Toan Nguyễn belongs among Germany’s best known marketers who specialize on young audiences. He founded the agency Jung von Matt NERD, a spin off of the famous agency, where he worked until the end of 2025. I interviewed Toan for our report on Gen Z and news for Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung.
Toan, many media companies are working hard on getting the next generations hooked on their products. But is there such a thing as THE young audience?
Young people use media differently because they were exposed to media and technology at a different time than older generations. It’s true that they have a shorter attention span. Forms of presentation need to be adapted to this. Nevertheless, I prefer to talk about ‘style groups’ rather than target groups – people who stand out because of shared beliefs, interests, passions, mentalities and worldviews.
What would be a style group for you?
My classic example is a 21-year-old with a yoga mat and a mindfulness app standing next to a 51-year-old who also does yoga in the organic food store by the almond butter shelf. She probably has more in common with her than with another 21-year-old who comes from the chemist’s and has a cheap brand of lip gloss in her bag. So, I prefer to look at: What are the values, hierarchies, beliefs and principles that these people have? And of course, there are very different style groups within Generation Z. As a marketer and communicator, I have to think carefully about which messages I convey to whom.
As the founder and managing director of Jung von Matt Nerd, you developed many products for young people. Your task was, as they say, disruption.
Many of the products I created appealed to a wide range of age groups. This is best illustrated by the example of Super Mario Haribos (a type of sweets), which I co-invented. People thought about it as a great rejuvenation measure. But the product sells across all age groups. Nevertheless, the secret sauce of every successful work I have done is that it was anchored in a community. It’s also called ‘community-centric creativity’.
Could the media industry learn something from this?
I think so. The big difference between my approach and traditional marketing is that I look at what’s happening outside: where are these communities of interest emerging, and how can I connect with them? This is the so-called ‘outside-in approach’ from management literature. Old marketing was always inside-out. It was all about the brand essence, brand values and stories that were penetrated through classic channels with a large media budget. Back then, pop culture was also a question of volume and frequency. Today, pop culture emerges in niches and around influencers.
The traditional approach describes the situation in many newsrooms: you sit around a table or on a Teams call and think about which topics might be interesting for ‘young users’. What advice would you give to editors-in-chief?
I’d mention three things: First, develop outside-in expertise and don’t work from an ivory tower. Second, build personal brands. I think that’s the most important thing. People trust people who write about people, and that’s even more true for younger generations. They no longer trust logos. A logo like ARD or, in Austria, ZIB can be a seal of quality, a reassurance, but the launch vehicle must be a human being.
But that also carries risks. If followers are attached to a creator or news influencer and these make mistakes or behave unethically, the reputation of the entire media brand may suffer.
I am clearly referring to the plural: several strong personal brands. Every top journalist must build their own reach, become their own face and stand for an opinion. That is the only distribution that still works. A company account has eight times less organic reach than a personal account. That is a waste of money. That is one thing, the other is pluralism. Good journalistic products are usually part of the discourse. What I still don’t understand is why publishers don’t build up different protagonists and play with them.
Because they often only serve one community, at least in terms of political orientation.
I believe, and this is the third point, that you have to build your editorial team like a football team. Not everyone has to do the same thing. Some should polarise, do a bit of clickbait, be strikers. Others should defend a bit, make sure the facts are correct. You have to build diversity into your team. If you only have ten goalkeepers, you’re boring. If you only have ten clickbaiters, you’re not credible. And you need substitutes and young players. You have to train your trainees so that you can bring them on as substitutes.
Where does the media industry stand in terms of these criteria, and what is going wrong?
Two years ago, I could have listed a long list of mistakes, but I think there is energy in the industry again, something is happening. A lot has changed in terms of craftsmanship. But there is a lack of personal brands. And there is a huge opportunity in community building. Media companies could get much more involved in events to build loyalty and connect different strands.
What has changed in the last two years? Have you observed a generational change?
Yes, you can see that in some companies, the people at the top are a bit younger. There is also more investment in video content and other formats, which I think is good. But there are also opportunities in print in the magazine sector.
Really? Most companies are winding that down.
I think print journalists are simply writing about the wrong people, such as male CEOs over 55 who don’t sign off anything without the approval of their press officers. That’s inauthentic. It would make much more sense to pick up on trends and personalities from the online world and honour them, so to speak, with a print appearance. That can work.
Are there other formats that are underdeveloped in the media industry?
Video podcasts. They are growing nine times faster than normal podcasts. We are 100 years behind in this area. The US market is constantly showing us how it’s done.
How do you imagine journalism in the age of AI?
It will be a challenge for journalism. For the media industry per se and for anyone who has prided themselves on using their head. I see a renaissance of craftsmanship, where you see what you have done, fulfilment and a good feeling. It will be brutally difficult for young people in journalism. They will have to establish themselves as personal brands. Just being smart and doing research is no longer enough. They have to get out into real life, be on the ground, deliver documentation in photos and videos. Then there will be a few luminaries where people will want to know: What is their opinion, how do they analyse things? And in the field of feature pages and lifestyle, only those with truly excellent taste will prevail. My three Rs in the age of AI are reputation, reach and relationships. You have to build a reputation, establish relationships and have reach.
Are there any topics that need to be discussed more looking at young people and the media?
That we have a misleading concept of diversity. Diversity as it is created today always means we have a black person, an Asian person, a woman, an old man, and they all hang out together. That’s not what a peer group looks like; it doesn’t look like that in any school yard. Arabs hang out with Arabs, Asians with Asians. But there are just a few content formats that serve this need. Why not have a special edition of ZEIT magazine just for the Asian or Arab community in Germany? It’s no coincidence that one of the most successful German shows of the last ten years was 4 Blocks.´
Because traditional media have a universal claim: they want to bring people together – public broadcasters are even obliged to do so.
There are ideas on how to balance a format for specific people and specific cultural circles. I’ve always found it strange that there’s nothing like that out there.
When you look back on your time at Jung von Matt, what surprised you the most?
That rebelliousness and creativity are superpowers that are no longer sufficiently appreciated in Germany. There is an increasing search for consensus and security. It sometimes happens that individual opinions without any factual basis carry incredible weight. Experts put months of work into something, have the data on their side, and then the CEO’s wife doesn’t like it – and contracts worth millions are cancelled.
This interview was published in German here. It was part of the report “Knapp daneben ist auch vorbei” that was commissioned by Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung and published on 8th April 2026. You can find the full report here (English version forthcoming).