Restrategize Your Social Media Marketing For Gen Z
Brands are surrounded by buzz words when it comes to refining their Gen-Z social media marketing strategy. Inclusivity, authenticity, diversity, and community have become key phraseology for brands trying to personalize their Gen Z appeal in a post-pandemic and more socially conscious climate.
As brands dig into the data around Gen Z’s purchasing power, the importance of their social media presence cannot be understated. A recent survey conducted by Barnes & Noble College Insights of more than 1,000 college students aged 18–24 found that 72 percent of respondents were more likely to buy from brands that they follow on social media. Amongst Gen Z Instagram users, 47 percent of Gen Zers who follow brands have purchased something directly through the platform. Gen Z respondents were also 22 percent more likely than other generations to unfollow a brand online. True to their status as digital natives, Gen Z’s purchase power is driven by brand perception.
There are four key deliverables brands need to get right to optimize their Gen Z social media marketing: genre, audience, tone, and timing. Consider how the following brands hit (or missed) based on how well they understood these four factors.
Hits
WENDY’S: “SUPER WENDY’S WORLD”
Recap: Back in 2019, Wendy’s dropped its namesake character into Fortnite to destroy all the freezers in a special “Food Fight” edition of Epic’s hit Battle Royale game. Throughout 2021, their SUPER WENDYS WORLD campaign set a new standard for how brands get involved in gaming.
“Super Wendy’s World” was a campaign that worked over the course of 2021 to infiltrate a variety of popular video games and stream it all on the brand’s Twitch channel. Wendy was in Minecraft smashing ice blocks. In Animal Crossing, she sold freezers to the lowest bidders. She was in Street Fighter, Super Mario Maker 2, and Super Smash Brothers. Overall, gamers spent more than 9.8 million minutes exploring the Wendy’s video-game universe. Wendy’s became the first verified restaurant on Twitch and ranked in the top 1% of all streamers on the platform.
Why did this hit? Big reach in connecting different communities through more of a personalized experience where the user can seamlessly integrate themselves into the brand without being told “this is is an ad.” They cross-pollinated genres (Gen-Z, fast food, and gaming) with a simple & inclusive cross-platform strategy to deliver a unique and personal experience (playing as Wendy in a video game) which shows they understand their audience.
ASOS: Making fast fashion more inclusive and accessible
ASOS has separated itself in the fast fashion industry amongst Gen Z as a brand that lets the clothes (and its micro-influencers) do the talking. Their #asseenonme campaign has created a community for young consumers, and has been circulated on social media by influencers repping the brand’s product. ASOS also offers a particularly unique gender fluidity through both its rotating inventory and also its Instagram and TikTok channels where they have an audience of 14 million users collectively. Their social content consistently performs well because of its raw, unedited street feel, which checks big boxes for Gen Z shoppers who value inclusivity and accessibility both online and off.
Glossier’s Path From Blog To Ecommerce To Brick and Mortar
Glossier was one of the first social commerce brands that immediately performed well amongst millennial and Gen Z consumers when they opened their online store in October 2014. They were also early pioneers of simplifying or “stripping down” the beauty industry which was essential in building brand trust amongst young digital natives who value experiences and products that encourage them to embrace their more natural and unfiltered selves. Glossier started out with a pure e-commerce business model which allowed them to acquire customers at a low cost through its content and social. They were also able to offer their audience products at affordable price points by cutting out middlemen retailers. The brand launched their first brick and mortar location in New York in 2016 and made a smart choice to invest in a Instagram-worthy interior that drew both young crowds by the thousands and also prompted a share-worthy experience that blew up engagement on social media.
Misses
Facebook’s “Introducing Meta” Ad Dropped The Ball On Rebranding (audience)
Recap: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented a six-minute walk-through in October 2021 about why the company was rebranding itself and its overall agenda into the Metaverse.
Why did it miss? The presentation was awkward enough, but the most obvious flop was why the company “agreed” to have Zuckerberg–arguably its most controversial figure–be the mascot of this rebrand. This arguably defeated the purpose of a rebrand, as putting Zuckerberg in front of it merely just changed the name and not the actual perception of the brand. As a consequence, brand trust actually decreased in the company following their change in name. As Facebook announced its rebrand to Meta, its trustworthy score reportedly dropped from 11 percent to 6.2 percent.
Biggest Miss: Audience. Facebook already faced an uphill battle in appealing to Gen Z with a platform that visually has almost no appeal to the mobile users who prefer minimalistic, short-form video. They’re also a prime example of how brand credibility (or lack thereof) can push younger consumers away from your platform. Meta was overdue for a rebrand, but making Zuckerberg the face of that rebrand only further hurt the disconnect between the brand and its rapidly shrinking Gen Z audience.
Burger King’s Tweet On Women’s Day Strikes The Wrong Tone
Recap: Burger King faced big backlash after they tweeted: “Women belong in the kitchen” on International Women’s Day 2021. While the tweet was meant to give their cooking scholarship for female employees a humorous twist, it resulted in some flame-grilled rage on social media from people who didn’t appreciate the ‘sexist’ joke. The fast food chain was then forced to justify its tweet with follow-up posts, one of which read: “If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender ratio.” Unfortunately for Burger King, when you have to explain the joke, that usually means it wasn’t funny. This is also a great example of how brands can overcorrect in trying to find the right tone on social media, as competitor brands like Arby’s have built a meme following by building a more edgy brand voice that borders on nihilist. Without context and given the timing of Burger King’s decision, the tone from this campaign was a huge miss.
Bad Timing: Robinhood’s 2021 Super Bowl Amidst GameStop Controversy
Financial services company, Robinhood, faced extreme backlash when it celebrated amateur investors in a 2021 Super Bowl ad amid a flurry of bad press. While the concept that anyone can be an investor has been a constant in Robinhood’s branding, their controversial stock restrictions around GameStop undermined the entire brand and turned off a lot of the brand’s younger users. Following the GameStop controversy, the Robinhood app received an influx of one-star reviews on the Google Play store, causing the app to average the lowest rating. The timing of this ad was its biggest miss. When it comes to marketing and taking up such a huge spot, it’s crucial not to be at the centre of a wild and untamed PR backlash. The Super Bowl commercial touched a nerve with many because it didn’t address any of the controversy surrounding the brand, making it awkwardly timed and out of touch. In the long term, this also presents a problem in trying to build or maintain credibility amongst Gen Z who often use peer reviews to make final decisions about who they buy from.
(Genre): Brands Who Missed When They Tried To Insert Themselves In A Viral Story Like West Elm Caleb.
Recap: West Elm Caleb is the name of an alleged serial dater who dated and ghosted a significant amount of women in New York City via the online dating app Hinge. The story went viral in January across Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. Its quick spread led to an overwhelming consensus that reactions from brands like Hellmann’s, Ruggable, Daily Harvest and other brands who chimed in were self-promotional, awkward and downright cringe. Brands trying to insert themselves into a viral narrative has become a meme genre of its own, coined by catchphrases like “Silence, brand,” often used in response to brands on social media attempting to appear relatable. In the example of West Elm Caleb, brands without any real connection to the story put themselves in this cringe category. Hellmann’s, a mayonnaise and dressing brand, tried to jump on the bandwagon with tweets that aimed to center their own products but were clearly a stretch, like “West Elm Caleb thinks mayo is spicy.” Daily Harvest and Ruggable had similar swing and misses, trying to bridge the gap between a viral story and their products.
In today’s social media landscape, brands are desperate to one up each other in effort to win over a generation of socially-conscious consumers that are progressively anti-corporations. But when brands participate in fleeting trends to which they have no connection and are overly reliant on humor as a social strategy.
Social media has eliminated some of the boundaries between brand and consumer but has also bred more volatile buying signals. Gen Z shops across channels, with an appetite for higher-quality items and an eagerness to stay on top of cultural trends. The brands trying to define their social media strategy for Gen Z need to do more than change their optics to convert users into followers into buyers. This nuance in brand voice is difficult to execute without a real-time understanding of the audience and trends they are constantly moving between.
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