Reid Litman on Youth & Culture

Reid Litman is a consultant, writer, & researcher and Global Consulting Director at Ogilvy in New York City. He has led transformative projects for global brands like Google, Nike, and Coca-Cola.

So, you might know this, I'm not sure, but I always start every conversation with the same question, which is a question I borrowed from a friend of mine. She helps people tell their stories and I borrow it because it's really sort of big, beautiful way to start a conversation, but it's big, so I over-explain it. So before I ask, I want you to know that you are in complete control and you can answer any which way you like. And the question is, where do you come from?

I love it. Starting strong, Happy Friday. You know, I think I'm still at an age and a place, you know, in life where my story is really anchored in where I'm from and who my parents are in terms of answering the question, you know, who are you and where do you come from?

So I'm from the Midwest of the U.S. Minnesota. And, you know, I always like to say my dad is, he's a structural engineer. He's sort of my logical brain and my quantitative side.

And my mom is a public school social worker. She's very much my qualitative and emotional side. And I think those two things play together really, really well.

You know, and together plus coming from the Midwest and now living in New York, I feel like both of them really taught me not to be beholden to, you know, how things have always been done. And that continues today to be a big part of the big part of who I am. So I think. Oh, good.

I've told this story a couple of times for people who have listened already, but I grew up in Rochester, New York and Western New York. And I remember when I would meet people from Western New York, I would always click with them kind of in a way that I didn't with people from maybe New York or New England. And I met this person from Buffalo and I asked her, I was like, what is going on? Why do I click so well from people from Western New York? She said, well, we're from the Midwest. She kind of blew my mind. I don't know what you make of that. But what does it mean to be from the Midwest for you? What do you carry with you?

Yeah, no, good question. I think sometimes the Midwest gets a bad rap, right? It's middle America or it's the flyover states, whatever it might be. But I love being from the Midwest. I think, you know, for me, it's a superpower, especially now after, you know, spending the last five years or so in New York City and kind of combining the best of those two worlds. And maybe what's different or interesting or unique to me about the Midwest is that especially coming from like the, you know, the brand or marketing perspective, which I do is sometimes people in the Midwest are tough customers.

Like there's, there's less of a constant need for consumerism and status. People seem to feel a bit more comfortable with who they are and kind of what they want out of life. The pace is slower and, you know, so is the need for change. And sometimes people on the coasts or wherever confuse that with a lack of intelligence. But I don't know. I think that's a mess. I think there's something interesting about middle America.

Yeah, I love that the Midwest is there's a superpower. It's your superpower. In what way? In what way is it a superpower for you?

I think just going back to recognizing those differences in seeing that, you know, people from the Midwest just seem to be a bit more comfortable with who they are. And the pace just sometimes is slower, like the need for change, the need for evolution, the need for self actualization is just a little bit different. And I think that's taught me a lot about both myself and how I approach branded marketing as well.

Do you have a memory of what you wanted to be when you grew up as a kid?

You know, I think the first thing I've ever truly as a specific job, remember wanting to be was it's so specific. It's L’il Waynes manager. I wanted to be involved with music and in sort of brand and artist management so badly when I was younger.

You know, before I even knew what like brand strategy or consulting or even design was, I knew really early that I wanted to work in culture. And I feel like music was just the most tangible expression of culture as a kid. Like it was, it was the thing that I could just, you know, see first, it was the furthest edge out for me. And so it was just what I grabbed on to really early.

And what did you think? What did young Reid think that job was?

I just thought it was fun to be a part of someone's world who was kind of shaking things up and impacting culture, but not, you know, beholden to the basic or ground rules that everyone else seems to have to live by.

And sort of catch us up. Where are you now? And what are you working on?

Yeah, so these days I'm in New York City. I work at Ogilvy, which is a, you know, kind of one of the larger older advertising agencies. But specifically, I work within a cool group called Ogilvy Consulting, which is Ogilvy's brand strategy and really business kind of transformation division. So I don't know, you could think about it maybe like a McKinsey or BCG meets ad agency, kind of the collision of creative and a bit more of the rigor around a traditional management consultant.

And what do you love about it? Where's the joy and the work for you?

For me, it's really the collision of two worlds that I really love. It's the creativity and kind of the edginess and the provocation of advertising and creativity and sort of pushing the Browns on what brands can do and what they can stand for and what they can mean to people. But also with the accountability and really the structure of more of a business consultant. So I just love the ability to, you know, really push and change brands while also being accountable for, you know, growth year over year and actually ensuring that what we're doing

When did you discover that you could make a living kind of doing this kind of thing? I mean, there's this gap between your little Wayne dreams and where you are now. When did you discover brand or brand consulting?

Yeah, no, I mean, for me, it's all still so connected and part of the same kind of ecosystem. It's just different, you know, expressions or different connections to culture. But I feel like I didn't know about brand marketing or even ad agencies until a little bit later in life, I would say like university age.

I wasn't one of those people who had a ton of friends or family in the creative industries in that sense. And so I was exposed to all of this a little bit later. But I think, you know, at least since around age 19, 20, 21, I've been pretty familiar with kind of the marketing industry ecosystem and really sought out Ogilvy as, you know, a teaching hospital and an awesome place to just meet really, really smart people doing cool work.

What was the attraction? Do you remember?

You know, I think there's so much happening in the marketing industry between agencies and consultancies and new creative networks or independent shops, whatever it might be. And I don't know, Ogilvy, it's bright red or the history and sort of way that people spoke about their time there always really stood out to me. You know, and I feel like no matter what, if you could get to spend every day around people who are a lot smarter than you and a lot more interesting than you, it's hard to look back and say, you know, that time was misspent. And so it just really keeps me there and I'm really proud of that.

What kind of work do you enjoy doing or what kind of when clients come to you, what kind of questions are they asking?

Yeah, you know, I've kind of spanned across several industries and types of work over the last five years or so, but especially over the last couple of years, I've really kind of dug my heels into youth culture branding and community building. And I think when brands come to me today, the biggest question is how do we either pivot, change, or for the first time, set up systems to really connect and resonate with youth culture. You know, how do we win with that next generation of consumers?

Today, that means Gen Z. And I think, you know, so much has been said about the business opportunity in the size of Gen Z. So maybe I don't need to go there. But what's important to me is that brands and brand leaders, you know, think of me as someone that they can come to when it's imperative to succeed with the next generation of young users and all the things that come with that.

And how do you help them? What's your, I mean, I'm sure that's custom in that way, but what do you, what do you find they really need and where do they need help?

Yeah, I mean, some projects come to life through, you know, new products or the recasting of old products and some come to life through new brands or an adjustment of what the brand stands for in the world. But I think what all projects have in common is that my sort of ethos or my approach to this work is really to ensure that there's a very diverse range of young, interesting voices at the table. And so I talk a lot about co-creation and just ensuring that the brands that we're creating are built, you know, with Gen Z rather than for them.

And that can come to life through research methods, you know, as you know very well, which could be just anything from ethnography to focus groups to panels that actually invite Gen Z to the table, not just, you know, to do things like vote on a flavor, but really to impact and discuss and understand the business at all levels. You know, it varies from the brand's purpose and what it stands for in the world, all the way down to how it thinks about and executes on customer service.

Can you tell me a story about, yeah, I guess I love the concept of co-creation and how co-creation kind of works?

Yeah, I mean, there's so many examples out there of times where we've brought people in. I'm trying to not say any specific client names, but one of the things that we so often do is invite influencers who the industry would think of as influencers, right? Young Gen Z creators with a big following on social media, but we use them in a really different way.

Instead of handing them scripts to kind of megaphone out in hopes that their voice will make the brand interesting to the followers, what we do is, we work with the influencers on work and strategy that will never be seen explicitly by the outside world. So we really use their knowledge of their audience, their knowledge of the industry or adjacent topics to bring them in and help have conversations around, you know, what the future of this space or this industry or this offering could look like, and impact change on just a bit more of that behind the scenes level.

And I think that's been a superpower for us, you know, influencers and creatives and young, bright people as partners and explorers and, for example, what the future of wellness or what the future of food and beverage is, as opposed to just using a foodie influencer to megaphone the brand that we're hoping to make resonate with young people.

And what's the role of research or qualitative in research generally in qualitative in particular in the work that you do?

Yeah, I think so much of it is research and spending time, you know, with the target and just being among the target and ensuring that voices are always included. And so it can take, you know, really basic shape, like the classic survey, which is always tried and true, or it can be video interviews and video panels. Oftentimes we host kind of almost like get togethers or parties where we just get a bunch of people in a room and talk about the thing.

And so whatever we need to do to get close to that subject and hear it from the people who live it every day is what we do. So I've been in everything from, you know, rooms with alcohol brands where we're literally just discussing the state of what it means to consume alcohol, where we're consuming, why we don't want to feel maybe drunk or whatever in the same way as previous generations, to being in wellness spas, talking about why these environments no longer fit the Gen Z narrative or the youth culture narrative of what it means to be, you know, healthy and balanced. So it's so random, but in the best way of just getting with the people who are living it every day.

What are some of the biggest sort of shifts among Gen Z that brands are having to grapple with when it comes to innovating or communicating differently?

Yeah, I think, you know, at the most basic level, this idea of co-creation, participatory brands, I've heard it called, you know, multiplayer brands, is one of the most fundamental and interesting shifts. I think what, for all the contradictions or nuances or differences within Gen Z, one thing that really seems to remain tried and true and unify them is their desire for creative expression and sort of, you know, individualism. And so no matter what, when we're working with brands, we build mechanisms that allow youth to participate and help shape the direction of the business and the brand.

So whether that comes to life through, you know, today it might be fandom or even partial ownership to, you know, any mechanism that allows people to feel more included, more like they're shaping the direction or even the topics that the brand might be talking about or impacting is so, so critical. And then there's, you know, several other things that are happening right now in the start of 2025 that I think are really important to how we'll view brands in the future. One of them is, you know, for example, just around technology, whether it be, you know, Gen AI or this kind of dupe culture that we're feeling right now.

But it's just around realism and in a world where 90 percent or whatnot of the content that we see is generated by AI or that, you know, Gen Alpha is very much born with, you know, Gen AI in their pockets. Like, what does real mean? What does authentic mean?

Which was kind of like the ultimate buzzword for Gen Z and how are we going to shape what meaningful, true experiences look like, you know, in a world where we spend X amount of time on our screens. And we might even have, you know, trips and travel and food tastings in a purely digital space. So I think it's just really challenging what the frames of traditional brands are and how, when and where they can be experienced.

Yeah. I love what you just said that the traditional frames of what a brand, what brands are, is that what you said? Are brands having to rethink that question?

Yeah. I mean, I think it used to be so much more one or two dimensional. A brand, it really existed through, you know, the TV industrial complex, sometimes on shelves or at the store. And then, you know, in one or two sponsorships across, you know, whatever it might have been, an IRL sports field or a magazine. And now it's the brand sort of exists in between all of those spaces.

It exists, of course, in the minds of people, but also in these kinds of strange digital and physical corners and everywhere in between. So the job of market or the role of the brand is just a lot more intimate, a lot more dispersed among so many different touch points, opinions and channels. So it's just a fun time.

Yeah. Use the word intimate. I'm curious what you're pointing at when you say that it's more intimate now than maybe it has been in the past.

Yeah. I mean, I think especially as it relates to marketing in youth culture, we see people connect themselves or associate themselves with a brand as a way to help show off who they are, to show where their, you know, where their edges are in life and what they value.

And so brands then, you know, have such a deeper, not only responsibility, but just set of tasks to try to execute at a time when, you know, we're seeing traditional institutions and governments, et cetera, trusted less and less in brands and sort of these entities as community builders trusted more and more. So there's just an emotional and sort of lifestyle component that naturally arises in the brand world that maybe wasn't there before. Brands are part of social conversations. Brands are part of pop culture, really, in every single way.

Is it fair to call it kind of a flattening a little bit like that? I mean, so I'm thinking about experiences I've had in my research where, you know, in the past to ask somebody who they look up to or who they admire was a way of understanding a kind of aspiration. And I feel like in more recent years when I asked young people that question, they kind of refused to participate. You know what I mean? They kind of like, I don't really look up to people, you know what I mean? I'm not playing this game or I'm going to tell you that I admire this brand or that brand or this celebrity or this celebrity. And I wonder if that resonates with you and if it's connected at all to this sort of, I mean, I'm using that term flattening. I don't know if that's accurate, but that's what I hear you kind of describe it.

Yeah, I mean, one thing we sometimes say in talking in a different context, talking about sort of Gen Z career or life aspirations, is that more and more Gen Z wants to move on rather than move up. So to your point, that kind of that ladder in life, that ascendancy where you might see someone at the top and want to aspire to be that feels like it's sort of dissolved a bit. I think another thing is, you know, in a world where everything is so much more transparent and we're kind of fully aware of people's accomplishments, but also their flaws behind the scenes.

It's harder to say or associate your, you know, your ambition with one specific person because you can always be worried that maybe they've done something that you don't agree with or maybe explicitly, you know, they've done something that you don't agree with. So the fact that we know more about these, quote unquote, celebrities makes it, I think, harder to root your identity and wanting to be just like them.

Both those things seem to have kind of a little dark edge to them a little bit. Well, how would you describe, I mean, you know, not to be a nostalgic old man guy, but, you know, Gen X, when I was coming up, we were the slackers, you know what I mean? What do people get wrong about Gen Z and what's distinctive about them?

Yeah, you know, I think it's funny and I feel like more and more generational research, which I love the subject. I think more and more over the past couple of years, it's been, you know, scrutinized or, you know, people say something to the effect of, but everyone's an individual, you know, everyone's so different. The generation is so large, therefore, you know, categorizing or the device of generations or Gen Z is meaningless or it's futile in marketing because, you know, the range or the spectrum of who's in there is so large.

And I think there's a couple of ways to kind of respond to that. The first is, you know, yes, the generation is large, but the reason we use these devices is because it remains helpful as a way to understand how different groups at different times are experiencing life speed and technology. The other thing that people say a lot is, or a parent might say, well, like, you know, my daughter, she rarely ever uses her cell phone.

So therefore, like the trope that Gen Z is always on their phone is wrong. And I think the answer there is simply, you know, no single anecdote just proves the average. The metric is there because on average, young people spend more time on screens than people of older ages.

So, you know, as in any statistical group, it doesn't really matter what your daughter does. It matters what, on average, this age group is doing. And so these conversations persist because they're useful and because they're things that we can point to directionally for what different groups and what different communities are doing.

That being said, of course, the more that you drill down and the more specific that you get with the group, the more rich the findings will be. I mean, especially what we're seeing with Gen Z is that there's so many, you know, sort of fragmented or fractured communities, whether it be basic things like a divide in politics among gender or, you know, really specific sort of approaches to sustainability among, you know, European Gen Z. So I guess all of that to say, I believe in the power of generational research to understand what's happening with the emerging kind of cohort of the world, while also, of course, acknowledging that the further you zoom in, the more rich insights you'll find. And I think both things are true and important to continue looking at.

Yeah. Do you have any mentors that you really kind of turn to often or touchstones, you know, whether it's an idea or a concept that you return to quite a bit?

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely people who I look to as anchors in certain spaces. I mean, I was just talking a bit about the debate around generational research and its value. And there's a woman, Jean Twenge, who is an author and sort of research scientist in the field who I really respect and who I feel like has kind of the best handle on the ability to articulate why it's valuable and what continues to be the most interesting differences between generations. In fact, she has a book called Generations, which I would definitely recommend to anyone out there.

It's very popular for people just to get very excited about debunking generational research as being hoo-ha, pseudo-sci.

I mean, and I understand the critiques, but I think it's more popular to critique and to attack, especially on platforms like LinkedIn than it is to actually create or generate something new. And so if someone wants to spend their time that way in interrogating something as opposed to looking for the value, I think that's up to them.

My mentor had a, you know, in our research, he would always say in talking to the client, he would say, he would coach them that we're all so trained to be critical that we have to actively create the conditions for sort of positive response. And so all of the questioning that we do and that I learned to do was always really affirmative and appreciative and really encouraging people into positive descriptions because the default is deeply critical.

Yeah, no, I love that. I really resonate with that. I think the world has, you know, sort of enough critics and not enough creators. And so that's something I try to emulate, even in little things like whenever I'm doing a brand report or a brand study, I try really hard to use only positive examples to affirm what I believe is working well as opposed to, you know, dunking on brands who might have had a misstep or an error. And I just think it's important.

Where does that come from, do you think? Is that something you learned?

I don't know. It just seems, you know, I think I probably hear my mom's voice in the back of my head saying like, you know, don't step on anyone when they're down. But I think also just in terms of productivity and really for the audience or brand out there reading it, it's a lot more helpful to make a recommendation and then show examples or creative ways that brands are starting to execute on it, as opposed to show an example. Or give a recommendation and then show an example of someone who did something horribly, which, you know, just instills fear and reservation, which is not the goal of the Gen Z brand consultants. Yeah.

You've done, what have you been working on lately? Any themes that you've been exploring in particular and any learnings that you find particularly interesting?

Yeah, one thing I've been digging really deeply into lately is sort of this, and it's been happening for a while, but it feels especially resonant right now is sort of the idea of this changing economic and educational paradigm for young people. So, you know, in a world where less and less students are going to traditional universities or more and more employers are feeling like Gen Z don't have the right attitude, skills or socialization to be successful. You know, what does the future of that career ladder look like?

And we're also seeing, you know, things like by 2027 almost half of the world's workforce will be part of the gig economy, right? So it's just also a time when that 40 years at the same company, nine to five, is just eroding. So it's a really interesting moment in the career world, the education, the upskilling world for young people.

Oh my God. Did you say 2027? It'll be a 50% gig economy?

I think you can look at it as either the skills gap is either, you know, this big problem, or you can look at it sort of as an opportunity. And it feels like traditional education as it becomes more expensive and more inaccessible, and also just as its syllabus becomes more futile in the face of rapid innovation. There's actually a really cool opportunity for brands to step in and become more of these lifelong educational part and upskilling partners for this emerging kind of independent Gen Z workforce.

You know, so I sort of imagine a future where education won't be, you know, a four year period in your life or end with a degree, but you'll almost have a, I don't know, like a booklet of Boy Scout badges that continuously get stamped and added to as you go through life, upskilling and sort of learning new things continuously. And brands can be one of the most interesting providers for those upskilling and, you know, career learning or resourcing moments.

What examples are out there of brands in that space that seem to be doing it well or sort of, you know, embodying this new way of developing?

Yeah, I mean, I think a real basic example is we're seeing tons of tech companies and really actually even financial services companies and into all industries drop their degree requirements. You know, which is a big change. For so long it mattered deeply what, you know, what certification or what degree you had and what school it came from.

Now we're seeing more and more in this kind of creator economy world that your portfolio, the people that you know, the executions or projects that you've been a part of is really the driving force behind that initial stage of employment. Another cool thing that we're seeing is brands like Google offer these sort of micro certifications or, you know, many degrees. And it's so rather than, you know, paying one hundred thousand for a degree that includes all sorts of classes or coursework that, you know, might not be interesting or relevant to you.

You sort of pick and choose the two or three certifications you want from Google and you earn a degree that way in a more specialized sense that begins to instantly onboard you more to the industry and the people and the companies that are, you know, of interest to your career. And Google's quite cool with it. They do it both externally, but also internally for their workforce, all sorts of different micro certifications and almost little degrees that allow you to move between functions and specialties within the company.

We were talking about mentors and touchstones and you mentioned Jean Twenge. Are there others that you return to ideas or concepts?

Yeah, there's another one that's fresh on my mind because it's been released. This year's version has been released in the last week or so. But every year, Matt Klein does his meta-trend report, which is something that I sort of look to as a, I don't know, a lightning rod of annual thinking because of the way that it synthesizes and comprises all of the year's trend reports into a single report of basically what's trending amongst the trends.

So anyone who works in the marketing or brand world will know that there's no shortage of PDF files of the future of this or the 2024 things to know or the future of travel, the future of wellness, the 10 things to know about brands in automotive. And he basically takes all of those and with his own mind, synthesizes them down into 15 meta-trends. And so there's a whole kind of body of research and lore behind it.

So people should check it out, but it's a really, really great way to sort of summarize and understand the year and where culture is going, the edges of culture. Yeah, I think I use it in two ways. One is more of a, in a meta way to sort of look at what has happened and step back and evaluate what it means for my own processes or my own ways of approaching things. I'll give you an example.

So one of the things that he talked about in the report this year is that one of the unexpected findings was that 90% of the world's trends reports all published global trends. Trends reports come from the same nine cities. And that's really interesting if you think about it because it sort of shows how much of the industry, the industry of trend reports is an echo chamber, is using language that is either reductive or has already been said before.

When in reality, probably the most interesting in emerging trends, especially for someone like me who's interested in youth culture, come not from the same nine cities that they've always come from, you know, the London's, the New York's, etc. But probably from countries that have the massive populations of young people like Indonesia and Nigeria, you know, where almost no trends reports are coming from. And so I think in a meta sense, it's just a good reminder that market research and especially this kind of exploding industry of trend reports are often missing the most interesting parts of culture.

And, you know, I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday and we sort of joked that only a country that has plateaued would spend time creating trend reports, whereas the fast growing sort of emerging fun spaces of the world are just living it. They're just doing it, right? They're not reflecting on the year's trends.

And so we were joking, but I think the point stands that there are so many fun, emerging and interesting trends and sort of happenings in culture that aren't covered in trend reports simply because they might not be happening in the 10 cities that they most often are published in.

That’s beautiful. I mean, I love where we are in this conversation too, because there's a couple layers there too. There's the sort of the monoculture of those big cities, right? But there's also, I guess I'm curious, to what degree is there sort of a monoculture and sort of digital culture or sort of social media culture?

And how do you avoid, and then even AI, you know what I mean? Like as a researcher and you're trying to understand culture, there's lots of ways in which access to culture is very, very easy. And you can feel like you can interact with people all over the world engaging in behaviors at a digital level.

But how do you balance sort of, how do you access the fringe or the emerging parts of culture and avoid getting sucked into, I guess, a very dramatic image coming into my head, some whirlpool of sort of commodified generic kind of insights?

Yeah, I think that's something I'm wrestling with a lot right now. I mean, to your point, there's more access than we've ever had as humans to dive into super fandoms, worlds away from us or specific communities of fishermen. You know, 4,000 miles away.

And to actually just see and hear their conversations on an intimate level, it's really awesome. And the access that we have or the ability to sort of digitally travel across to see different and hear from different people is greater than it's ever been. But at the same time, when we step back and start to roll up those findings, those trends, those learnings, it does seem like we continue to put our own lens on it and arrive back at the same space.

So I think for me, the issue is not or the thing I'm trying to tackle, you know, let's say this year is not access to different interesting communities because the world has no shortage of them. But it's once we zoom back out and start to create recommendations or codify trends, how to not lose that richness, how to not just return to, you know, a trend that has been phrased that way several times before.

Yeah. Can you tell me a story about this?

Yeah, I mean, one thing that comes to mind right away is this idea of within Gen Z, there's this kind of this constant tension between individuality, which I talked about before, their deep desire for sort of creativity and self-expression in standing out with collective belonging, which is the idea that everyone's heard, you know, so many times of Gen Z and the loneliness epidemic, Gen Z and their isolation, Gen Z doesn't date, they don't have enough friends. And so there's this really interesting tension, and I'm certainly not the first to talk about it between Gen Z wanting to stand out and be noticed and sort of a platform to write their personal brands with Gen Z wanting to find a community that they fit into.

And so I'm trying to find literally today, this week, this year, a way to solve for this or add a new, add the freshest layer onto this paradox that we're seeing in culture. So not just to simply say that we're recognizing this duality or this kind of contradiction, but to show or find communities who are starting to act on it well. So where are spaces where young people are bringing other young people together, both giving them a sense of community and the ability to sort of stand out and kind of let their light shine. And so, you know, that's an area of research or an opportunity for brands that I think I'm very much still unpacking.

What do you feel like you might do?

Yeah, I mean, I want to spend time understanding and just within both physical, really, and digital spaces, you know, at the points or the intersections where I feel like people are both feeling a deep sense of belonging and really prideful about the personal brands or the influence that they're creating in those spaces. And it's funny because I think, you know, right now we're seeing the reemergence of so many like IRL hangouts, you know, in real life moments and get together.

It's like for almost all of 24, like those run clubs or picnics have been trending, which just sounds silly, maybe to older folks, but just getting Gen Z out back into the world physically with people. And there's been so many clubs and sort of gatherings like that that have been emerging. And then, of course, everyone's super familiar by now with all the different digital spaces, whether it be, you know, the Roblox fashion competitions or whatever, where there's an opportunity to both socialize and relax setting, but also to show off a little bit of your creative flair and just have fun with it.

I love what you just said. I appreciate that you felt the need to caveat picnic is being silly for older people. What can you help me understand? Tell me a little bit more about the reality of why it is meaningful and why you think maybe somebody older doesn't maybe just really doesn't understand what it's about. There isn't. It's this need to have to feel neat, the same need.

Yeah, I mean, we touched on it a little bit earlier when we were talking about the rise of these really micro niche sort of communities that the Internet has allowed for. Right. There's no shortage of various online communities. And we especially saw that explosion or peak or maybe even just really get started during it during Covid. And then one of the things we saw coming out of Covid and still to this day over the last year or so is how those individual micro communities began to migrate from the Internet into physical spaces.

You know, and so, for example, there was a funny one in California called the Diplo Run Club. So it's people who are fans of Diplo's music plus love running. Right. And so it's just like these funny combinations of niche interests that are manifesting originally online, but then really coming to life and sort of growing in physical spaces.

And so whether there be, you know, I don't know, there's other ones like Seattle or Chicago Swim Club, which was just a bunch of people who would go jump in, jump in the water early on every Friday morning or the picnics or the show and tells. So they're just fun ways that groups of sort of isolated people who found connections online in digital spaces among niche interests are now coming to life and exploring sort of the world together.

And I still think, actually, and I've mentioned this to several clients, I don't know if it's ever caught on, but I still think there's massive opportunity for the brand that becomes known for helping Discord or other similar groups come together and meet and activate for the first time in real life. There's so many online communities forums, like let's say XYZ Discord channel, who are yearning for the space and ability to get together in real life, but maybe just lack the resources or just the organizational capability to do it. And I think it's such a massive opportunity for brands to help people get together.

You know, another example that people might be familiar with is Hinge. So Hinge has the One More Hour initiative, which is a fund that it's created. And this also ties back to the points around Gen Z co-creation, a fund that it's created for different social clubs, Gen Z based social clubs to get to help get more people together in real life, spending time together physically. So any sort of Gen Z owned and organized group can apply to receive funding from the Hinge One More Hour fund and then use that money to really help facilitate a get together for people in real life. And it's sort of solving on that need.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Putting Hinge kind of at the middle of the conversation of how do we help more people get together? How do we reduce that isolation and loneliness? Yeah.

What are the implications? I mean, it's so exciting to, like, I hear you on the hunger for IRL experiences, right, and physical connection and belonging. What are the implications on sort of digital spaces? Is there a similar sort of evolution in terms of where and how people want to gather or interact in the digital spaces and the platforms, or is it sort of more the same? Is that too broad a question?

It's a hard one because I think we see the pendulum sort of constantly swing back and forth. You know, I'm imagining the massive, you know, concerts in Fortnite or all the hype around the metaverse from years past. And then I'm also imagining, you know, the touch grass memes and all of the people who are using flip phones rather than smartphones, just as both a literal way to sort of unplug, but also just a way to show the people around them that they're doing something a bit different and that they want to be less attached.

That being said, I think digital environments and digital connection is sort of more important than ever, you know, but we just might be doing it in more of a balanced way where it's using the tools to connect with people based on interest and leveraging the algorithms to find the content that's most relevant to us so that we can be more efficient with how we're spending our time. So we might reach sort of an interesting equilibrium where hopefully the tech allows us to surface opportunities for IRL experiences and connections faster as opposed to the tech swallowing us up in the constant need for scrolling or, you know, experiences that exist purely online and therefore not allowing us out into the world.

I have two questions before we end. And the first is, I guess, well, just to share, there's an organization, they're called New Public, and I'm not going to do a good job of defining what they do, but I think what they're all really about is creating digital public spaces. And there's something interesting in that concept. I mean, I live in a small town and lots of very real local community conversations are happening on Facebook, like in a group, which is a giant private platform, of course. So I think they're asking for advocating for sort of new ways of, I guess, local is a form of analog, right? Isn't that sort of a proxy for the kind of belonging that we're talking about? So local digital seemed to be a cool concept and novel in a way that I hadn't really encountered before.

I love that. And that reminds me, a friend of mine, Brandon, was what we were talking about, what we thought would be, you know, some of the interesting things manifesting online in 2025. And he talked a lot about how we're going to go, and this was kind of his hot take, how we're going to go from community to neighbors, because we've so much lost the idea of neighbors over the past several years, right?

Like even just in general. And I thought that was a really, you know, fun and interesting way to think about it. Not that community or the idea of belonging is going anywhere, but more so that the emphasis might shift back to this idea of neighbor, which I think requires more effort on both people's parts. And so I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah, I think a community is sometimes today used too loosely, you know, so it might be people who share the same interest or who support the same person but don't necessarily know each other or show up for each other or sacrifice something to help one another. Whereas I think neighbor comes with a bit more responsibility, a bit more work in that, you know, it requires a mutual investment on both sides in a way that, you know, some people might say they're a part of X community or, you know, thank you to everyone in the community. But really those people aren't connected or working, you know, for each other in a way that, or sacrificing for each other in a way that, you know, sometimes neighbors have to.

I remember this was a long time ago, maybe eight years ago, 10 years ago, it was a while ago doing groups for a client. And I have a projective exercise where I have people imagine the competitive set as members of the same family. And I remember this person saying, just describing one of the brands in the category as, as a neighbor, and I was like, well, what do you mean a neighbor? She's like, neighbor, like, I don't really know him. I don't know anything about him. And I was just, it was shocking to me because when I grew up, a neighbor had a different, like, you knew your neighbors, but it was so stark that the neighbor had become somebody that you didn't know, which is just sort of shocking.

Yeah. I mean, I think today, you know, especially in a world where, where, where younger people sort of associate or identify less with their physical geography and more based on their interest points. Right. So I might not be Reid the Minnesota and I might be Reid the guy who likes XYZ artists and XYZ, you know, fashion. And that's more important to tell the world about me than the city that I'm from. Neighbor just means less.

But I think when, you know, my friend Brandon Hurd was talking about it, he meant it in the same way that you're thinking about it. Neighbor in the traditional connected sense, not neighbor in the, we don't really even know who lives next to us anymore because it switches every year.

Yeah. One last thought, because this is close to my heart. I have an eight year old daughter, we walk around and I address kind of everybody who lives in my town as a neighbor. And I'll say, and she'll say, why do you say hello to that person? I'm like, oh, well, they're a neighbor. And she refuses to admit that the neighbor is anybody other than her definition of neighbor is they have to live next door. You got it. I keep, I keep expanding, trying to expand her definition to include people beyond the next door name.

No, I love that. And I think that actually gets to the heart of, kind of the difference I was making or the distinction I was making between what a community is and what a neighbor is. And I guess the ideal state was that we would have communities, you know, each of which member we treated like neighbors. And so that, that would be the most powerful version of a, of an actual scale and community.

That's beautiful. Reid, this was so much fun. I really appreciate you sharing your time.

Thank you.

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