Gen Z Marketing is Crazy

During my 20 odd years in marketing and branding I can tell you a lot has changed since first getting my teeth into consideration funnels, engagement rates, audience loyalty and all that jazz. Looking back, it felt like each era of marketing was defined by the generation with the purchasing power. Although a lot of aspects have remained constant, such as pricing, service and range, the voice for the marketing campaigns has been defined by the generation with the purchasing power at the time.

With the boomers it was all about quality over quantity. With Gen Y it was more about family and community. With Millennials it was all about consciousness towards the environment. But now there’s a new kid on the block…Gen Z. As this newest generation of consumers enter the market, faced with the constant perma-crisis rhetoric, with the cost-of-living crisis getting worse year on year, inflation going through the roof and the general air of doom and gloom shoved down our throats by mainstream media, these guys have used marketing as a cope. And I’ve got to sort of applaud them in a way, because a lot of it is mental.

It's kind of like they just said fuck it. The world is burning anyway, we’re not going to have kids or ever be able to afford a car let alone a house. We’ll never own anything outright ourselves and get told to be happy about it, but now we’re the ones calling the shots in the marketing world so sit back and enjoy the madness.

The Gen Z Marketing Case Study

Just check out Tony from LC Signs. This guy has gone super viral with his no-shits-given attitude, stitching together bonkers clips from the peak wokeness of yester-year to drive home is marketing message. I didn’t even know I wanted a LED sign until I stumbled across this guy. And perhaps this is a sign that the masses are waking up from that DEI nightmare we’ve all had to tip-toe through for the past decade, going back to plain old, in-your-face marketing with a “don’t-give-a-fuck” attitude. Are you offended? No, you’re just insecure.

It's proven so popular that even big names over here in sunny old England such as Curry’s have started to cash in on the trend, regardless of the feedback because at the end of the day, any engagement is good engagement. Could you imagine the board of Curry’s from ten years ago looking at their social feed today? Whether you’re in the market for a new microwave or not, it’s done the one thing that good advertising should do, and that’s getting people talking about it and I’d wager my mortgage that this all came about from a bunch of Gen Z social media execs saying, “fuck it, let’s get weird”.

Perhaps we can blame Tiktok for fueling all this glorious madness, where whacky shorts were once the realm of the online weirdos, big brands have decided to join the club and now with it’s future “sort of” secure in the US and Trump giving it the green light, perhaps we’ll see more left field marketing.

But does any of this actually boost the company’s sales? Well, using LC Signs as a case study, we can see a big increase to web traffic in September 2023, around the same time good ol’ Tony graced us with his social media presence and then exponentially more recently when he went crazy  on TikTok. I’m not sure what the conversion rate for this traffic would be, and although most of this might be people curious about the brand, there’s no doubt a few of these will be genuine leads. Let’s not forget, this is also all free advertising for LC signs, so there is minimal cost per acquisition.

So, Gen Z now have the mic and will be dictating what we see for the majority of advertising now. Personally, I can’t wait to see what they get up to. It’s like watching a mudslinging match in real time. No pressure Generation Alpha.