College: The Eternal Prediction Market
Markets evolve, industries transform, and technologies disrupt, but the college experience remains strikingly consistent. On campus, students live, learn, eat, and socialize within the same few square miles. That density creates a culture of influence where trends move at lightning speed, adoption happens in packs, and physical proximity, not age or income, quietly drives how students shop, socialize, and build community.
These dynamics make college the most powerful marketing environment in the world—and one of the sharpest predictors of where the broader market is heading. When brands win college, they win the generation.
In this talk, Alex Kronman, founder and CEO of College Inc., will explore why the college experience is a living "prediction market" for brands. By examining timeless patterns in student life alongside new research, he'll show how the choices students make today predict the consumer behaviors that will dominate tomorrow.
We'll explore:
- The factors that make college the world's most powerful marketing environment
- How student behavior predicts broader consumer and cultural trends
- Research insights on what students are doing now and what it means for the market ahead
Alex Kronman is the founder and CEO of College Inc., the platform that makes college marketing efficient and measurable at scale. Alex started the company after running his college newspaper and working in F500 media buying, realizing that brands spend more per capita targeting young consumers, yet the most obvious place to reach them – on campus – was nearly impossible to access.
He founded College Inc. to close that gap. College Inc. unifies every form of campus media – OOH, newsletters, transit ads, influencers, newspapers, screens, and posters – into one platform, streamlining campus advertising for brands and creating new revenue streams for student media. College Inc. operates on 2,300 campuses and generates 4.4 billion monthly impressions that reach 96% of U.S. college students.
College Inc. invests heavily in research on college consumer behavior, eschewing anecdotes and instead building the channels where students can share their preferences, attitudes, and behaviors in real time. Alex and team help brands make data-informed decisions and build a path to win Gen Z by winning college.