14


Q2 • 2021


FEATURE


community and be like, ‘Oh, let’s conquer this acquisition.’ They must be participants.” A poster child for doing it right is Fenty


Beauty, which joined Gen Z’s passion for inclusion and body positivity as America’s most diverse generation ever. “Of course they got a big push with Rihanna being the face of the brand,” says Jung. “But if you look at their social media and the way they engage with people, they’re not saying, ‘Buy this product.’ They’re saying like, ‘Hey, we love you for the way you are.’ And they just create the tools for this conversation to keep going on their platform.” The Fenty Beauty site has a feature called “You Did That” that showcases customers and how they created their beauty looks. And the Fenty BeautyHouse (it’s all virtual, for now) was created for beauty influencers to practice their makeup skills and share their results on social, specifically TikTok. “It’s like, bring your iPhone, make content, do what you want with it. So there’s a lot of trust involved,” says Jung. “It’s difficult for brands to do, but if they


f can let go of that control, their communitywill do it for them.”


RETHINK CELEBRITY Rihanna aside, fame is a tricky dance when it comes to selling to Gen Z. With many of thembeing YouTube stars and influencers themselves, Gen Zers are less wowed by Hollywood than previous generations. “Using George Clooney to sell your watch is not going to work unless he actually is known for wearing that watch and believing in it,” says Eric Jones. In fact, about 40 percent of Gen Zers aged 18 to 23 say their purchasing decisions are most influenced by social media, compared to 25 percent of millennials, according toMcKinsey & Company. Ryan Detert, founder of the agency Influential, which matches influencers to brands, says, “It’s very much about niche. We work with people like David Dobrik—I call him the Tom Hanks of influencers [with 14 million followers]—and the Rock and Chrissy Teigen- type talent. But that’s a fraction of our business. There are so many campaigns where you want to find a hometown hero who runs the cul-de- sac in the Midwest to do a local activation for a brand like Dick’s Sporting Goods. For Gen Z, it’s really about driving that engagement on an authentic level that happens only in those kinds of smaller micro pockets of influencing.”


ACT FAST: THE NAME OF THE GAME IS SPEED According to Forbes, researchers have clocked Gen Z’s attention span at eight seconds, which is a challenge for marketers. When you’re creating content, you’ve got to hook Gen Zers immediately with something visually arresting, emotionally powerful, or totally different. Otherwise, they’ll scroll. A marketing team also has to be nimble


and more plugged in than ever to the cultural chatter. Popeyes showed that if you can seize a fleeting moment, it can connect you forever with young customers. Bruno Cardinali, Popeyes head of marketing for North America, remembers it was 1:43 p.m. on August 19, 2019, when he got a message on WhatsApp. Chick-fil-A had tweeted a subtle put-down of Popeyes’ newly introduced chicken sandwich. Cardinali gathered his team on the fifth floor of the company’s Miami office to think of a retort. He also cued in his WhatsApp group, which had been set up to react to such things in real time. It had about 25 key people on it, including execs from Popeyes’ parent company, Restaurant Brands International (RBI); their attorneys; and creatives from their outside firms.


CASE STUDY


Making Civic Education Gen Z Friendly with Minecraft


Last year, with the presidential election coming up, the Sid Lee agency decided to partner with the nonprofit Rock the Vote to educate young people about the voting process. It’s not a particularly sexy topic, so they said, “Okay, let’s step back and not think as advertisers,” explains David Allard, Associate Creative Director for Sid Lee. Instead, they asked questions like “How do they think?” and “Where are they?” That led


When you’re creating content, you’ve got to hook Gen Zers immediately with something visually arresting, emotionally powerful, or totally different.


In 15 minutes, they had a retort. PR blessed


it. Legal approved it on the spot. And the team said, “Yeah, let’s fire it up.” “Y’all good?” Popeyes posted. And Twitter


exploded. Popeyes sold out of chicken sandwiches


in eight days. And the brand’s sales growth soared that quarter—42.3 percent, compared with 6.3 percent the previous year. It was a massive success.


LEAD WITH FUN, NOT INFORMATION Gen Z goes online for entertainment, the WP Engine survey found, unlike older generations who primarily go online to look for information. Creating interactive fun for this tech-savvy


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