Many youth marketers talk about immersing oneself in youth to really understand Generation Y but few do it on a regular basis. Nancy Lublin (1010Youth Award Nominee) on the other hand surrounds herself each day as she works one-on-one with teens and young adults at DoSomething.org, a not-for-profit that uses online methods to get teens to do charitable work offline.  Her youthful exuberance and girlish look had me wondering if I was talking to the right person or another Gen Y staff member.  Quickly however,  her deep understanding of youth culture became apparent and it’s no wonder that she has been called on to work for corporate social cause campaigns like Pepsi Refresh. In this episode of MobileYouthTV Nancy discusses the reasons for the rising popularity in social causes among youth and her advice for brands marketing to young consumers.

Nancy also shared with me a great case study of a campaign DoSomething.org did with the clothing retailer Aeropostale. The objective was to increase sales and traffic to their stores in the slow retail month of January and create awareness for their lesser known denim line. The solution was a Teens for Jeans blue jean drive whereby youth would donate their used blue jeans to homeless youth in exchange for a discount on new Aeropostale jeans. As Nancy will tell you it was a win-win-win-win event for all.