Most teens spend time Facebooking and gaming. Jerry Zhang started an ad agency
At just 14, Jerry Zhang started his own social media agency, Glowstik. Now, two years later and old enough to drive, Zhang is a CEO presiding over a staff of nine (none older than 23) and a small roster of clients, including DECA Ontario, his local chapter of the youth business group Distributive Education Clubs of America. In the May 20 issue of Marketing, Zhang shared some of his thoughts about how marketers are targeting youth, the advantages of being a digital native and why he included this line on the Glowstick website: “If we wanted to be mundane, we would be a print advertising firm.”
On social media and Warren Buffett
“My father had told me about Warren Buffett’s strategy for having a durable competitive advantage, something people can’t beat you at. The one thing people can’t beat youth at is social media. We know the platforms on the consumer side and can create experiences for consumers, because we know their psychology.”
On the virtue of youth
“For a lot of [older] people, social media is sort of like walking into a book club for a book they’ve never read. With young people and people who have put in the hours on social media, they have the feel for it. We may not be as experienced and have a marketing education or experience at big agencies and brands, but for a lot of brands, that might be an advantage. We haven’t been indoctrinated with traditional marketing principles. We’re foundationally digital.”
On social overload
“I don’t think every brand needs to be on every network. Facebook is the one everyone is on and Twitter is growing fast, so those are the ones we use the most. People who spend a lot of time working on social media and reading Tech Crunch, we’re often not in touch with what an average consumer does. I have apps for 15 social networks on my phone, but there’s not many people who do.”
On the need to scale
“One of the big goals with social media is scale. We want engagement but also scale. What TV and traditional mediums have on social media is reaching, say, 4.5 million viewers by showing one TV commercial. When social media becomes as interesting is when you can replicate that scale.”
On why it would be mundane to be a print ad shop
“I might not have used the right terminology there [on my website]. I wouldn’t say that [traditional media are] necessarily boring. But if you define boring in a way that’s more effective for marketers—in that it fails to engage someone in a deep way—you could say print, billboards and TV ads are boring. Even if it’s a really cool ad, it’s out of touch and there’s a lot of barriers between saying, “Oh, that’s a cool ad,” and a purchase. I’ve read about [traditional] and I’ve learned a bit about it, but I think the direction marketing is going will be into digital.”
On more effective connections with youth
“In the old days, advertising was something you had to live with. With youth, that’s not the case. We have a different sense of expectation and one expectation youth have is for advertising to actually mean something to them. The best marketers are raising the standards on how meaningful they can be and how much value they can provide within the marketing. Create something meaningful where your brand is providing value, not just putting a message out. Providing value in some way to the person who is consuming [the ad], that’s what youth expect.”
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