questions. One of my favorites was with Google. They wanted to understand why they were losing young people to social media platforms.

For a long time, the assumption—especially from developers and engineers—was that it was just about frictionless access. Their thinking was, “Well, they’re already on TikTok or Instagram, so of course they’re searching there. It’s not a better product; it’s just convenience.”

That made logical sense—if you’re spending 12 hours a day on TikTok, you’re naturally going to start using it to search. Same with Amazon. But our research revealed something deeper. And now that enough time has passed, I feel comfortable talking about it publicly.

It wasn’t just about convenience. It was about trust. That insight came into focus when we talked to people with accessibility needs. One person said, “Sure, you can list something on Yelp or Google Reviews. But I don’t believe you. When I watch a TikTok video, I can see whether there are stairs in the back. I don’t have to guess whether it’s truly accessible.”

Or they’d say, “You tell me this place has a vibe. But when I look at the people in the video, I know if it’s my vibe or not.” It wasn’t about search efficiency. It was about seeing it for yourself. That changed everything.

And so that’s no different from how we looked at things 40 years ago, right? You want to see for yourself, but the mechanism has changed. I think that level of candor and perspective is what we’re able to unlock, and that comes from a different kind of access—a real, open relationship with the young people we work with.

I was struck by the word access. Can you tell me more? You said the clients need access. Tell me more about what you mean when you say access, and why that’s important.

There are some places—some circles—where it’s just not our place. Whether it’s physical or social access, guards go up, doors get locked down.

I’ll give you an anecdote. One of the young people we worked with—he’s grown up now—one of his hustles today is hosting BDSM parties. He invited me to one. I wanted to be supportive and check it out.

I went, and they gave me a very cute T-shirt that said something like “Punished for Dress Code” because I didn’t have the right attire—making it very clear I was a guest in their world.

And it’s funny. I walked into this party that night and realized I was the wet blanket. I thought I’d be the one to walk into a warehouse full of S&M and BDSM and feel awkward. What I realized was, I made everyone else feel awkward. I had invaded their safe space. So everyone’s guard went up. I did not have access to understand that world.

I’d love to hear you talk about how your approach creates access—or gains access.

I don’t think we gain it. I think they give us permission. They take us in. They interpret their world for us. And they give us that permission in very conventional places.

I remember, in our early days, we were doing research with kids. We were on interviews and getting tours of their neighborhoods. We walked into one home, and the grandmother came out and asked, “What are you doing here?” She asked our associate, the one who was taking us around and introducing us to young basketball players. The project was about identifying who might be the next great player.

As soon as he explained, “This is my job. I work with this company,” everything changed. The tone, the energy, the conversation—all of it opened up. There was trust. They gave us a pass. He literally said, “I’m going to take you into my world.”

And I think that’s what access means. Conventional qualitative or quantitative research tries to bring people into focus group facilities—we’re already taking them out of their environments. Nothing about it feels natural. And then we expect people to be authentic in the most inauthentic situation.

You’ve been at this a while. How are things different now? What’s changed in your career—in what clients need, or in how people move? I love that insight about trust. That TikTok gives everyone visible evidence, so the standard has changed.

I think there’s more accessibility for everyone now, across the board. There’s been a democratization of everything—access to young people, for example—and much more competition. We go up for projects and clients say, “Well, we used YouGov,” or “We went to Suzy,” or “We used a digital tool,” or “We did a social scrape to listen for sentiment.”

I have competitors now who are using our same business model. That’s how the landscape has changed. But what’s also changed is the applications. People now understand what research, information, and insight can actually do.

When we started, our work was very much geared toward advertising—that was the world I came from. A lot of our early jobs were new business pitches. They needed fast turnaround and real quotes, real insights, to bring into creative development. Today, we’re doing everything from new product development to trend hunting to conventional research.

That’s interesting. Do you think that’s the case across the board? What you just said makes me think—this has been my experience too—that the need for human understanding first came through creative development and advertising… and then somehow spread through the rest of the organization. Does that seem fair?

I might say unlocked rather than infected—only because I think there were people always doing this kind of work in different ways; we just didn’t have visibility into it.

People working in innovation started saying, “Hey, this tool you're using is actually a really good one—let us talk to those people too.” We've done work for private equity firms trying to decide whether or not to make an acquisition. And I think that's part of the growing awareness of these tools.

That’s the note about democratization. Now, it’s just a quick search. You might’ve seen an interview or caught me on a podcast, or someone forwarded something. Ten years ago, if you worked in private equity, you probably wouldn’t have even heard of us. Now, it’s easy—and people are quick to say, “I see how this could help my business.”

I always want to talk about qualitative. What you do is qualitative, but you have a particular approach. What's the benefit of qual? I mean, you’re competing with non-qualitative solutions. How do you advocate for qualitative? What's the magic of it? How do you articulate its value?

Perspective. We turn down a lot of projects where someone is looking for validation—statistically valid data. That’s not us. We’re your people if you’re looking for insight, if you’re trying to get ahead of the curve. If you're looking for a shift in perspective. We resonate with clients who are open to seeing what else is out there. That’s what it boils down to.

And because we’re a different model—validated but not widely adopted—many still rely on quantitative data. Their decision-making is often based on what’s safe. And you can’t blame them, especially in this climate.

But there are always those few who are open to trying something new, who want to understand things differently. Their decision-making process is built around what they want to accomplish with the information—not just defend a decision.

How do you think about the work you do for clients? What would you say you do for them?

I want to give a thoughtful answer. I think we shine light. We shine light into areas they haven’t explored. That’s the hope. It doesn’t always happen—sometimes the light lands in a brightly lit corner, and they say, “Well, at least we validated it.”

But most of the time, our clients come with no expectations. They’ve hit a wall. They’re not getting the answers they want, and the answers they have don’t make sense. So they’re ready to try something different.

Over time, we've built a client base that comes to us saying, “We think there’s something going on here, but we don’t know how to frame it or understand it.” Topics range from employment, to sex, to money. What’s different about kids?

One of my favorite examples is from working with folks in finance and banking. They kept asking, “Why can’t we get young people to understand that if you open a bank account, you’ll save money on fees? It’s a no-brainer!”

I thought the same thing—until we talked to the kids. Their answer made total sense: It’s a business decision. When you don’t have consistent income, you can’t maintain minimum balances. That means you’re hit with recurring fees. So they did the math: “I’d rather pay one bigger fee than constant smaller ones over six months—and at least with a check-cashing place, once the money’s gone, it’s gone. They can’t get back into my wallet.” Banks can. So they chose what gave them control.

We’ve got a little time left. Looking ahead, what do you see? You mentioned AI earlier—do you encounter synthetic data? Any thoughts on the impact of AI on your work—on shining light?

I think the impact of AI is different in my case because it’s not necessarily a competitor—it’s more about how it’s changed the landscape. Broadly, technology has impacted young people—and our generation as well—in that there’s no clear roadmap anymore.

In an environment that lacks clarity about where to go and how to get there, insight and direction become so much more valuable. Take trends, for example. You can sit and talk with someone in a marketing department, and they can spend hours on Google and find trends of all kinds. But eventually, if you keep looking, you’ll find someone who says X, Y, and Z are great. So, how do you know what to listen to? How’s it being curated?

That’s the shift. As technology opens up everything, we’re more and more in need of someone to curate the information and give us confidence that it’s coming from the right place—that it’s actually valuable and creates genuine connection with our audiences.

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, listen, this has been a blast. I really appreciate you accepting the invitation. It was great to hear you talk more about your story and the work at Untapped. It sounds amazing.

Well, I appreciate the invitation. I mean, I’m curious—I’ve got the same question. AI is affecting our industry so much. What are you seeing? How’s it affecting your work.

Yeah, I don’t know. I never feel like I’m the kind of guy who knows how to talk about this kind of stuff—speculating about business and industry. But with synthetic users, I kind of had an existential crisis when I encountered the concept. There are huge chunks of work that are definitely going to meet clients where they want to be met—with synthetic personas or ridiculous oversimplifications.

To your point, you talked about how a lot of the industry already treats people like answer-generating machines. So maybe it’s good riddance that some of that gets commodified into synthetic data.

But, also, to your point—curation becomes more important. And I think all the interesting stuff is going to live on the fringe. I choose to think of it as an opportunity—a kind of permission to get wilder, more imaginative, more interesting, and honestly, more human. That last sentence maybe ended with less drama than I intended, but… you know what I mean? The synthetic stuff captures the big, fat middle. There will be so much agreement on so many things, I imagine.

I don’t think that’s bland at all. I think it’s at the heart of everything we’re feeling right now—people are craving that connection.

There was an article in The New York Times this morning about how young people feel like they’re the most rejected generation. Statistically, it’s true. Just look at the scale of things—you’ve got more university applicants, more job applicants. I think it’s something like 160 applications to get a job now. It’s become a volume game.

So when they say they feel rejected, on one hand, it’s backed by data. But on the other hand, there’s the emotional side of it. When you say be more human, I think that’s the real opportunity for brands—to connect.

I think about when we were young. McDonald’s wasn’t just fast food. It was your first job. It was someone from the neighborhood saying, “Hey George, look at you—you’re growing up. You’ve got a job.”

There were layers of humanity in that. And I think the marketing, the communications, the products that have always resonated—historically—had that human layer. We've lost that.

A lot of what I’m seeing from young people today is not just feeling lost—it's feeling overwhelmed. That’s the difference between a “lost” generation and today’s generation. There’s so much information, so much access. People look at them and say, “It’s never been easier to apply for a job. Why aren’t you applying?”

But yeah—it’s easier. Which means everyone’s applying. They’re saying, “Let me talk to a person. Let me get a real interview.” And I think you’re landing on a much bigger issue. One we could unpack for days.

It’s true. Well again, I really appreciate this.It’s good to see you. It was fun talking with you. Thank you so much.

Yeah, let’s do it again soon.

Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe