How Maxine Marcus Built the In-House Gen-Z Correspondent for Reddit, Taco Bell, Universal Music Group, Long Drink, MTV

@zauey

tech talk! #climatechange #chatgpt #datacenter #techtalk

Maybe this isn’t a shocker but our AI usage and consumption is slowly ruining mother earth. Sure there are ways we to create more “sustainable solutions,” but my question will always be whether or not large tech companies want to prioritize humanity. Longevity is a hot area for consumer and healthcare investors, founders, and operators, but imagine if they all worked together to think about how the environment could flourish for another century so people could actually live on it. What good is living to 100 if we're inheriting a depleted planet?

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While we figure out climate change, we have to talk women’s sports because there is so much going right. The Liberty won their very FIRST WNBA Championship earlier this week, and it was more than just the players on the court. Clara Wu Tsai’s playbook is THE playbook for building a successful franchise in women’s sports. Tsai’s says the Liberty are on track to become worth $1B in the next 10 years. The business of sports goes beyond just building an all star team. Media rights, attendance, sponsorships, and the ownership group all play a role in the valuation and long term growth of a team. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Ellie the Elephant is a major driver of ticket sales for the Liberty.

Maxine is the founder and CEO of Ambassco and a graduate of the University of Southern California. She is also the general partner of Ferris Ventures, a micro fund investing in next generation products.  Ms. Marcus discovered her passion for consumer insights while interning at SoundHound: she continuously noticed a disconnect between the marketing/brand leaders at the company and her generation. She started her first Gen-Z consultancy while in High School and has evolved the business to where it is today. Notably, she has spoken at the Lazard CEOs Foursquare Conference, Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, and has worked with over 60 brands.

Can you share the impetus for Ambassco and how it started?

I started the company in its first form when I was in high school. I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley, very much around startup culture. I was doing an internship at a company that's now public called SoundHound. I was the marketing intern, I was there to fetch coffee and do spreadsheets. Being the only young person in the office, I was constantly pulled to test products or answer questions like, "Why are you guys using Snapchat?"

I pitched an idea to go out to my friends, ask a bunch of questions, and come back with a report on what young people were doing. The CMO loved the idea, and I delivered my first insights presentation. From this, I realized I had a real passion for understanding people and tapping into consumer trends. I find consumer behavior so interesting because it links to psychology, culture, and everything else.

After that, I did an internship at a social media startup where I was doing product testing. I started to get more invested in the company and began running my first Gen Z test group. I started to receive a ton of inbound requests from other startups wanting Gen Z to test their products. That ultimately spun off into the first iteration of my Company today, Ambassco.

I built the company with me throughout my time at USC where I did my undergrad. I always viewed it as a passion project while in college. I was dedicated to my education and to having a fun college life, but through that experience, I learned so much. There's a lot of pressure when you start to view a company as something that needs to grow and evolve, but as a college student, you have the luxury of doing it for fun. The learning is massively widened because you're so open-minded.

How did your USC experience shape how you built Ambassco’s product?

So much! Being immersed in the student experience was incredibly valuable for the respondent side of things. Figuring out what would get my friends excited to participate in something, or talking to my classmates about pop culture – it was all invaluable. College campuses are like the biggest manifestation of youth culture. You're just around a bunch of young people all the time, and everything is dictated by that environment.

From a respondent perspective, that inspired how we collect feedback and innovate on research methodology. It's important because it seems like people try to sell brands anything these days. People can easily get bamboozled into thinking they know what's happening with Gen Z, but a lot of it is not actually driven by solid research methodology.

Being at USC also helped me figure out how to organically grow a network and how to lean into relationships as an asset when you're building a business focused on qualitative insights and community.

Can you touch a little more on the research piece? What do you feel is Ambassco’s differentiator?

We're a qualitative insights firm. We’re focused on reinventing how research  is done from a Gen Z perspective. We were seeing the same issues everywhere, from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies. No one really has data problems anymore. If you want to collect data on your users or consumers, there are a million platforms. You can leverage AI to get all sorts of information and data cuts.

The issue is understanding the human side: 

• What are real people doing? 

• What do they want? 

• What does this mean for my brand? 

There's so much intricacy in everything. That's the piece we consistently saw missing from brands… the “je ne sais quoi” and color that defines what it means when people say “iykyk.” And that's the qualitative piece. 

Take the classic sustainability example. The narrative that Gen Z cares about sustainability is true. But when you look at actual consumer behavior, do we really care about sustainability? Our generation orders more stuff online than any other generation. We're obsessed with Amazon. Shein is one of the biggest e-commerce fashion businesses, massively because of Gen-Z spending habits. It's easy to misstep as a brand by making assumptions.

We focus on one thing: actionable, qualitative insights that can be plugged into any process across brand strategy, PR, social media, marketing, product, or insights/research teams. We get you to the right group of Gen Z’ers, and we do it fast. 

We have a Gen-Z community that we've built: I’ve built this grass roots since I started the first iteration of AmbassCo, and it has grown organically since. Our community is extremely diverse across ethnicity, background, age, interests, passions, education level, etc. 

We match brands to a curated group within our network. Consumers today, especially Gen Z, can’t be bucketed purely with demographics. Behavior today is shaped by things like…what are you seeing on your TikTok FYP? We put a lot of effort into how we create groups and who we engage. 

Our methodologies are driven by creating products and processes that actually emulate how consumers operate in real life. We want our respondents to talk to us like they do to their friends.  We have content tracking tools where we look at what people are engaging with on their TikTok or Instagram feeds. We also have what we call the Ambassco feed, which is essentially a privatized social media experience that a brand can have. And of course we run every other qual methodology from panels to interviews and more.

What do you think is one of the most pressing challenges for brands from a qualitative perspective right now?

Brands need more processes and mechanisms to validate good marketing/social strategy, and build campaigns that are social first. Right now, so many companies treat insights & research as this siloed entity. While marketers have access to tons of quant/tracking tools, they rarely actually integrate human perspective, or their Gen Z target consumer into rooms when making key decisions. SO much money is saved by talking to real people. Data only tells a portion of the story, you need qual to paint the picture. 

What I consistently see, especially when you're talking about marketing teams, CMOs, or even CEOs, is that there is still a lack of understanding when it comes to socials. With Gen Z, everything always comes back to social. Gen Z operates differently—and future generations will too, we’re wired by these platforms. They shape how we discover, think, and share. You can't ignore platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X, and Snap. Brands sometimes can also be scared of leaning into social: consumers seem to always have criticism/complaints. But that's the world we’re moving towards – a world focused on discourse and conversation. That's not a bad thing. 

Yet, in many big brands and agencies, social teams are still treated as an afterthought in broader digital strategies, which is crazy to me. The people who live and breathe social media often get it and know what to do, but they need validation tools to show others the culture and strategies that will work. Sometimes there will be only 1 Gen Z’er on the team, and everyone will just rely on them to “know everything.” Not possible - I do this all day and I’m constantly learning new things from our network. 

CAC is rising, and culture changes quickly. To generate organic and earned social buzz, brands must be deeply in tune. Problems arise when companies rely on generic Gen Z reports or stick to the status quo without grasping what Gen Z truly wants from their brand.

How do you think about the evolution of Gen Z and what are the REAL misconceptions around our generation?

Great question. If I could only tell a marketing team one thing, here’s what I’d say. The idea that doing “generically Gen Z things” works is SO false. Save your money, don’t pay for the crazy crazy expensive influencer that you think will ensure Gen Z appeal. As a brand, you don’t need to use Gen Z lingo, or make overly colorful graphics. What you need is to figure out what your personal voice is, and who your community is within Gen Z that will help you find organic footing & buzz.  

I think it's important to recognize that Gen Z is not a monolith. We are just people who are shaped by the things we’ve experienced as a generation. For example, being digitally native and growing up with social media has shaped who we are as people. But because of that, there's a lot of complexity inside Gen Z because we all have such different experiences with how we interact with content, information, discourse, friendships, brands, and parasocial relationships with influencers/creators. 

When you’re constantly seeing things that are so personalized, like a TikTok feed, the way you interact with the world becomes more nuanced. Behavior gets so much shaped by what you’re consuming, in addition to the influence of friends/family. You could put me next to a millennial and we might be more similar consumers than myself and someone of my exact same demographic profile, despite us both being Gen Z. This is part of why qualitative research matters so much more. It's less about age and being in Gen Z. It's so much more about who is the consumer you want to attract. What are they consuming? What do they care about? Who are they as a person?

A lot of brands treat Gen Z like we're this one big bucket. That needs to stop. And also stop thinking of Gen Z as this alien separated out from millennials or any other generation. I have similar consumer behaviors to probably some Gen Xers. Gen Z influences 96% of household spend… My mom won't even purchase makeup or skincare or clothing without vetting it through me first because I'm her "hip daughter."

How have you thought about your vision for yourself as a founder, your team, and Ambassco?

Being a founder is very personal, rewarding, anxiety inducing, and also tough. It starts to become a part of your identity, because you somewhat have to make it your identity. At the early stages, your founding story matters so much. And, my passion and investment in my business is incredibly strong, because it's my baby. I care about what I do so much. The level of investment as a founder can blur the lines between how you think about yourself on a personal level and how that correlates to success at work. You’re also always marketing yourself, which is one of the joys, but also tows that line. That can contribute to not feeling like you’ve done enough, it's like… oh I should have gone up to that person, or I should be posting this.. etc. 

In terms of my vision, I know this won’t always be the case (I’m hard on myself), but my vision is to feel that what I’m doing has real impact, and matters in a tangible way. In terms of how I want to continue building my businesses, I love things that feel very tangible and real. I'm kind of allergic to bullshit. I feel strongly about doing things with a lot of intention and building relationships carefully and doing something because I really care.

From a team standpoint, working with people who actually care about you is very important. I'm lucky that I've had a business partner for the last four years who is also a best friend. We have a very unique working relationship. We're the only two full-time employees, but we have a bunch of part-time people, advisors, and an incredible technology team that we work with. My number one rule is that you have to be a person first. I want to work with people who are just good people, simply put, and who care. It's just not worth losing sleep or dealing with potential tough times that come with people who aren’t human-first.

Being a founder is really rewarding, but also tough. I think it gets glorified a lot. It’s really easy to constantly compare yourself to other people, especially on social media since so much of personal brand building has shifted there. And that is really hard because you know it's not productive. You're just wasting time thinking about other people rather than focusing on yourself.

Did you ever raise money for Ambassco and what’s your advice for other founders who are considering raising outside capital?

We have some great institutional funds involved, we did a pre-seed. We are open to taking on capital if it's intentional and strategic.  If we fundraise in the future, we’d want investors involved that can truly be a part of the journey, where it's right for the business, right  for the benefit of our partner, and right for the ultimate outcome too so everyone can feel good about it. We’re focused on building a great business that is cash flow positive and bootstrapped more than anything.

Is there a female founder you really admire, who doesn't get as much press coverage, and whose story deserves more recognition?

One of my biggest founder inspirations is Katherine Power, who started Who What Wear, Versed Skincare, Avaline Wines, and Merit Beauty. She’s also a Partner at Greycroft, she’s just incredible. She knows how to build amazing businesses. We're a co-investor with her in a deal called Experiment Beauty, which is rewarding. That was an incredibly happy moment for me, getting to co-invest alongside someone like her who I respect immensely. She is covered by the press and she's a well-known founder, but she's a boss. 

In terms of a founder who is doing incredible things but isn't getting enough attention, I would say my two best friends who started the pickle company, Good Girl Snacks. They are getting attention because they're blowing up on Instagram. Behind the scenes of what you see on social media, just know that they're incredible people, and they work so hard, and they care so much. They're just amazing founders - Yasaman Bakhtiar and Leah Marcus. 

And then I'm going to call out a founder friend of mine who works on multiple different projects. Her name is Anushka Joshi. She started the GEN-ZiNE when we were at USC together, which is a publication for young people. She no longer does that full-time, she’s now building Friend of a Friend. She thinks about things meaningfully and has a really strong grasp on people and culture. She cares so much about what she's doing. She's also very intentional. She's supportive, she cares about people, and she genuinely wants people around her to win. She's just a good human.

How do you navigate the balance between building your personal brand and maintaining authenticity in the digital age?

Even though this is a simple question, my answer feels complex internally. It's something I’m constantly thinking about.  I’m a work in progress when it comes to figuring out the most authentic way. As a founder, I think it can feel a lot more “high stakes” to build a personal brand – sometimes you even feel like your company's success is on the back of that… rather than your product, or how good you are at your job.    

I feel like so much of being online these days is just noise, especially in the world of marketing thought leadership. But it's also not just noise, there's also a lot of great, really insightful stuff. But, the great stuff can feel mixed up  in the constant droning of scrolling and new trends. Every 5 minutes it feels like there's a new “it thing” to adhere to, it can feel impossible to keep up with the next shiny object in marketing, on social media, or “way to go viral.”  It makes a lot of really interesting thoughts and discourse feel harder to access, and it makes me think…am I just contributing to a bunch of noise that no one really cares to read?  I’m already immersing myself in social culture all day as is, that knowledge is essential to my job. And, I also love that part. But, applying that thinking to my own personal brand can feel overwhelming, because my hope is that what I put out into the world is something that I personally find interesting. But I find myself questioning that a lot – like is this insight really different? Or does anyone really care? Or, am I just doing what everyone else is doing? But even if I am… is that so bad? If it works, what do I care if it’s not super original? And who am I to think I am so original in the first place? Lol.  It's a lot of overthinking, I think, driven by a hope to be intentional about how I build a personal brand, while remaining authentic to who I am, and the type of voice I to be want attached to my company. And yes, I agree, it's not that serious, and I should probably just not overthink this much.

I also never want to make somebody feel the way I've felt at certain points, where you feel like you're behind or you're comparing yourself to someone on social media. I could portray my life to be one way if I wanted to, and it might work from an engagement perspective, but I struggle to get myself to execute on that sometimes. 

I hope any part of this is relatable. Overall, props to all those who are pros at the personal branding aspect. I respect it immensely. A lot of my best friends are pros. I'm trying to take a page from their book and I’m definitely becoming better at this. Good news, I’m awesome in person and when I’m in front of people, that's usually my superpower. 

How can we support you and Ambassco?

We love working with innovative brands and founders. If you know any brands in need of insights into Gen Z, we got you!  

AmbassCo is real time, reinvented research for Gen Z. After working with 50+ brands, our Gen Z founding team grew exhausted by the disconnect between decision-makers and Gen Z consumers, and the outdated methods used to understand us. So, we made it our mission to seamlessly integrate human, qualitative insights into every step of the marketing and consumer process. Think of us like your super-connector...we match you to a custom group of your target consumers from our network of 4,000+ GenZ. Our process empowers this community to engage in their native environment, turning giving feedback from a chore to an enjoyable habit: 

• A private social feed (emulating how Gen Z interacts IRL), where our network instantly reacts to any asset or question to validate/ideate on marketing, social, branding, & more.

• Our content tracker shows you exactly what content your target audience is engaging with on socials

• + many more ways —> like what? Hit us up.

We deliver you insights via our custom dashboard and custom reports to drive actionable results. Some of our partners include Reddit, Taco Bell, Universal Music Group, The Long Drink, MTV, and more.

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