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The Forgotten Markets: Where Gen Z Is Rewriting the Rules

Welcome back to GenZtea's Newsletter, where I break down trends, industries, and tech with a Gen Z lens.

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Welcome back to GenZtea's Newsletter, where I break down trends, industries, and tech with a Gen Z lens. I'm Natalie Neptune and I'm so happy you're here.

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There's a shift happening in how business gets done, communities get built, and opportunities get created. Traditional institutions are losing ground to models that move faster, include more people, and generate better results.

Here's what we're covering in this edition:

  • IRL is the New ROI - How brand activations and micro-events are replacing digital-first strategies as the primary driver of authentic engagement

  • The Gen Z Agency Revolution - Why traditional marketing firms face an existential crisis as Gen Z-led agencies build structural advantages that can't be taught or hired

  • The Rural Digital Divide - How America's 16% of young people in rural communities experience mental health at the same rates as urban peers but face dramatically different barriers to digital support

  • The Student Leadership Revolution - Why university club presidents are building the next generation of global thought leaders and top founders while still completing their degrees

But first, let's dive into this newsletter's theme... The Overlooked Opportunities Where Gen Z Is Already Winning.

Traditional forecasts focus on obvious markets—AI, creator economy, sustainable tech. But the most interesting patterns emerge in spaces most analysts ignore: rural mental health infrastructure, experiential marketing transformation, campus-based entrepreneurship, and community-led agency models.

As someone who's built GenZtea into a recognized voice in the startup ecosystem and been named a LinkedIn Top Voice, I've developed insights into where conventional wisdom fails. The biggest opportunities aren't in crowded markets everyone's analyzing—they're in underserved segments where Gen Z is building solutions that traditional players don't understand.

Some dynamics I've been tracking:

  • Rural youth experiencing identical mental health challenges but accessing support at dramatically lower rates—creating massive untapped markets for purpose-built solutions

  • Physical activations outperforming digital campaigns as Gen Alpha becomes the "Unplugged Generation"

  • Gen Z agencies replacing traditional marketing models through structural advantages, not just demographic targeting

  • University club presidents launching scalable businesses during college, building founder pipelines most VCs are missing

Let's break down:

  • The overlooked segments - markets serving underserved populations where incumbents are failing

  • The structural shifts - why these aren't temporary trends but fundamental changes in how business operates

  • The market opportunities - where smart builders can create category-defining companies

Now... let's dive deep into the markets everyone else is sleeping on.

IRL is the New ROI: The Experiential Marketing Revolution

The pendulum is swinging back to physical space. After years of digital-first strategies, brands are rediscovering what community builders have known all along: nothing replaces showing up in real life.

The shift isn't theoretical. Gary Vee predicts 2026 will mark a fundamental pivot toward community and smaller in-person events. Gen Alpha is being called the "Unplugged Generation." Sales leaders are reporting that significant portions of closed deals now involve in-person customer visits. The data is clear—while digital may be convenient, it's not what people want anymore.

The NYFW Activation Blueprint

New York Fashion Week demonstrated how brands are transforming everyday spaces into impossible-to-scroll-past experiences:

OLAPLEX reimagined a classic bodega as an immersive mask market. Shelves stocked with samples, guests discovering treatments in spaces built for curiosity and conversation—not just transactions.

GUESS blended café culture with fashion preview. Guests sipped coffee, tasted gelato, and stepped into photo-ready settings while experiencing the Fall collection. The collaboration with CNC Agency (Coffee 'n Clothes) proved fashion doesn't need a runway to create moments.

Moroccanoil celebrated their Treatment Mist launch with a pop-up at maman, serving spiced cloud lattes and vanilla cloud cookies. Guests left with tote bags filled with curated products—turning product sampling into genuine hospitality.

The International Model: Nudake's Tea Museum

In Seoul, Nudake (by GENTLE MONSTER) opened a tea house where retrofuturism meets modern art. The space isn't about tea—it's about creating an aesthetic experience where every dessert looks like an exhibit. They elevated a familiar format with art and design, making it irresistible for social sharing.

The strategy is simple: don't offer a product, create an experience people want to document. The more visually memorable, the more it becomes free advertising. Companies are terrified of IRL activations because you can't track ROI in a dashboard, but Claude's NYC pop-up is a perfect example of why they matter.

The Micro-Event Movement

Scott Leese has advocated for micro events for years—small, intimate, packed with value. The format is gaining traction because intimacy creates impact that scale cannot replicate.

The winning formula for micro-events:

  • Keep attendance small (15-20 people maximum)

  • Curate the invite list strategically

  • Choose venues with atmosphere, not conference rooms

  • Add personal touches like handwritten place cards

  • Force connection through structured mingling (table shuffles, intentional intros)

  • Focus on connecting attendees to each other, not pitching services

When executed well, these events generate organic deal flow and authentic word-of-mouth marketing. Relationships built over dinner convert better than any cold outreach campaign.

The Overlooked Opportunity: Legacy Clubs

The most interesting experiential real estate opportunity might be hiding in plain sight—legacy social clubs like the New York Athletic Club.

The NYAC sits on priceless assets:

  • 350,000 square feet across 24 stories overlooking Central Park

  • Olympic pools, dining halls, squash courts, boxing rings, libraries, banquet halls

  • Infrastructure built when craftsmanship mattered

  • History and prestige that can't be replicated

Yet these clubs remain stuck in the past, operating on outdated models while people crave physical community.

What it would take to transform them:

  1. Capital: Hundreds of millions for infrastructure, technology, energy systems

  2. Revenue diversification: New membership tiers, corporate partnerships, better food service, branded events, room rentals

  3. Brand repositioning: From "exclusive club" to urban retreat, business hub, cultural venue, city institution

  4. Professional management: Replace committee decision-making with experienced operators

  5. Creative funding: Family offices, experience funds, philanthropic capital mixed with debt and naming rights—the university endowment model

Social clubs generate strong economics when properly managed. Membership fees provide recurring revenue. Food and beverage carry high margins. Rooms create incremental income. Events spike profitability.

The problem is scale, reinvestment, and leadership—not the fundamental model.

The Broader Trend

Brand activations, micro-events, and experiential spaces represent the same insight: people are searching for community beyond remote work and phone screens. Brands showing up in ways that feel real, local, and connected will win attention that digital campaigns cannot capture.

The key is creating with intention and giving people something they can feel. Scale matters less than execution. Thoughtful activations leave bigger impacts than expensive productions without soul.

The Bottom Line

The shift to experiential isn't nostalgia for pre-digital marketing. It's recognition that human psychology hasn't changed—we're social creatures who bond through shared physical experiences. Digital amplifies these experiences but cannot replace them.

For brands, the question isn't whether to invest in IRL activations. It's whether they can move quickly enough to claim physical spaces and moments before competitors do. The pendulum has swung, and physical presence is becoming the scarcest, most valuable marketing asset.

In a world where everyone has a website and social media presence, showing up in real life is the ultimate differentiation.

The Student Leadership Revolution: How Club Presidents Are Building Tomorrow's Business Empire

University club presidents have always been natural leaders, but something fundamental is shifting. A small cohort of ambitious student leaders are no longer content with campus-only influence—they're building global communities, launching companies, and creating thought leadership platforms while still completing their degrees.

The traditional path was predictable: lead a club, add it to your resume, graduate, climb the corporate ladder. The new path is anything but traditional, and the early results suggest we're witnessing the emergence of a powerful trend.

The Economic Foundation

The data on student leadership already tells a compelling story. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that student leaders earn 33% higher wages than their peers—a premium equivalent to earning an entire additional college degree. But this wage premium may be just the beginning.

What's happening now goes beyond traditional career advancement. A select group of club presidents are leveraging their campus leadership experience as credibility foundations for building scalable businesses and personal brands. They're treating university clubs as testing grounds for community-building models they plan to scale globally.

The Early Examples

Market Map by GenZtea

The early adopters are coming from elite institutions, but their approaches are replicable:

Harvard's Model:

Daniela Andrade transitioned from Co-President of Undergraduate Women in Entrepreneurship to Co-Founder of WWV Labs plus a thought leadership platform. Her campus leadership provided the credibility foundation for building beyond university boundaries.

Yale's Approach: Roxana Grunenwald evolved from WITTY founder to H*Quotient Deep Tech Ecosystem and Business Brilliance CEO, now serving over 3,000 students. The progression from campus club to scaled community shows the potential pathway.

LSE's Strategy: Reese Wong moved from LSESU Entrepreneurs President to founding the Potentia Fellowship, an early careers talent and skills accelerator. The transition demonstrates how campus leadership skills translate to workforce development.

Stanford's Innovation: 

Pear Chotbunwong progressed from VP of Marketing at Stanford Women in Business to founding H.E.R, a feminine health organization with 200+ volunteers and 10,000+ products distributed, plus co-founding Foundess. The model shows how social impact can scale through proven leadership frameworks.

The Emerging Pattern

The successful cases share a consistent approach: campus leadership as credibility foundation, LinkedIn content strategy launched during university tenure, and systematic community building that extends far beyond graduation.

Currently, this represents maybe 5% of elite club presidents taking this path seriously. But the infrastructure is aligning for massive scale. Nearly half of universities now have entrepreneurship support systems, 62.5% of entrepreneurship club members already intend to start businesses, and Gen Z naturally builds online communities—they just need frameworks for monetization.

Just in: Syracuse University launches the 1st Center for the Creator Economy!!!

The Scale Opportunity

If even 10% of club presidents at top universities (estimated 500+ positions across elite institutions) build scalable communities averaging 2,000 members each, that creates 100,000+ people in student-led ecosystems. Most current club presidents are still figuring out monetization, but the pioneers are proving the model works.

The progression from campus club to scaled community isn't theoretical—it's happening now with measurable results. The question isn't whether this trend will grow, but how quickly it will become the expected path for ambitious student leaders.

The 2030 Prediction

By 2030, this approach will likely shift from experimental to mainstream. Every ambitious club president will attempt to build personal brands and businesses simultaneously. The current 5% participation rate will probably hit 50% within six years as successful examples inspire replication and university infrastructure evolves to support these hybrid models.

The students currently building beyond their campus roles aren't just creating businesses—they're establishing the template for how future generations will approach leadership development. University clubs are becoming laboratories for testing community-building models that scale far beyond graduation.

This represents a fundamental shift in how ambitious students think about their university experience. Rather than viewing campus leadership as resume building, they're treating it as business incubation. The implications for both higher education and entrepreneurship could be significant.

The Gen Z Agency Revolution: Why Traditional Marketing Is Becoming Obsolete

The Gen Z agency ecosystem is exploding, and the implications for traditional marketing firms are existential.

What started as a handful of young creators offering "authentic" social media management has evolved into a sophisticated network of specialized agencies built by Gen Z, for Gen Z. The difference isn't just demographic—it's structural. These agencies understand platforms natively, create content authentically, and possess insights that can't be taught through workshops or hired consultants.

The Landscape

The ecosystem breaks into distinct categories, each serving different aspects of the $574B Gen Z spending power:

Full-Service Powerhouses: The Z Link, NinetyEight, and VYTAL offer comprehensive marketing strategies built around Gen Z behavioral patterns rather than adapted from millennial playbooks.

NinetyEight has been leading Paul Frank’s brand revival for the last 3+ years

Platform Specialists: Influencer Marketing Factory dominates TikTok and YouTube strategy. Playkit (led by Julia Pintar) approaches subscription content differently.

Viviene NY (Estella Struck) leads sustainable marketing positioning.

Campus Marketing: Campus Trendsetters, Home from College, and Her Campus Media (Windsor Hanger Western, Stephanie Kaplan Lewis, Annie Wang) tap directly into university networks where Gen Z consumer habits form.

Next-Gen Infrastructure: Even legacy entertainment giant UTA built a Next Gen division (Shaina Zafar and Ziad Ahmed), recognizing they couldn't serve Gen Z creators through traditional talent management structures.

The Prediction

By 2027, every major brand will either have acquired a Gen Z agency, built an internal Gen Z-led division, or accepted they cannot effectively market to this demographic. The gap between traditional marketing approaches and Gen Z expectations is too wide to bridge through training or hiring individual consultants.

The agencies listed here—and the dozens more launching quarterly—aren't just service providers. They're infrastructure for how brands will need to operate as Gen Z becomes the primary consumer demographic. The question isn't whether traditional agencies will adapt, but whether they can adapt quickly enough to remain relevant.

For anyone building in this space or watching the ecosystem evolve, the opportunity is clear: Gen Z agencies aren't competing with traditional marketing firms for Gen Z business. They're replacing the entire model.

The Rural Digital Divide: How America's Invisible Youth Are Being Left Behind

Nearly one in six young Americans lives in a rural community, yet their digital reality looks nothing like what tech companies imagine when building products for "Gen Z."

A comprehensive study from Hopelab examining 1,274 young people aged 14-22 reveals a troubling pattern: rural youth experience the same mental health struggles as their urban peers, but face dramatically different barriers to accessing support. The data exposes uncomfortable truths about who gets served by the digital mental health revolution.

The Social Media Paradox

Rural young people use social media differently than anyone expected. While 75% report daily usage compared to 85% in urban areas, they're simultaneously more likely to prefer digital communication over in-person interaction (49% vs 38%).

The reason reveals the complexity of rural isolation. For LGBTQ+ youth in conservative communities, digital spaces offer safety that physical interactions cannot provide. As one multiracial lesbian participant explained: "Personal interactions you have are more than most times gonna be bad interactions. You'll either be judged for your behaviors or your appearance."

But infrastructure remains a persistent barrier. Poor internet connectivity forces rural youth to be strategic about when and how they engage online. One participant noted that the only public Wi-Fi outside school was the library—hardly an appropriate venue for private therapy sessions.

The Mental Health Access Crisis

Despite experiencing comparable rates of moderate to severe depression (30% rural vs 28% urban) and anxiety (24% both groups), rural young people are significantly less likely to use mental health apps or access online therapy.

The stark numbers:

  • Depression app usage: 13% rural vs 19% urban

  • Anxiety app usage: 15% rural vs 21% urban

  • Online therapy access: 20% rural vs 28% urban

Even among those with severe symptoms, the gap persists. Rural youth experiencing moderate to severe depression use related apps at 29% compared to 41% for urban peers.

The barriers are cultural as much as infrastructural. Mental health remains stigmatized in many rural communities where discussing therapy invites judgment rather than support. As one participant described: "Bringing up that you're going to therapy or that you're on medication puts a blanket over the entire room."

The Purpose Gap

Rural young people report lower life purpose (48% vs 57% urban), often tied to limited professional opportunities and educational pathways. The feeling of being "stuck" without resources to escape creates a cycle that digital tools alone cannot break.

Yet paradoxically, rural youth rely more heavily on social media for support (59% vs 54%), creative expression (65% vs 59%), and staying informed about

news (75% vs 68%). Digital spaces serve as critical lifelines—when they work.

The Harassment Reality

Rural young people are more likely to permanently quit social media due to harassment (36% vs 26%) and time concerns (47% vs 39%). For marginalized identities in conservative areas, online spaces often replicate offline hostility rather than providing refuge.

They're also less likely to encounter affirming content about diverse identities:

  • LGBTQ+ affirmation: 51% rural vs 66% urban

  • Racial/ethnic diversity: 50% rural vs 67% urban

  • Intersectional identities: 54% rural vs 62% urban

The Product Design Failure

The data exposes a fundamental failure in how tech companies approach mental health solutions. Teletherapy and mental health apps were supposed to solve rural access problems. Instead, they're optimized for urban users with reliable internet, private spaces, and communities that normalize mental health conversations.

Rural youth need different solutions:

  • Offline-first mental health apps that work with intermittent connectivity

  • Community-based interventions that address cultural stigma

  • Platform algorithms that don't assume homogeneous urban networks

  • Digital literacy programs that help rural families understand online support

The Market Opportunity

For startups willing to serve overlooked markets, rural mental health represents significant opportunity. Nearly 16% of young Americans live in these communities, facing unique challenges that current products fail to address.

The key insight: rural youth aren't simply "behind" their urban counterparts—they have fundamentally different needs that require purpose-built solutions rather than feature adaptations of existing products.

The Bottom Line

As one Black participant summarized: "I use technology to find acceptance."

Rural young people want what every young person wants: connection, support, and opportunities to build meaningful lives. The difference is that every barrier—infrastructure, stigma, limited resources—compounds in rural communities in ways that urban-optimized solutions cannot address.

The question isn't whether digital tools can help rural youth. It's whether tech companies will build products that actually work for communities beyond major metro areas. Until then, America's rural young people remain digitally connected yet systematically underserved—scrolling through platforms designed for lives they don't lead, seeking support through systems built for problems they don't have.

Other Events + Resources I Found

What Does GenZtea Actually Do?

We get this question a lot! While we're known for our exclusive IRL events and newsletter, GenZtea LLC offers a full range of services to help brands authentically connect with the Gen Z startup community.

GenZtea LLC Services

Gen Z Consulting & Advisory - Strategic consulting and ongoing advisory roles on reaching, engaging, and building authentic relationships with Gen Z consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs. From product development insights to workplace culture recommendations and long-term strategic guidance.

LinkedIn Influencer Marketing - Leverage Natalie’s personal LinkedIn network and authentic Gen Z voice to amplify your brand message to founders, creators, and investors in the startup ecosystem.

Sponsored LinkedIn Content - Strategic paid posts on our personal LinkedIn account to reach our engaged professional network with your brand messaging and thought leadership content.

Speaking Engagements - Book Natalie Neptune for keynote presentations and panel discussions on the future of work, Gen Z in the workplace, startup ecosystems, and community building at your corporate events or conferences.

LinkedIn Workshops - Custom workshops for your team on LinkedIn strategy, personal branding, and professional networking specifically tailored for reaching and engaging Gen Z professionals.

Tech Event Strategy & Execution - Full-service event planning and execution for tech networking events, panel discussions, and community gatherings that authentically connect with the Gen Z demographic.

GenZtea Event Sponsorship Opportunities - Partner with us through financial sponsorship, venue partnerships, or product gifting (CPG & food) for our exclusive networking events.

Ready to work together? Reach out to [email protected] to discuss how GenZtea can help amplify your brand in the Gen Z startup community.