Where is Gen Z?

WHAT ARE THE KIDS UP TO?

One of the few things that doesn’t change in the world of marketing is the desire to define entire generations by a simple set of characteristics. A study by Horizon Media into the habits of Gen Z revealed what should have been obvious all along: There is no single “pop culture,” especially today.

Dating back as far as the Baby Boomer generation, agencies have loved to put bold statements into their pitch decks about how they’ve defined the kids these days like “Gen X is rebellious,” “Millenials crave authenticity,” and “Gen Z wants to change the world.”

Imagine how ridiculous that is for a moment. Lets give those deck-makers the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were referring only to people between 19-25 who live in major cities in America. While that is already a small slice of the total generation, it’s easy to see that it is still filled with a wide array of cultures, preferences, and behaviours. A kid from the Northwest who grew up fishing, camping, and boating is going to be nearly indistinguishable from a kid the same age who spent their formative years in the city, surrounded by retail experiences and masses of people. That is not even to address the differences in interests, ambitions, and social connections.

It has never made sense to define millions of people with blanket statements, but because of the ability that social media gives us to see those differences in realtime, for the first time we are starting to appreciate that there is no single answer to the question: What are the kids up to these days?

The researchers at Horizon Media have identified 5 different categories of online content, which they’re calling “sectors,” and 12 subcultures within those categories. Even a casual scroll through TikTok and Instagram will reveal that these are just a few of the hundreds — possibly thousands — of subcultures that exist, but it's a start.

The report is an easy read, and worth your time to flip through, and the most important conclusion it draws (and the reason that we’re sharing it with you here) is that marketers who try to reach Gen Z as if it were a monolithic culture are going to waste a lot of money. Instead — and this is the exciting part — the research tells us that that the way to create connections with younger audiences is to figure out what they’re into, what types of content they’re consuming, and where they’re interacting with each other.

While that may not sound revolutionary, it’s a fundamentally different way of thinking about marketing strategy. There are no more movie or music stars who an entire generation universally showers with their love and attention. There is no single message that will ignite and inspire a generation. Instead, we all have the opportunity to figure out the intersection between what our audience is into and what we have to offer. It’s the difference between partnering with a influencer to run Facebook ads targeting 19-25 year olds across the US, versus identifying the fledgling pickleball tournament that’s just getting started, and offering our sponsorship resources to make it 10x more fun, then telling that story across all of our channels.

When we recognize that not only is there no single pop culture among kids these days, but that there never really has been, it opens our creativity up to the types of content, partnerships, and meaningful activations that people will actually care about.

Although, as is the theme of today, your perspective may be much different than mine. If you have a few minutes to flip through the findings, I’d love to hear your interpretation and if/where it differs from my take.

" When compared to millennials, Gen Z is less trusting of what they consume on social media. Increasingly, the cohort will use social media as a place to research brands they are considering buying from to see who tags them in posts, what other customers are saying and whether or not they tick boxes in other causes they care about, namely sustainability and diversity — the two causes Gen Z cares about the most " — GWI study

TIKTOK REFUSES TO BE IGNORED

By this point, you have probably become aware of the newest kid on the block - you have have even tried it out for yourself, but a recent piece by the Washington Post reveals that the impact of TikTok is significantly greater than most people even realize, and that it has not-so-quietly become a content mainstay for pretty much anything that you might be interested in. Most importantly, the article answered a few burning questions that many of us have had about the rising social media star:

HOW POPULAR IS IT, REALLY?

TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google. No app has grown faster past a billion users, and more than 100 million of them are in the United States, roughly a third of the country. The average American viewer watches TikTok for 80 minutes a day — more than the time spent on Facebook and Instagram, combined.

ISN'T IT JUST A BUNCH OF DANCING VIDEOS?

That was how it got started, but the amazing thing about the internet is how users make every new tools and platform their own. You can’t stop creativity online, and today people refer to the various sub-categories that they stumble onto as “corners of TikTok. Basically, if there are people interested in something offline, there is a community posting about it on TikTok. Here are just a few examples:

• One in three TikTok viewers in the United States regularly use it as a source of news - The Washington Post’s TikTok account has more than a million followers.
• Videos of people sharing/talking about/debating their favorite books, many of them with the hashtag #BookTok, which has 78 billion views, helped make 2021 one of the publishing industry’s best sales years ever.
• There is fishing (#fishtok, 14 billion views), farming (#farmtok, 7 billion) and role-playing (#medievaltiktok, 4 billion)
• There are TikTok cops, lumberjacks, nurses and nuns.
• There is domestic bliss (#cleantok) and chaos (#cluttercore).
• And, this being the Internet, of course there are TikTok animals. The Chipmunks of TikTok account, with 15 million followers, features Bubba, Dinky, SpongeBob, Stinky, and other chipmunks gobbling up hazelnuts.

TikTok is leaning into these uses, too. So far it has tested features for interactive mini-games and résumés; started selling concert tickets; built a live-streaming business used for meal-cooking showcases, lottery scratch-offs, tarot readings and apartment tours; and tested a shopping feature that would let viewers buy products from QVC-style live streams in a few quick taps.

WHAT ARE THE ADVERTISING OPPORTUNITIES?

TikTok has been offering its model of behavioural tracking and algorithmic suggestion to advertisers, promising them a way to know which ads people find most compelling without having to ask. Already the company’s ad revenue tripled this year to $12 billion. In the United States, the cost to advertisers for TikTok’s premium real estate — the first commercial break a viewer sees in their feed, known as a “TopView” — has jumped to $3 million a day.

The second-most popular way to advertise on TikTok is to partner directly with creators, and the company has found a way to formalize that as well by introducing a giant catalogue of people for brands to partner with, known as the Creator Marketplace. The service is invite-only, and creators have to post frequently if they want a chance to get paid.

There are security concerns, of course, given the company’s direct link to Chinese-based company Bytedance, but so far the content and curation on TikTok are just too enticing for brands and creators to pass up.

Read about The Rise of TikTok

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting