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Gen Z broke the marketing funnel — the assumed customer purchase journey that has long been seen as the gold standard for marketing strategies. Now, brands are faced with “chaos”, and successful product roll-outs that speak to the next generation often follow a non-linear, rule-breaking path. That was a central theme at the recent Vogue Business and Archrival cocktail party in Austin, Texas on 10 March, where Archrival’s Ben Harms and Tapestry’s Alice Yu shared data and anecdotes about the new Gen Z playbook with Vogue Business senior innovation editor Maghan McDowell. Guests included delegates from Estée Lauder, Stitch Fix, Amazon, Apple and Snapchat.
During the event, Harms, who is chief growth officer at the youth culture agency, debunked a number of Gen Z assumptions, and shared highlights from a recent Vogue Business report — which is grounded in Archrival’s research — outlining how Gen Z’s preferences and behaviours differ from those of millennials. For example, despite reports of so-called “influencer fatigue” — whereby consumers have become disillusioned with social media stars who promote products — Gen Z is more inclined to look to influencers for trends. According to Archrival research, 51 per cent of Gen Zs believe social media influencers create new trends, versus 36 per cent of millennials
“The reality is, Gen Z is the first generation to be on social media since the youngest ages, and they can sniff out the BS faster than anyone. So influencers from a traditional pay-to-play model, it doesn’t work,” Harms said. “But we also know that trust has shifted dramatically in culture, and we’ve seen this huge shift from brands to people. They believe that trends are actually coming from people like them.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean they are running to shop on social platforms; they are more eager to experience physical stores and experiences, and they would much rather buy something in a store than on socials. Loyalty also looks different to Gen Z: teens (13 to 18) are especially likely to consider themselves loyal to a brand simply because they love it, even when they have no intent to purchase. “There’s a lot of paradox in young people today. If you want to build a real, authentic connection with Gen Z and create a meaningful relationship, you have to go beyond the purchase. You have to add value to their life,” Harms said. “They’re far more loyal to a sense of community and innovation than just being a consumer in your world.”
This extends to the metaverse, too. Only 32 per cent of Gen Zs believe a presence in the virtual world makes a brand “cool”, and that they don’t even think of it as “the metaverse”. Harms shared an anecdote, in which a Gen Z consumer, when responding to a question about the metaverse, simply said, “You just mean gaming, right?” In other words, it was the marketers who seemed more interested in the concept of the metaverse than Gen Z.
“They had just been there forever. It was just the world in which they played and created,” Harms said. “We as marketers wanted to make the metaverse happen, but there are already all these places they already live and breathe and exist, and it’s our job as brands to help amplify and pour into those communities in a way that adds value, versus trying to just get them to enter our world.” (It’s for this reason that Harms refers to it as the “beta-verse”.)
Tapestry’s Yu, who is VP of consumer insights, shared how the company’s brands Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman conduct research to better understand their Gen Z consumers, including intimate closet walk-throughs and interviews about their style. Tapestry brands use consumer insights to build “worlds” around their brands so that a bag isn’t simply a utilitarian item but rather something that is connected to a broader message and holds cultural relevance, Yu said. “It’s not just about the product. The product has to do what it needs to do. It’s high quality, it’s great. Consumers love the product. But then, the emotional connection that’s built around the storytelling, the brand, the experiences that the consumer is having is super important. That’s what’s connecting with Gen Z.”
Similar to Archrival, her work has also uncovered some contradictions about Gen Z. For example, for this generation, money is their top concern, and they’re also the first generation to save for retirement at a much younger age than previous ones, she said. On the other hand, they are also the generation that’s engaging with luxury at the youngest ages; on average, they make their first luxury purchase at just 15 years old.
Yu’s role also involves understanding cultural differences across various global cities. For example, one closet walk-through revealed that one consumer’s interpretation of “bright and colourful” was not the same as the researcher might have defined it, while other sets of interviews helped inspire and inform Coach’s “Wear Your Shine” and “Courage to Be Real” campaigns.
“We especially like to understand self-expression, which is very important for Coach. When we do surveys, the majority of people say self-expression is important to them, but what that looks like from place to place, consumer to consumer, is quite different. Talking to a Gen Z in the US is actually very different from talking to someone, maybe in a tier-two city in China,” she said. “Sometimes data is just a statistic, and you go, ‘Oh that’s interesting.’ But these different techniques allow us to dig deeper into the ‘whys?’ behind it.”
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