The Path to Reaching Any Audience (including Gen Z)
We're right in the middle of the awkward teenage phase of communications and marketing engagement shifting to newer platforms favored by a younger, incoming cohort. Gen Z interest in platforms that favor shorter-form live video, small-group asynchronous chat, and (crucially) authenticity.
Many institutions have been hesitant to dip their toes into TikTok, Twitch, Discord, etc., and for good reason.
Gen Zers have creative agency and reach that prior generations did not. Due in part to this agency, the top-down nature of culture and identity development among pre-teens and early teens is flipping into something more self-selected. It's not surprising, then, that Gen Z favors media created by their peers rather than media created by brands.
After a millennial marketing generation where brands had (a little) more time to capitalize on a trend/a meme, the combination of agency, a new class of creators, and increase in digital media at large means the lifespan of "viral" content is shrinking.
Their preferred platforms prioritize small, intimate, communities centered around specific beliefs, values, or interests. This makes the communities very good at snuffing out inauthentic engagement.
And the platforms themselves are…different. Per HBR, which calls these new tools "digital campfires": "figuring out how to navigate digital campfires can be overwhelming. Many of these platforms are relatively new, have different rules of engagement than traditional social platforms, and varying levels of sophistication and readiness when it comes to supporting brand integrations. Often no clear rules exist on the platforms for how to create branded content or experiences that will resonate with their audiences." While some of this complexity and perceived unfriendliness could be chalked up to newness of the platform, the high threshold to engagement could also intentionally signal to institutions to "engage at your own risk."
Some see the risk of engagement as potential extinction. I personally think that older generations used to being in power (Gen X and up), and a rising generation expecting to have power (Millennials), now enters a phase where top-down culture creation has been flipped on its head; while the generations in power have spent years trying to use their authority to resist the younger generations' (inevitable) cultural evolution, now, the evolvers have the power, and the powerful aren't taking that well.
Therefore, I see the risk of non-engagement, irrelevance, as much more real and likely than potential extinction; never before have the risks of sitting on the sidelines been greater.
Lots of research points to Gen Z and young Millennials getting information from a diverse and different array of channels. Here's pandemic-era research from WEF, which I've organized into a little chart:
There are a few oversimple ways to read this data for communications and marketing professionals:
If you aren't finding authentic ways to participate in video streaming platforms or gaming, your marketing to Gen Z and young Millennials may not be all that effective.
Reconsider the effectiveness of online press re: reach toward Gen Z and young Millennials. It's hard to remember a time in the early digital era when "blogs" only mattered to a third of news consumers, but by now, for the majority of the digital era, reaching online media outlets comprised a central part of modern PR and marketing. We have reached the point where that assumption should be challenged.
The highest ranking media consumption channel among Boomers is none; that raises serious concern about how to reach them.
Also, there are just…so many channels, many of which seem new, amorphous, or "different". This shift differs from the shift to online media; even though that shift seemed radical, the wide majority of the shift for communications professionals simply moved journalists and their output from print to online. It's obviously much more nuanced than that, but, by and large, while the tools have changed, many PR pros pitch journalists, research angles, etc., just like their forebearers did 30 years ago.
This change brings atomization of influence; it shifts some power to new forms of content creators; it removes power from messengers. It is different.
For many staffs, just "doing more" isn't an answer, due to priorities, time or talent constraints, or some combination. Also, whereas pitching media and posting brand content is usually/mostly free, participating in some of the new channels comes with hard costs (sponsorship, influencer agreements, content creation, paid amplification) and soft costs (relinquishing control of the message, the vulnerability of entering a new platform).
So, now what? Suggestions:
Hire and empower people that look like your target audience. Advertising and PR in the US is overwhelmingly white and Gen X-and-above. (see Advertising, public relations, and related services near the bottom; 61% of the industry is aged Gen X and up.)
While the BLS data says 32% of the industry is aged between 25 and 34, it's safe to assume the lions share is closer to 34 than 25. For many reasons, it's not practical to hire a ton of Gen Z to do all marketing, PR and content creation. But: do you have any? How do you glean input from them, and do you take it seriously?
Hiring non-white people, however, is practical, solvable, has been shown to have a positive impact on the bottom line, can help teams avoid tone deaf disasters, and has been talked about for quite some time. Don't just hire non-white employees, but make the workplace inclusive; give them a seat at the table; invest in training to help your existing workforce learn, non-defensively, about biases and practices that contribute to disinclusion.
And when they work on the challenge of better reaching younger cohorts of your target audience…take their advice seriously. Ask their opinions on your creative and your campaigns. Reconsider how you make decisions to include their POV; of course, if you have few non-white and younger employees on your team, their opinions might rarely be part of the majority or the consensus. When they dissent, how do you take that into consideration?
Work backwards from where the target audience gets their information. Meet them where they are. (I say this a lot.)
Even for teams without robust research arms, there's enough research out there to form even a basic understanding of your target audience before you embark on any kind of campaign or launch. In my opinion, this step is crucial and should not be overlooked or assumed. With so many channels, niche interests being explored, shifts in content, etc., there's a good chance you will learn something in your research that either challenges an existing belief you have, or provides you an insight you didn't know.
Depending on the desired endpoint, this process could include a number of questions, but should at least include:
Where are they, physically?
What kind of info do they like?
Where do they get this information? (on what platform?)
What is the preferred content style of that platform?
How do they spend their time, on the platform and otherwise?
Who do they listen to/trust?
What is their level of trust in us, currently?
What would make them trust in / believe in our mission?
What is the prioritization of things I want to ask them to do?
These questions are not new, or breakthrough. But, they represent change, expense, risk, and vulnerability. During my time in the public sector, I had the honor of working on a successful influencer relations campaign. The concept was simple: who are we trying to reach? What do they listen to? What do we want them to do? How do we align with voices they trust? We saw real, exciting results, which could not have been achieved without some risk-taking, and working with experts who had insights and tools that we did not.
Based on my conversations, the ultimate risk of such work might be relinquishing control of the message: hiring people (influencers) to take your message, and say it in another way that they think best reaches their target audience. Remember the data. Gen Z prefers content created by their peers, not by brands. If you find influencers whose personality and audience match your target audience, their authentic message should resonate.
I mentioned in the Marketplace interview that I expect this kind of communications and marketing to become steadily more common. Again, I don't consider that breakthrough thinking; younger generations have, for decades, popularized new information pathways that become more mainstream as the generation ages. The maturation of brand marketing (thus people getting set in certain ways), the risks of errors in the current climate, and the evolution in power dynamics in this era make change feel harder, but this isn't anything that hasn't happened before; some in the current executive cohort may have cut their cloth during the last information revolution, when digital and social media seemed like outlandish fads themselves. And that was barely 20 years ago or less.
Go niche, not wide. Given a wide array of content options, and growing up digitally native, "Gen Z has identified infinite, disparate, and chaotic combinations of tastes and consumer choices, mining from a limitless array of niche subcultures and milieus. Their eclecticism is more far-reaching and complicated than ’90s or 2000s young people, even more omnivorous, so it’s harder for corporate executives to market a one-size-fits-all youth culture to, or for so-called cool hunters to narc on them.”
There is no one-size-fits-all, or single channel or singular media moment that qualifies as "mass Gen Z". Authenticity + channel dispersion = get specific in who you are trying to reach and what they care about. While this is an exercise in research, it's also an exercise in authenticity and vulnerability. The more niche you go, the more likely that posers get exposed.
Can you show up within a niche community and add to the discussion in a meaningful way? Can you contribute something real, something differentiated, beyond token gestures?
If you worry you have no topics where you confidently think you can show up authentically and meaningfully, revisit your company's mission and values. What do you stand for; anything there that can help? Who do you serve/help; anything there that can help?
Don't get caught up in the platform: What do you want people to feel? What do you want them to do with that feeling? THAT is the important question to answer before you ask whether you need to start a TikTok page or whether you need your brand to appear in Fortnite. So many brands rush to a platform out of FOMO or misunderstanding before they understand what they want to do. You may be surprised at the options available to you, like local nanoinfluencers or hyperspecific websites.
Try a small step. Talk to an influencer who aligns with your target audience; many are happy to have an honest conversation for a serious inquiry. Barring that, talk to an expert, like an influencer relations agency if that's what you want to learn more about. Heck, talk to me. But don't do nothing!