For all those marketers still questioning the “why” of social media, this one’s for you. An open letter from Gen Z, take it or leave it.
Over countless hours of consumer work with Gen Z, here’s a very honest take of what social media means for this segment. Their feed is their window into aspiration: the best life they imagine having, all at their fingertips to carefully curate. From the meta-desires of who they want to be, where they want to live and the lifestyle they dream of having, to the micro-details of where they want to eat next and what their dream wardrobe is. It’s all perfectly planned and fed to them on an hourly basis (conservatively).
As a brand, very simply put, your goal in this space needs to be to find your place in that vision. The moment you do, you change from being a product to a desire. And the rest is history. Every single KPI you measure has to relate to how far you’ve gotten in achieving this.
A very interesting BCG article talks about how the “roots of influence” are historic, with iconic figures setting standards for today’s “influencers”, with Chanakya being an example of a finfluencer and Cleopatra a beauty/fashion influencer. It’s interesting to think how the way we look at the world has been coloured by such icons for as long as humanity has existed.
My internship project was creating a content strategy for Dove, and it involved generating a very interesting influencer playbook for go-live content mandates. It’s interesting to see how far the social media landscape has come in two years. Now, templatising content and forcing scripts on influencers is universally agreed to be blasphemous. Content that truly influences is always-on (bursts are a no-no), outcome-tested, and gives creators utmost creative freedom (as a result of which product plugs have become very seamless, and it’s increasingly harder to distinguish between an ad and an organic piece). Brands are now focusing on building creator communities over one-off partnerships, and it’s this community engagement with their audiences that makes creators ambassadors.
We could have endless debates on the dangerously parasocial nature of creator-audience relationships and the trend-based homogenisation of Gen Z. As a consumer brand though, you can no longer ignore the influence of influencers.
