Spring 2017 Q2 • 2021


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DON’T SELL TO THEM; REPEAT: IT’S NOT ABOUT SELLING This is the biggest shift marketers need to make, and it’s a bit of a hairpin turn. But get it right and it’s your ticket to Gen Z. “They don’t want to buy from a brand; they want to partner with it,” says Jones. “If a brand is too sales-y, it’s a dead turnoff. They want a relationship. They want honesty.” What does that look like? Not your classic ad. To start, think of interactivity, fun, video, and mobile phones—which 55 percent of Gen Z spends at least five hours a day on, according to the Center for Generational Kinetics. Benoit Vatere founded Mammoth Media


three years ago specifically to reach Gen Z. Its two main mobile apps have reached 80 million downloads so far and have completed successful native integrations for brands such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Skype, and Starbucks. Using the fiction-based, microstory-telling app Yarn, Mammoth Media partnered with Dunkin’ to launch an interactive campaign that targeted Gen Z by telling the story of a group of friends who were transformed into


their costumes on Halloween night. On the app, you could follow the friends’ journey and help them choose paths along the way. “The Halloween story had the characters trying to navigate around in a fictitious town while crazy things were happening,” Vatere says. “And guess where they finally met? At a Dunkin’ Donuts.” On Wishbone, Mammoth’s polling app, they ran a campaign asking users to vote on the color of their favorite drink. One of the options was in a Starbucks cup, but Starbucks was not specifically named in the survey. “That’s how Gen Z likes it,” Vatere says. “If they see it in the story, they will remember the brand.”


Eric Jones also points to crowdsourcing


initiatives like the one LEGO runs, which invites fans to vote on and submit ideas for new LEGO products, even compensating winners. Social media campaigns can be effective too. Axe, the fragrance company, launched the #PraiseUp campaign in response to young men’s struggles with stereotypes around masculinity. The campaign encouraged guys to post short


videos of themselves giving positive shout- outs to people they knew. “Axe was only mentioned in the tags,” says Jones. “It caught on like wildfire.”


INSTEAD OF THE CUSTOMER, FOCUS ON COMMUNITY For Dahye Jung at Sid Lee, the creative agency behind #PraiseUp, that campaign tapped into a critical idea. “It wasn’t the brand taking center stage but rather [Axe] inviting the community to create content around an important discussion that was already happening,” says the strategy analyst. “Gen Z is all about communities. They think about their identities in terms of what communities [they] belong to—both in digital and [in] real life.” To reframe Sid Lee’s marketing around this concept, the agency launched an internal initiative called the Belong Project, which measures strength of communities and how brands might leverage attachment to them. “The aha moment we had was that brands have to take a chill pill,” says Jung. “They can’t just go into this


Social Media Platforms Gen Z Checks on a Daily Basis 65% 62%


70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0


Instagram Source: Business Insider Survey YouTube 51% 34% 23% 22% 14% 11% 10% 8% Snapchat Facebook Twitter


Facebook Messenger


Pinterest TikTok Discord Tumblr


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