Gen Z are challenging marketers to be more creative and brands to be more in tune with culture
Nothing makes you feel older or more insecure about your own relevance than your successor generation.
But unlike humans – who slowly make their peace with a soft landing into the relative obscurity of middle age – brands that want nothing less than enduring competitive advantage can’t just give up in a generational power transfer.
So, what now that Gen Z and Gen Alpha have us Millennial marketers firmly in a chokehold?
Here are three things we’re advising our clients to get comfortable with as the world shifts generational gears.
“We’re a generation that cares about everything and nothing. If you matter to us, we’ll make you happen.” says Ben Clarke, Designer at Landor.
A generation that’s grown up steeped in online stan culture, Gen Z can be the outsourced marketing department that you didn’t know you needed. Resourceful and creative, sometimes all they need is a powerful set of iconic brand assets and a social media account.
[Gen Z] have precisely no time for the corporate codes and clichés that previous generations were quietly respectful of.
Matt Kissane, Executive Director of TBCs, Landor
Just look at how the roll-out around Charli XCX’s ‘brat’ was amplified by Gen Z leaping on the album’s slime green cover art, basic typeface and lazily straightforward tone of voice.
Or look at West Loop, Chicago’s meatpacking district. Our brief was to cement the neighbourhood’s reputation as a cultural hotbed, and drive growth for local businesses and communities. We created the design asset system, and then handed assets over to members and visitors to remix, meme and reshape as they wish. Their neighbourhood, their brand. Generating a 20% uplift in local business engagement with West Loop assets and 2.2 million media impressions at launch.
Today’s tastemakers have no idea just how limited and two-dimensional brand experiences used to be. Because in this everything-everywhere-all-at-once media landscape, audiences expect every brand to be a feast for the senses.
When Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano came to us looking to boost its dwindling youth audience, we started by thinking about how an orchestra gives you the feels across all the five senses. So, we built a new dynamic, multi-sensorial brand identity that made you see, hear and feel the bombastic energy of the orchestra. Subscription sales and tickets soared 57%, and the rejuvenation of the brand keeps flowing with the appointment of Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, the youngest Musical Director in Europe.
If you’ve ever followed a Gen Z meme account on work life, you’ll know they have precisely no time for the corporate codes and clichés that previous generations were quietly respectful of. No surprise then that the brands successfully engaging with them are the ones who are subverting corporate tropes with humour and irreverence.
Vattenfall, Sweden’s leading energy company, took a low engagement B2B topic – industrial emissions – and resisted the temptation to play it safe. Instead, they hijacked the advertising codes of beauty and fashion, promoting their fossil-free hydrogen emissions in the form of a high-end face mist, pure enough for Cara Delevingne’s bankable skin. While carbon emissions went down, unaided brand awareness soared and NORDDDB’s campaign was recognised with a Cannes Lions shortlist in the social and influencer category.
To sum up, Gen Z are probably the best thing that ever happened to brands and marketers. They are doing our job better than us, forcing us to serve every sense, and calling out the codes that keep us trapped in safe, generic work.
So have fun – they are.
Matt drives Landor’s thinking on topics that challenge conventional approaches and established methods. He argues for brands and leaders embracing vulnerability; fast and imperfect exploration of new technologies, like AI; and believes that there is no proof of strategy without activation. With over 15 years of experience, Matt has worked across sectors, having led projects in financial services, insurance, energy, fintech, engineering and software, professional services, retail, food & beverage, the public sector and beyond. He has worked extensively internationally, having lived in London, Moscow, Hong Kong, and currently Paris. Matt is originally from the UK, speaks English, French and Russian, and studied at the University of Cambridge.
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