we’re engineered for obsession, comparison, and emotional whiplash

INDUSTRY NOTES #1: Maxine Marcus

Good morning and welcome back to as seen on!

Apologies for being MIA this week — some life changing events were taking place. I'll share more in tomorrow’s news roundup, which I promise will be very long and very good. My April reading recap will go live on Sunday. I read 13 books last month and listened to an audiobook for the first time. I have thoughts.

Today, I’m thrilled to publish the first edition of a new series I’m calling INDUSTRY NOTES, where AmbassCo founder Maxine Marcus and I discuss building products to help brands connect with Gen Z; algorithmically engineered culture; the fate of the Gen Z agency; the big fat CAC problem; and West Village Girls.

Maxine Marcus is the 24 year old founder of AmbassCo, a qualitative insights company launching SocialGlass.AI, a new tool that lets brands step into their target audience’s social media algorithms. SocialGlass.AI curates personalized, relevant feeds from AmbassCo’s Gen Z network and uses AI to surface trends, language, sentiment, and creative signals as they emerge. Maxine also co-manages Ferris Ventures, a VC fund writing angel checks into startups like Tennr, Pogo, and August.

Maxine and I will be available to answer your questions in the comments. ENJOY!

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INDUSTRY NOTES is a bimonthly interview series where I sit down with Gen Z founders, creators, and operators to explore the most compelling topics at the intersection of business and culture. Think of it as a snapshot of the group chats that inspire this newsletter — conversations with the smartest young people shaping my views on the industries and ideas I love to write about.

The next INDUSTRY NOTES conversation will be with Alice Ma, Founder and CEO of Mad Realities — the Webby Award-winning entertainment company creating social-first shows like Shop Cats, Hollywood IQ, and Keep the Meter Running.

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Maxine, before we get into what you’re building with SocialGlass.AI, I’d love to talk about the overarching theme of your work, which is youth-focused consumer insights. We share a close mutual friend and have known about each other for a while now. In that time, you’ve been the CEO of AmbassCo, a Gen Z insights company you founded while in college at USC. Can you tell me about your journey to starting that?

I started doing Gen Z insights at 16, mostly out of an obsession with why we do what we do online. Growing up in the Bay Area with a VC dad, I was giving product feedback at the dinner table long before I knew what consumer research was. A summer internship at a startup turned into me building a Snapchat usage report for the CMO. Why was my generation sending triple-chin disappearing pics to friends? I was able to answer that question for them. It made intuitive sense to me, but for those not living that experience, it was incredibly strange and unobvious. So I built a teen product testing network — version one of what turned into AmbassCo.

At USC, we expanded into doing all kinds of research, honing our focus on delivering deep, qualitative insights to brands. We grew our network organically to thousands of Gen Z and started working with large brands like Neutrogena/Clean & Clear, UMG, and Reddit. It wasn’t data I loved — it was understanding people, behavior, and culture. We were solving for how to bring brands to the expert consumer who lived and breathed the communities and spheres that mattered to them. That still drives everything I do.

I’ve always been curious about these Gen Z research groups. I was in a few of them in college but have since dropped off that circuit. How exactly did you go about building and operating that network?

I love that you did a few in college — it's rare to know people who are actually in research groups. It may not sound scalable, but relationships are everything. So much of how we built our network was through genuinely developing relationships with our members, to where they knew us and felt excited to bring in friends. Some of our respondents I’ve known since I was 17. It WORKS — we built our network pretty much organically through word of mouth, focusing on connecting with certain target groups (college students, people with niche interests, etc.). We’ve also used social media here and there too.

What’s one behavior or insight about Gen Z that brands consistently misunderstand?

I know you asked for one, but I’m going to give a couple that work in tandem. Firstly: Gen Z is very deep. Many brands think we’re all about brainrot, trends, and lingo — we’re not. The other one is that we have a short attention span. WE DON’T. We’ll do something for 10 hours straight when we’re obsessed. We’re a generation of contradictions. Sure, we like dumb internet humor, but we also love deep conversations with friends, yearn for human connection, and consume complex TV, books, and movies. We actually just captured in SocialGlass.AI a resurgence of Jazz listening, lol.

As a result of both of the above — GEN Z EXPECTS GOOD CREATIVE (not gimmicks). We have awareness that everything is an ad these days, so we want you to show us you put in work to make it worth watching. And just because something worked for one brand cough cough Duolingo doesn’t mean it will work for you :)

And what brand do you think is doing “GOOD” creative these days? You can’t say any of your clients.

You know I’d say one of my clients if I could ;) But the Severance marketing was genius. I know it's not super recent, but I loved their Grand Central activation. I also love the Jacquemus Banana campaign.

THE FUTURE OF THE GEN Z BRAND

AmbassCo came up alongside a class of Gen Z agencies like JUV and The Z Link, whose USP was that their teams and leadership were Gen Z. The message was clear: “talk to us, not about us.” It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of Gen Z as a brand and to see the power that carries in marketing. At times, it’s felt like being Gen Z was a qualification in itself — but maybe that’s just youth. How do you see the role of the Gen Z agency evolving as the generation grows up and starts to cede cultural relevance to Gen Alpha?

There’s always been generational-specific research and marketing agencies. But you’re 100% right — the branding around “Gen Z” has been at another scale. I think this is more about the characteristics of Gen Z that turned our generation into a brand to be leveraged. We are the first digitally native generation — we became a window into new mediums (social) that control/influence billions in consumer spend. As long as we continue to be a window into that, there’s a role for the Gen Z agency.

Now, Gen Alpha is the first to grow up WITH social media. People who live experiences firsthand know best, and often that can be categorized by generation. Sometimes not. For example, our work with Reddit showed us that those who aren’t Reddit users struggle to understand the platform’s culture and power. That's not generational — it’s about which technologies/platforms you use. The role of Gen Z agencies will inevitably shift. My experience has been about leaning into areas where “Gen Z” speaks to broader cultural changes that create new zones for systems and processes — again, why we’re building SocialGlass.AI.

So at what point in running AmbassCo and working with these startups did you realize there was a bigger opportunity in building a better social listening tool?

I ran hundreds of discussions, read thousands of responses, and one thing was obvious: we’re all products of our social feed. Almost everything you need to know about behavior, culture, and consumer POVs is already online. Someone’s posted it—it's about finding the relevant insights for you. Social is inherently qualitative; often it’s the vibe (music, an outfit, imagery) that drives engagement. 

We’re all trapped in our own personalized algorithms. The only social spheres we fully understand are our own. Social listening tools are great for detecting mentions, sentiment, and mass trends. But when it comes to deeper cultural context, we still rely on culture experts, decks, and delayed translation—while consumers are experiencing it in real time.

The algorithms surface great content because humans train them. If you want to know “what is my audience actually consuming right now?” – today’s systems don’t tell you. This isn’t just about Gen Z, but how the whole landscape is shifting social first. That’s the gap we’re building for: becoming the cultural operating system for social media.

Does that scare you at all — the idea that we’re increasingly products of our social feeds? And if so much of it is algorithmically engineered, can we still call it “culture”? Does that even matter to brands?

Wow, what a great question. YES, it scares me — because our social feeds literally impact the fabric of how we think, live, and perceive EVERYTHING. I find myself thinking in social media encoding all the time. Even when talking about relationships, I hear things like “the guy has to love the girl more” (an opinion massively circulated on TikTok) turning up in IRL conversations.

But it’s also deeply exciting to me that I can share inside jokes, interests, and draw inspiration from people I’ve never met before. It amplifies how similar people really are — I always laugh when I see comments like “I’ve never had an original experience.” On the flip side, we’re engineered for obsession, comparison, and emotional whiplash. I’ll see a TikTok DIML video, then horrible news in my next scroll. The platforms are optimized for one thing: attention.

I also think it eliminates so much novelty — it’s like we’re pre-experiencing everything because of how tailored our feeds are. Other people’s opinions flood in before you can even form your own. I’m late to the party, but I just started reading ACOTAR — and before I can start book two… boom, spoilers and someone’s opinion. Already feels like it’s shifted my experience. Experiencing things for the first time is special, and social media has killed a lot of that.

I still think it’s culture, though, because people create the zeitgeist that algorithms push. The content is still UGC (for now — we’ll see how AI shifts this). The best internet moments and trends often come from random people. Social creates a fluid web of culture: sounds, moments, experiences from different corners of the internet served up together. And whether we like it or not, culture is about what’s impacting our society in real time — and these engineered algorithms absolutely are.

Did you read that New Yorker piece by Brock Colyar on West Village Girls? I’d love to hear your thoughts — not just on the piece itself, but on the discourse it’s sparked. I’m asking because the dozens of reaction TikToks I’ve watched make me think this iteration of the “West Village Girl” is a great example of algorithmically engineered culture.

Yes, I read it and overall liked it. I agree that it's Exhibit A of algorithmically engineered culture. In the article, Colyar unpacks what the previous generation of “chic” West Village dwellers were like. There were definitely trends then, too, of a certain type of person moving in. But TikTok is like gas on a fire—shifting the culture of a place seemingly overnight. Extreme targeting propels certain things to become “basic” because those POVs reach the right audience, who then choose to activate. People have free will. If you wait in a 3-hour line for a hot restaurant, it’s a choice. NYC is a microcosm for a lot of things—the impacts of algorithmic internet culture being one of them.

To be clear, I don’t think this is “right.” It just is a fact. Separately, I think this speaks to a much deeper topic: the link between algorithmically engineered culture and consumerism at large. I’m not safe from any of this—I’m always catching myself wanting some new dumb thing or thinking I need to look hot to show up to a workout class.

Again, while our feeds can bring us info and awareness we would have never had before, they also serve us a sea of sameness once they know what we like, to make sure we stay tuned in. A tangent: separate from the broader WV Girl convo, no one is safe from that fact. Unless you don’t use social media at all, you’re also in your own bubble, with your thinking engineered to some degree and similarity on your feeds. It's dangerous for anyone to think they’re safe from that.

Overall, I thought the article was written well to capture the varying external vs. internal perceptions of the WV girl. The article was definitely taking a POV without saying anything directly. It’s funny, I always wonder how many of those who like and comment on the TikTok reaction vids for these sorts of things actually read the article. Often, I only consume the discourse around something, not the actual thing. I find it interesting that the author points out the positives too. I haven’t seen a lot of takes or discourse on TikTok leaning into those elements of the article. If I hadn’t read it, I may not have formed my own opinion at all. :)

RESEARCHING VS MAKING CULTURE

You’ve described SocialGlass.AI as the next generation of social media’s cultural operating system — the next gen of the Nielsen Black Box for social. What would that look like?

We’ve been a qualitative insights company, fully focused on curated cohorts to reach the right and best audiences for each brand. We’re applying that same logic here - capturing relevant social content straight from the source: consumers who exist in the right algorithms.

We let brands see the social content their target audience is actually consuming in real-time. Our platform curates relevant content from our network’s personalized social feeds, and uses AI to surface trends, language, & key signals, as they emerge in target communities. Think of it as stepping inside your audience’s algorithm.

Knowing what is showing up and resonating separates a valuable insight from the never-ending noise of content. SocialGlass.AI exists to surface context. Not just trends, but how things are embodied IRL. Not just what’s popular, but why something gets a save or a send. Those signals are what will shape the next generation of brand growth, and we built our platform to help brands listen, decode, and act on them.

I have this theory that the abundance of data and audience insights has made marketing and advertising more reactive and less innovative. You should check out

Matt Klein

’s essay on Foresight as Activism. A key selling point of SocialGlass.AI is its “real-time” feedback loop — but it’s still reactive, regardless of how quick that reaction is. I also think that as marketers, our collective reliance on data in a process that could be more creative and immersive means a lot of brands end up feeling the same, or worse, like nothing at all. Without essence. It also gives them license to activate “for” subcultures without actually doing the work to embed themselves within those people and places.

I LOVE THIS THEORY. The more you get wrapped up in data and performance, the farther you get from feeling grounded in human POV (I’ve seen this countless times). Yes, SocialGlass.AI is real-time (essential), but the piece of it I’m most excited about is our ability to track change over time. And again, we’re not just tracking culture “generally,” but specific and relevant elements of it, given the brand we’re working with. For example, take nostalgia: Gen Z has been leaning into the feeling of nostalgia for YEARS. This isn’t a trend; it’s been showing up on social media since 2020 consistently, just in various ways. Actually, I just found a report from 2020 that we gave to Epic Games, where we talked about leveraging nostalgia in marketing, and here we are in 2025 with the resurgence of early 2000s pop (always), low-rise jeans, and new artists like Addison Rae leaning in fully. The key is using BOTH data AND cultural immersion to look for consistent insights that you can stake your flag on for long-term strategies.

You’re launching this product with Taco Bell signed on as a partner but are in the process of onboarding other brands. How did you go about securing that first big client?

We’d been working with them for a while, there was trust that our output & products were great. When we told them the concept, they absolutely loved it. They’re at the forefront of social, they’re a leader. Which means they also understand the nuances of social. It clicked for them why this was powerful, and here we are!

I got the chance to read an early draft of the SocialGlass.AI manifesto, where you wrote, “It’s no hot take or secret that social media has touched and infiltrated every fiber of society and consumerism. But the marketing and brand world has yet to truly adapt to this truth.” Could you expand on that idea? Because I’m not totally convinced the marketing world hasn’t adapted. In my experience, most brands are already thinking social first. Sure, execution still varies — but it always will. If anything, I think the bigger challenge, and the more interesting experiment for brands now, is figuring out how to show up IRL.

I 100% agree that the marketing world HAS adapted and that most brands are thinking social first. What I meant is that the infrastructure itself supporting these systems and shifts still has room to adapt—aka there aren't built-out tools beyond social listening, management, and agency systems to really propel in this social-first direction. Processes are just inefficient, but brands and leaders are definitely excited to push social first. As I said then, caring about social and being social-first is NOT a hot take, and the world IS going there.

Re: IRL experiences—great point. It’s harder because you have relatively no test-and-learn when you try a new IRL strategy, especially anything out of the box. Going back to my Jacquemus reference earlier, they crushed it with their banana campaign: an IRL activation that drove lots of social engagement from their customers and targets (which is the true goal of showing up IRL today).

Last week, Vogue Business ran an article about the end of digital brand building, which I also discussed in my newsletter. Meta, Google, and TikTok are all in precarious positions, and brands need to rethink the future of brand growth. Can you share more about why traditional “paid” advertising and performance marketing aren’t working the way they used to, especially when it comes to Gen Z?

It’s not just that performance marketing is declining; it’s that Gen Z doesn’t even operate in the same mental model those ads were built for. We’ve been raised on personalization. Our feeds feel like they know us better than we know ourselves. And within those feeds, we’re being trained passively to want specific things. So the idea that we’d respond to an ad that shows up and tries to “convert” us? It just doesn’t match.

We’ve seen this shift across every study we’ve run. Social platforms are the new search engines. TikTok especially has become one big recommendation engine. 72% of Gen Z has purchased something after seeing it there. Why would I click on a banner ad when the exact product I need is already being recommended to me by someone I trust, in a format that feels native to my world?

The CAC problem is real. But the bigger issue is resonance. Traditional ads are losing because they feel like outsiders. Gen Z makes decisions based on what fits into their feed and overall world of interest, formulated by constant and continuous touchpoints all the time. And that’s shaped by social media—not just the content, but the context around it. The song choice. The creator’s vibe. The comment section energy.

So, what should brands be doing right now? If I’m a founder, how should I be thinking about reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha — getting them to buy my products or sign up for my service, and ultimately stick around as repeat customers? Feel free to be as prescriptive as you want; no one has to take your advice.

In fact, Founder to Founder, if I don’t know your business, you probably shouldn’t take my advice. Back to what I said in my Gen Z misconception, there is no one-size-fits-all. But some advice I do think applies to every consumer co: get into the social feeds and algorithms where your consumers live. Read EVERY comment. In addition to talking to real people, be VERY online, and try to consume what your audience consumes. That alone gives you powerful insight into what your consumers want. My best friends, who founded Good Girl Snacks (aka Hot Girl Pickles), leveraged this strategy and have CRUSHED their organic growth.

Last question. This series is called INDUSTRY NOTES. What’s your industry hot take?

I struggle with the words “authenticity” and “community” because they’ve been sliced and diced so much by marketers. My hot take is that these words have turned into confusing word salads with diluted, diminishing meaning, sadly (although I can’t say I don’t use those words).

I’m with you on that one.

Nikita Walia

a just published a great takedown on “Community” so you can go read that next. It was great speaking with you, Maxine. Thanks for being my first INDUSTRY NOTES guest!

Of course! It was great talking to you too, loved this conversation.

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