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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Youth is no longer an age--it's a commodity YouthNation is an indispensable brand roadmap to the youth-driven economy. Exploring the idea that youth is no longer an age--it's a commodity that's available to everyone--this book shows what it takes to stay connected, agile, authentic, and relevant in today's marketplace. Readers will learn the ins and outs of the new consumer, and the tools, methods, and techniques that ensure brand survival in the age of perpetual youth. Coverage includes marketing in a post-demographic world, crafting the story of the brand, building engaged communities, creating experiences that inspire loyalty and evangelism, and the cutting-edge tricks that help businesses large and small harness the enormous power of youth. The old marketing models are over, and the status quo is dead. Businesses today have to embody the ideals of youth culture in order to succeed, by tapping the new and rapidly evolving resources n business and in life. When everything is changing at the pace of a teenager's attention span, how do businesses future-fit for long-term success? This book provides a plan, and the thoughts, strategies, and brass tacks advice for putting it into action. * Use New-Gen psychographics to target markets * Build stronger evangelism with a compelling brand narrative * Create loyal communities with immersive and engaging experiences * Navigate the radically-changed landscape of the future marketplace In today's hyper-socialized, Facebook fanatic, selfie-obsessed world, youth is the primary driver of business and culture. Smart companies are looking to tap into the fountain of youth, and the others are sinking fast. YouthNation is a roadmap to brand relevancy in the new economy, giving businesses turn-by-turn direction to their market destination.
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Seitenzahl: 281
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Disclosures
How to Connect with Me and Learn more about YouthNation
Introduction: Forever Young
Chapter 1: From Status Symbol to Status Update
The Hip-Hop Invasion and the Reimagined Status Symbol
Status Symbols Disrupted
Chapter 2: From Things to Thrills
The Instagram Phenomenon
DIFTI (Did It for the Instagram)
Businesses Leading the Experience Economy
Chapter 3: The Rise of Electronic Dance Music
Everything You Wanted to Know about Today's Festival Scene but Were Afraid to Ask
Endnotes
Chapter 4: Access over Ownership
Uber and Airbnb: the Game Changers
Endnotes
Chapter 5: The Communal Table
The De-suburbinization of America
The Urban Frontier
The Youthification of Cities
Endnotes
Chapter 6: The Peer-to-Peer Economy
Bartering Is Back
Peer-to-Peer Disruption
Where the Digital Meets the Physical: Meetups
Endnotes
Chapter 7: The Power of the Crowd
How Big Brands Are Stepping Up to the Plate
Crowdfunding
The Kickstarter Effect
Other Crowdfunding All-Stars
Cutting Through the Red Tape
Endnotes
Chapter 8: Free Agency
Jobs Used to Define People, Now People Define Jobs
The Power of LinkedIn
Income Everywhere
Depth over Breadth
Free Agent Collaboration
Eat What You Kill and the Fallacy of Detroit
Endnotes
Chapter 9: Lifehacking
Why Not Me?
The Internet Is the New College Campus
Brand-Driven Education Models
The Innovation Imperative
Endnotes
Chapter 10: The Field Guide to Lifehackers
The Side Hustler
The Explorer
The Automator
The Passion Pilgrim
The Octopus
The Ultimate Life Hacker: Elliot Bisnow
Let's Pivot to Brand Building
Chapter 11: TV, the NFL, and the End of Demographics
The NFL's Grip on Television
Endnotes
Chapter 12: Going Viral: Decoded
Culture Jacking The Dunk in the Dark Happening
Psy Oppa and the YouTube Revolution
Music Disrupted
Viral Can Be Mainstream
Chapter 13: Big Data 101
The Three Pillars of Big Data Access
The Social and Interest Graph
Chapter 14: People Are Brands
The Newsfeed Is the New Soapbox
The Democratization of Celebrity
The Rise of the Influencer
Celebrity Endorsement Reimagined
The Cyber Celebrity
The Social Influencer
The Everyday Influencer
Lessons from the MRY Archive: CrowdTap
Influence Gone Mainstream
Endnotes
Chapter 15: Brands Are People
Creating a Brand Persona
Content Strategy
Community Management
Chapter 16: A Story Worth Sharing
The Death of the Phone Call
Stories versus Conversations
Communication Disrupted
Ephemeral Storytelling
How Brands Can Tell Stories
The Sharing Imperative
Paths to Great Brand Storytelling
The Storytelling Mandate
Endnotes
Epilogue
What's Next?
Conclusion
Index
End User License Agreement
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Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction: Forever Young
Begin Reading
List of Illustrations
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
Figure 2.3
Figure 2.4
Figure 3.1
Figure 3.2
Figure 3.3
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.2
Figure 5.1
Figure 8.1
Figure 8.2
Figure 13.1
Figure 13.2
Figure 14.1
Figure 16.1
Figure 16.2
Figure 16.3
Figure 16.4
List of Tables
Table 11.1
YOUTHNATION
BUILDING REMARKABLE BRANDS IN A YOUTH-DRIVEN CULTURE
MATT BRITTON
Cover image: ® Andrew Rich/Getty Images
Cover design: Christopher Ayres
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright © 2015 by MRY US, LLC. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with the respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available
ISBN 978-1-118-85356-6 (Hardback)
ISBN 978-1-118-98252-5 (ePDF)
ISBN 978-1-118-98253-2 (ePub)
This book is dedicated to my family. Without each and every one of you pieces of me would not exist and my thoughts and words would have less meaning. I love you all dearly.
To my parents, Robert and Marsha and my brothers, Evan and Joey
To my wife Elyse, son Cameron, and daughter Ella
Foreword
The most important leadership characteristic to thrive in this ever-changing world is resilience. Resilience is the ability to fall, pick ourselves up from the floor quickly, learn, and continue with our journey. Behind resilience there is an inherent positive outlook on life based on unwavering faith in our purpose, our abilities, and the capability of the teams around us.
—Antonio Lucio
As global chief marketing and communications officer at Visa, I have been at the center of YouthNation's massive disruption to business and culture. Despite the fact that Visa, a brand of enormous scale, processes over 96 billion transactions in 200 countries during the past year, in many ways we are now forced to think and act like a nimble startup to ensure our long-term vitality.
I was deeply honored when Matt asked me to write the foreword for his first book. Matt has been an important thought partner and a key driver of change in our global organization. His electric passion for driving cultural change through social media and his deep knowledge of youth were key elements in Visa's marketing evolution.
The drivers of change below are not specific to the payments industry but have implications for businesses of all types in every corner around the world.
The over 2 billion smartphone users
1
around the world have forever changed the way our world communicates and consumers transact.
The over 3 billion Internet users around the world now have real-time access to data, tools, and content on a 24-hour news cycle, forever impacting the ways we reach and influence them.
The pace of innovation in the marketplace has spawned a wave of millennial-inspired startups, which have reimagined our industry.
For Visa, as for all businesses today, the way in which we manage change will determine whether we will be future leaders in our industry, or another case study of a company that has been left in the dust.
I believe that digital natives will rule the world. Whether you are a global organization with thousands of employees like Visa or a local, family-owned business, your ability to understand the principals of YouthNation is now mission critical. There is simply no way you can replace the experience of being hardwired in the new reality we live in, as today's youth are.
It is imperative, therefore, for business leaders today to empower YouthNation to directly drive change within our organizations. Only by tearing down walls and challenging legacy systems can we truly disrupt ourselves before we become disrupted into obsolescence. At Visa, we are working hard to deploy the principles of YouthNation in our brand, our products, and all of our marketing efforts—principles which you will learn about in this timely book:
Put consumers at the center.
No longer can we rely on talking at consumers, but rather, we need to engage them in a conversation. We need to fully understand the needs of our various consumer segments and interact with them in ways that add value to their lives.
Embrace social-at-the core.
We must design our communications with shareability in mind at every touch point. We want the consumer to feel a sense of ownership in our brand so advocacy must be earned and authentic.
Everything is marketing.
Whether its the way consumers interact with our products, the way we activate global events like the World Cup or the Olympics, or the way we interact with our great merchant and banking partners, they are all reflections of Visa and must be consistent and continually deliver excellence.
I am excited to be part of this book because even as the CMO of a Fortune 500 organization, my challenges are not unique. Anyone who is looking to navigate their way to success through today's white water of change must meet the demands of disruption with the principles of YouthNation.
These are indeed challenging times, but these are also times of enormous opportunity. I am hopeful and optimistic that the impact of YouthNation on our economic and cultural landscape will bring about great innovation, impact, and ultimately advancement for America, and for the rest of the world.
Antonio Lucio is Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Visa Inc. In this role, he oversees Visa's global branding, corporate relations, and marketing activities. Prior to joining Visa as CMO in December 2007, Lucio was the chief innovation and health and wellness officer for PepsiCo Inc. and, prior to that, was the senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Pepsi Cola International Beverages. Lucio has more than 25 years of global marketing and brand management experience earned at some of the world's most successful consumer packaged goods companies including Kraft General Foods, RJR Foods International, and Procter & Gamble.
Consistently recognized as one of the most active CMOs on social media, you can connect with him on Twitter @ajlucio5 and LinkedIn.
Endnotes
1
http://www.dazeinfo.com/2014/01/23/smartphone-users-growth-mobile-internet-2014-2017/
Acknowledgments
When I was growing up, I never imagined I would write a book. I mean I was the type of person that would have trouble completing an essay and many times a simple paragraph. There was one teacher I encountered growing up who taught me that writing could be a place to channel emotion and passion; Norman Walker you were that person. I will always be thankful you crossed paths with me as an impressionable youth. May you rest in peace.
It's fairly obvious that without the formation of Mr Youth (which would one day become MRY, and then spin-off CrowdTap), I would not have realized the experiences that lead to the writing of this book. I'd like to humbly acknowledge the core crew that has largely stuck by me from what feels like forever ago: Dan Lafontaine, Evan Kraut, David Weinstock, Matt Rednor, Vishal Sapra, Eric Schoenberg, and Helene Devries. I'd also like to thank the great new influences at MRY: Clare Hart, David Berkowitz, Cedric Devitt, Ian Chee, and the incredible Laura Desmond. Lastly thanks to the cronies who were with me when this journey all began; I still remember our four-person team trying to make enough noise to matter: Paul Tedeschi, Vinny Saulle, and Doug Akin. Lastly to Brandon Evans and Kareem Kouddous, your feats on CrowdTap have blown me away.
Thank you to those that took big risks on our organization and myself at various points throughout my career. From Jordan Rednor, who dove in and wrote a six-figure check, when I was still working from my Manhattan apartment, to get it all started. To Ed Razek, who gave me my first big break in 2003 in the form of a giant pink gift box in South Beach. To my Seattle friends Lisa Gurry, Tara Kriese, and Lisa Tiedt, whom for over a decade served as a constant foundational client for the agency. To Antonio Lucio, whose belief in me has helped drive MRY and my career to new levels. Lastly thank you to Carson Biederman and Tim Dibble, who decided to make an eight figure investment in Mr Youth the night before the Lehman Brothers collapse; I told you I would make you proud!
I believe whenever you achieve certain heights in your life it becomes increasingly important to surround yourself with others that push you to achieve more, whether they realize it or not. Throughout the writing of this book several people have inspired me, helped me, or otherwise pushed me to get this done. A big thanks goes out to friends, contemporaries, luminaries, and catalysts: Andrew Fox, Michael Lazerow, Jason Strauss, Adam Braun, Dave Kerpen, Sean Christie, Eric Hadley, Avi Savar, Elliot Bisnow, Jeff Rosenthal, Brett Leve, Jeremiah Owyang, and Ryan Schinman.
#TS: you've helped transform my body and cleanse my mind. Brooklyn for life.
This book would simply not have been possible without a dream team, which amassed seemingly overnight to help an inexperienced ADHD-saddled author actually get this thing across the finish line.
Beverly West: You have been a true partner in helping me frame and create this work. Your experience from a completely different angle of culture has given me great perspective as well as great respect for the trade of authorship. It's been a real honor, you are tremendous.
David Yarus: You are the youthful catalyst to my world. Your energy, positivity, and steady grasp on where this industry is going has kept me honest, dynamic, and inspired. I am so thankful for our relationship; the mentorship goes both ways my brother.
Chris Ayres: You will always be the best designer I've ever known. Thank you for designing the cover of this book, and the logos of MRY, Mr Youth, and CrowdTap and for being an overall incredible person.
To my MRY support team: Andrew Udin, Lianne Sheffy, Kate Bryan, Adam llenich, Glenn Grieves, Alyssa Kaiser, Toni Dawkins, and project quarterback Matt Picheny. You kept me on task and provided the needed nudge when we were falling behind.
To my assistant Brooks Credeur: you are the thread that holds it all together—it meaning my life. Thanks for all that you do.
To the MRY internship class of 2014—thanks for helping this book get off the ground and best of luck in your bright futures ahead: Alexandra, Christina, Collin, Danielle, Deanna, Erika, Evan, Jacob, Jessica, John, Judith, Julia, Kaitlin, Lauren, Leslie, Matar, Neha, Olyvia, Rachel, Rebecca, Rob, and Ryan.
Finally to the team at Wiley Publishing namely Elizabeth Gildea and ShannonVargo , thanks for making my first book such a great experience.
Disclosures
Throughout the writing of this book, I did my best to avoid writing about competitors of clients or otherwise biasing the content of this book with my personal interests. Although let's be honest, today everyone competes and everything is connected.
At the time of writing this book I was a shareholder in the following:
Publicis Groupe (owner of MRY and Mr Youth)
At the time of writing this book I was also involved in the following:
I was a major shareholder and chairman of the board at CrowdTap.
I was a member of the board of advisors at Pencils Of Promise.
I was a major shareholder and chairman of the board at Smooch Labs (owner of JSwipe).
Several current and former MRY clients at the time of writing were mentioned in this book; they are disclosed throughout where appropriate, but for an updated and full list of clients please visit www.MattBritton.com/clients.
How to Connect with Me and Learn more about YouthNation
I encourage you to reach out and connect with me to dive further into the topics discussed in this book. Below are the best ways to do so:
Twitter:
This is the best way to reach me directly for one on one dialogue; response times may vary. My handle is @MattyB, or visit
https://twitter.com/mattyb
Facebook:
Follow this page as new topics related to the book will be updated often. Feel free to join the discussion and get involved.
https://www.facebook.com/youthnation
Instagram:
Follow this page for daily inspiration and new findings:
http://instagram.com/youthnation
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Matt Britton - @MattyB
Introduction: Forever Young
YouthNation (Yooth-nay-shun)
1. (noun): A highly influential group of over 80 million American citizens born between 1982 and 1998. They are currently aged between 18 and 34 and nearly all of them cannot remember a time when the Internet did not exist. 2. (verb): A movement of influential individuals who possess disruptive power over cultural, business, and political issues in the United States.
Youth is not just a state of mind; it's the state of the art.
YouthNation is a new phenomenon. When America itself was young, there was no youth culture to speak of. There was no place set aside for young people to discuss and share things that were of particular interest to them. In most cases, young people were never really together as a group, and as a result, had no opportunity to form a culture that was unique to them. Historically, children were at home, sequestered away from other kids their own age, and by the time they were 10 years old were expected to take their place in the adult world of work. At the beginning of America, people weren't young for very long.
In those days, the information about the world that young people received came only from adults. When they had problems or concerns, they shared it with their elders. It wasn't until very recently from a historical perspective that young people were able to spend enough time with each other, separated and apart from the worldview of adults, to find the opportunity to be youthful. Even adolescence itself is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon.
As the middle class expanded, kids began spending longer and longer periods of time in classrooms, grouped by age, outside of the influence of adults. With growing middle-class family budgets, and a burgeoning industrial economy, kids suddenly had consumer power and an identity unto themselves. As a consequence, a youth culture began to emerge, and with it a specific language and a shared appreciation for the music, literature, movies, fashion, places, ideals, and activities that spoke directly to youth, because it came directly from youth.
Suddenly, youth culture had a voice and sought out channels of communication to express that voice. Through college radio stations, self-published magazines and newsletters, grassroots movements, or homebrew computer clubs, America's youth found a way to communicate with one another, and began to establish their footprint on the culture of the adult world. But even as recently as the sixties and seventies, our nation's youth remained a fringe culture with crude tools and few resources. It was, at most, a reaction against mainstream culture that lived on the outside looking in.
Today, far from a fringe or counterculture, our nation's youth have become the driving force behind American innovation, growth, and competitive advantage globally. As a result of our technological revolution, we are now living in a YouthNation, and all the old bets are off. The power and influence of YouthNation stands to dramatically shift every business, consumer, politician, nation, city, town, and village around the world.
This epic shift is disrupting just about everything that we took for granted about the old economy:
The importance of a college education
The vision of the American dream
What success actually means
What and how we buy
What and how we sell
What brands must do to embrace this new national and global ethos and compete
YouthNation has broken free from the hold that big media and big advertising have had on culture, and completely transformed the approach that brands must take in order to appeal to today's target market. The ripple effect from this monumental sea of change has and will continue to completely transform the way we work, play, and live, and is demanding and encouraging us all to be, in many ways, forever young if we want to compete.
So let's be clear. For brands today, the old marketing models are over. The status quo is dead. Today's rapidly shifting marketplace requires businesses to be agile, connected, authentic, artful, meaningful, immersive, and socially responsible. In other words, today, businesses have to embody the ideals of YouthNation, regardless of age or size, in order to succeed.
In YouthNation's hyper-socialized, Instagram fanatical, experience-obsessed marketplace, youth is no longer an age, or even a demographic, but the primary catalyst of business and culture. Fortunately, thanks to technology and the progressive ideals that social media has engendered, youth has become a commodity that is available to everyone; all we have to do is figure out how to tap these new and rapidly evolving resources in our businesses, as well as in our lives.
So how do you harness the enormous power of today's youth-driven economy, where everything is changing at the pace of a teenager's attention span, and future-fit your business for long-term success?
This is the book that will give you all the tools and understanding that you will need to understand the nuances of YouthNation and harness the enormous power of the perpetual youth economy.
As the founder and CEO of MRY (formerly known as Mr Youth), an NYC-based creative and technology agency which has specialized for well over a decade in marketing to youth for such brand titans as Visa, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft, I've learned a lot about how YouthNation thinks, works, plays, and spends. Since I was a freshman at Boston University two decades ago handing out nightclub flyers on the corner of Kenmore Square, I've made a career out of effectively engaging YouthNation on behalf of brands, and leveraging technology in order to keep pace with the counterculture that has now become the mainstream culture itself.
From Big Data 101, which explains how to use New-Gen psychographics to market effectively in a post demographic world, to how to tell a brand story worth sharing that builds engagement and evangelism to tips for cocreating immersive and engaging experiences that build viral followings and loyal brand communities, YouthNation will offer businesses large and small an indispensible map to navigate the radically changed landscape of the present and the future marketplace.
So let's get started, and right away, because in YouthNation, everything happens in real time, and in the blink of a Snapchat.
Chapter 1From Status Symbol to Status Update
The notion of the status symbol goes back as far as human history. In ancient China, once a man reached 20, he was permitted to wear a cap. This was celebrated with a ceremony called Guanli, or Ceremony of the Cap. As each new dynasty took hold, the caste system of the cap evolved, developing ever more specific rules and privileges associated with each style. What your cap looked like, and what shape or color it was, said very important things about you. For example, in the Han Dynasty a “lowly person” had to be content wearing only a headband, whereas the elite could get really decadent and wear a headband with a matching hat.
Since its early beginnings with the highly nuanced Chinese cap trend, the notion of the status symbol really took off, taking hold all over the globe in an ever widening array of objects and styles, all designed to tell a story about the importance of the owner. In America today, Maybach vehicles, Christian Louboutin shoes, Hublot watches, and real estate in glamorous places like the Hamptons or Malibu are the de rigeur status symbols of opulence and power among the super wealthy.
America's youth has had a love/hate relationship with status symbols. For one, the glittering objects of the affluent elite have been by and large out of reach for them. In earlier generations, young people were motivated to work hard and long to reach the point where status symbols such as a beautiful home or a nice car were attainable. As the gap between aspirational youth and the affluent mainstream widened, however, the nation's youth rejected the status quo and turned to anti–status symbols to express a different kind of importance within their own cultural sphere.
Along with this shift away from traditional status symbols, came a new set of values to support this new anti-status iconography. In the sixties, for example, ripped jeans, flag t-shirts, and long hair became counterculture status symbols. Along with these symbols came a lifestyle and world vision centered on experiences that were not about luxury but about the pure enjoyment of life in its simplest and purest form. Be-ins, happenings, and protests, became the status alternatives for a youth culture in revolt against a system that had shut them out entirely, and that stood for materialism over existentialism. For young America in those days, poverty became chic, and wealth became tacky. And so a schism grew up between the mainstream and the counterculture with regard to visions of what status really meant, what was truly important and valuable in life, and how that was expressed.
Mainstream Status Symbols in the Sixties
Counterculture Status Symbols in the Sixties
Lincoln Continental
Travel aboard a Pan Am jet clipper
Color TV
A royal title
A suburban bungalow
The peace sign
The Afro
Levi's
Psychedelic drugs
Tie-dyed t-shirts
Communes
The Hip-Hop Invasion and the Reimagined Status Symbol
Young America's feelings about mainstream status symbols changed dramatically in the nineties. Suddenly, traditional status symbols of luxury and affluence became more accessible to youth culture. The accessibility of luxury opened up enormous windows of opportunities for brands and entertainers alike. The emergence of hip-hop culture combined with a booming economy toward the end of the twentieth century brought status symbols to young people in a whole new way. An infinite and innovative variety of status symbols, which were accessible and available everywhere from suburban malls to urban street corners across the U.S., led a hip-hop renaissance, along with a world vision that supported this new emphasis on accessible affluence for youth.
Hip-hop status symbol highlights
Through pervasive lyrics, from the likes of Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Kanye West, Mase, Nas, and others, the new importance of status symbols to young America came through loud and clear. This new youth narrative, which stressed affordable opulence, helped usher in a wave of accessible luxury goods creating status symbols in every section of the economy. Here are some of the more notable examples:
One of the first status symbols that emerged from hip-hop's early influence was from Run DMC in 1986 by way of their hit song “My Adidas.” These early rap pioneers received a multimillion dollar endorsement deal as Adidas' three-striped sneakers tread the streets from Queens to Long Beach, California, in heavy rotation.
In 1994 Snoop Dogg donned some Tommy Hilfiger gear on
Saturday Night Live
, and sales reportedly jumped by over $90 million that year. Prior to the SNL endorsement, Tommy Hilfiger was largely an elitist fashion brand relatively unknown in inner cities and hip-hop culture.
Leading into 2001 at least 10 Rap and R&B songs by artists including Jennifer Lopez had mentioned Cadillac's Escalade brand in their song lyrics. During the MTV video awards that year, Ludacris drove an Escalade right onto the stage. His hit song that year “Southern Hospitality” included the lyrics: “Cadillac grills, Cadillac mills, Cadillac fills.” Suddenly Cadillac, which had an average consumer age of 62, had its Escalade SUV on back order in the dealerships of major cities where a whole new generation was lining up to be a reimagined Cadillac owner.
In 2003 after Justin Timberlake wore a Von Dutch trucker hat to the Grammy after parties, stars like Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher quickly followed suit. The Von Dutch had been in fringe existence for five years before this fortuitous set of events. After its celebrity patronage, it became a status symbol at suburban malls in white upper-middle class enclaves across America, selling out of stores at prices exceeding $100.
Through hats, cars, and sneakers, America's hip-hop and pop culture icons of the new millennium became core drivers of discretionary spending among America's youth. Logos meant more than ever before and played an increasingly important role in showcasing social status, wealth, and style, the very same way that wearing hats did in ancient China.
Logos from companies like GAP, Abercrombie & Fitch, and FUBU were brazenly branded across outerwear and considered high fashion simply because of their label. By the mid-00s, hip-hop would go on to reach arguably its cultural peak as whimsical lyrics about Gulfstream private jets, Cristal champagne, and Jacob the Jeweler bling were commonplace in songs on Casey Kasem's top 40 lists.
Status Symbols Disrupted
While much has been written about the effect of the 2008 financial collapse on American culture, its impact on pop culture and music has largely been understated. In fact a strong argument can be made that the experience of parental stress and deflated 401(k) accounts made YouthNation rethink the importance of the material status symbols that had become so important in defining their identity in the nineties.
