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🎯 The # 1 way to break into marketing isn’t a resume, it’s this. At the ThinkLA Creative Summit, I asked Don Lupo, Executive Director of ThinkLA, what advice he’d give to high school and college students trying to get their start in the industry. His answer? 🎙️ ‘It’s network. Find the people you admire, reach out for a 15-minute call. Be kind, be curious, and you’ll go far.’ Opportunities don’t come from job boards, they come from conversations. From showing up in the right rooms and connecting with people who inspire you. Huge thanks to Don and the entire ThinkLA team for continuing to open doors for the next generation of marketers and creators. #ThinkLA #CreativeSummit #NextGenCreatives #Networking #Marketing #CreatorEconomy #TheContentCode The Content Code #NetworkingOrganization #CareerAdvice

Corporations Are Scared of 23-Year-Olds Imagine being so terrified of irrelevance that you hire an entire generation to translate their own shopping habits back to you. Welcome to 2025, where "Gen Z consultant" is a real job title and a booming industry. So naturally, corporations are having a full existential crisis trying to figure out why their ads aren't "hitting" with people who prefer their coffee cold, their beer light, and their Emergen-C in "popping crystal formats." (Yes, that's a real product preference cited by Haleon's U.S. CMO.) Enter the multimillion-dollar Gen Z translation industry. We're talking specialized agencies like NinetyEight (founded by three college grads in 2020 when nobody would hire them), market research firms like [cafeteria] (valued at $22 million after a $3 million funding round), and legacy giants like Edelman launching entire "Gen Z Labs" that have pulled in $76 million since 2022. The business model? Pay teenagers $5 to answer 20 questions about what they like. Then charge Fortune 500 companies premium rates to access those insights. Cafeteria has 6,000 teens doing exactly this. The founder got the idea literally driving his daughter and her friends from Manhattan to Long Island and eavesdropping from the front seat. These Gen Z platforms offer continuous, real-time sentiment analysis at scale. The unit economics actually make sense if you're Barilla trying to figure out why Gen Z cares more about "energy and lifestyle benefits" than protein content in pasta. But let's talk about the REAL insight buried in this trend: 60% of Gen Z feels connected to people who use the same brands, and 46% judge people based on their brand choices (per 2024 Edelman research). Compare that to Gen X at 49% and 35% respectively. Which means if you're a CMO still running traditional demographic-based campaigns, you're not just behind. You're operating in a different economic reality than your target market. The kicker? Gen Z WANTS to co-create with brands. They'll write paragraphs of feedback. "I don't think people try as hard in school," says NinetyEight's Celine Chai about respondent enthusiasm. So corporations are paying premium rates to access a demographic that's literally begging to tell them what they want. The ones that aren't? They're the next Blockbuster, wondering why their focus groups from 2019 stopped predicting consumer behavior. Your move, CFO. #CorporateFinance #GenZ #MarketResearch #ConsumerBehavior #MarketingStrategy #CapitalAllocation #BrandStrategy #DigitalTransformation #ConsumerInsights #BusinessStrategy #CFO #MarketTrends

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to speak at the ThinkLA Creative Summit hosted at Team One, joining Kirsten Rutherford, Kate Wolff 🏳️🌈 🐺, and moderator Kelsey Hodgkin for an incredible discussion on the Next Generation of Creatives — what’s changing, what’s next, and who’s shaping it. We talked about how the future of marketing, media, and storytelling will be defined by collaboration between creators and brands and  how brands are no longer just hiring creators for reach, they’re co-creating with them. The brands that are winning are the ones giving creators a seat at the table, letting them be the creatives, and building real community through collaboration. As someone who runs a social-first agency, The Content Code, it’s exciting to see this shift happen in real time,  where creativity is no longer top-down, but community-up. Thank you Don Lupo and the ThinkLA team for the opportunity to be part of such an inspiring event, and for the honor of being ThinkLA’s youngest speaker ever. 🙏 #ThinkLA #CreativeSummit #NextGenCreatives #CreatorEconomy #Marketing #Advertising #GenZ #TheContentCode