As CEO of a creative and tech agency, I've spent considerable time in the boardrooms of major corporate marketers, and I've gotten an understanding of their business challenges and needs. But I've also gotten an inside look at the major disconnect between their knowledge of the marketplace and the groundswell of disruption and change being driven by youth culture.
Many of today's business leaders do not understand that youth culture is no longer counterculture as it was in the '60s and '70s. Instead, our nation's youth have become the driving force behind innovation, growth, and competitive advantage globally.
For brands today, the old marketing models are over. That status quo is dead. Our rapidly shifting marketplace requires businesses to be agile, connected, authentic, artful, meaningful, immersive, and socially responsible.
In other words, to succeed, businesses have to embody the ideals of today's "YouthNation."
What follows is based on an excerpt from my book, YouthNation: Building Remarkable Brands in a Youth-Driven Culture, which is a brand road map to the youth-driven economy that will help businesses large and small harness the enormous power of youth.
The Instagram Phenomenon
Considering the increasing predominance of images at the core of communication, it was only a matter of time before a social network broke through to serve that exact purpose. In October 2010, a former Google employee named Kevin Systrom and his college friend Mike Krieger created Instagram, a mobile application that served a simple purpose: allowing users to edit and share pictures with friends and followers.
The growth of Instagram was predicated on YouthNation's desire to share what they were experiencing. The photo filters built into Instagram allowed even the most mundane experience to seem beautiful, the beautiful experiences of mountaintop sunsets or mornings on the beach to look incredible, and the amateur photographer to feel and look like a true artist for the amazement of friends, family, and the world at large.
Especially on platforms like Instagram, bling and brand labels just seem less interesting and less valuable than pictures of people experiencing the world. It's what you were doing rather than what you bought that would now earn you status.
Instagram has helped to cement an American experience revolution, which seemed to spark from one of the worst financial collapses in our nation's history. For the first time since the '60s, YouthNation was shifting away from the status symbols that defined Gen X toward a new defining trait for millennials constructed around experiences.
The question of the day among millennials is where can I capture an unforgettable experience right now? The constant barrage of Instagram updates from friends doing epic things is only making the recipients yearn to do more stuff themselves. We are now in a race to collect stamps in a passport rather than cars in the garage.
Instagram boasts well over 300 million users worldwide, making it one of the fastest-growing communication tools in history.
Due to its explosive popularity especially among YouthNation, Instagram presents a unique opportunity for brands or organizations to connect with their communities in new and interesting ways. That said, it's also easy to lose the interest—and the follow—of your customers with just one misstep.
Pro Tips for Marketers
The following "pro tips" will help you to master what every marketer should keep in mind when using Instagram. Getting it right means the difference between being a part of your customer's daily culture-stream and being cut out.
1. Keep it real
