Connor Blakley used to tell America’s biggest brands what Gen Z wanted. He’s no longer waiting for them to listen

Mark Smucker probably should have taken the meeting. In 2018, Connor Blakley, then 18, mailed a handwritten letter to the CEO of J.M. Smucker Co., the fifth generation of the Smucker family to lead the business. Blakley was pitching the services of his Gen Z marketing consultancy, called YouthLogic. “ I grew up eating Uncrustables,” Blakley tells me. “We all did.” J.M. Smucker Co. executives responded with a letter of their own, saying that Mark Smucker was “very impr...