Gen Z Trends: The Future of Branded Content

Many of you content experts are asking us what is the future of branded content.

So, as Gen Z outnumbered millennials, making up 32% of the world’s 7.7 billion-person population, and they’ll soon reach full purchasing power, why not trying to foresight through their eyes, shall we?



For this month’s Trending chapter, we’re going to explore a few case studies that will hopefully inspire you and cross-pollinate your strategies with additional young vibes. Please let me know if you want to dive deeper into anything mentioned here or if there’s anything not clear, happy to chat.
 

David Dobrik’s approach to brands

YouTuber Dobrik has a cool way to promote brands to his massive and highly engaged young audience.

“When I give away anything, like a car or a trip or anything, it’s always partnered with a brand, so instead of taking the money from the brand, I give it to the person that needs it. […]

It’s the best thing to do when you’re collaborating with brands, because everyone hates watching branded videos, but now when they see I have a brand in my video, they go ‘oh, something cool’s gonna happen, someone is about to get a gift or something cool’, so I feel like that’s an interesting approach to it.”


 

By playing with brands and embedding them in the story as “characters”, as opposed to promoting them, David doesn’t bore his fans (who would skip the ads otherwise, as Zoomers do with pretty much any ad). He rather entertains them. The result is clearly in reach and engagement, but there’s more: the perception of the brand is one of a superhero that helps the audience’s icon making people happy.

Stories that involve surprise, identification (the kids at home identify with the “normal people lucky enough to meet Dobrik and his generosity”), and selling a dream to millions of targeted viewers have way more impact than boring ads.




 

An alternative to Super Bowl TV spending: Chipotle's TikTok challenge

Brands throw big budgets into the Super Bowl, so it might be legit to question how far TV big-spending gets them when they’re trying to reach Gen Z.

An interesting case was Chipotle’s Justin Bieber challenge on TikTok. The “TikTok Timeout” challenge starred singer Justin Bieber and big social influencers like Avani, Alex Warren, David Dobrik, Zach King and Brittany Broski promoting Chipotle’s new delivery service available on Sundays.

The experience was designed to be embedded both in the game and in the platform rituals: the influencers shared sponsored content every time a team called timeout during the Super Bowl, and the TikTok community was urged to create their own “February Free Delivery Sundays” ads set to Bieber’s latest song “Yummy.”

“The second screen is essential to the modern-day football viewing experience for Gen-Z,” said Chris Brandt, Chief Marketing Officer. “TikTok Timeout allows us to show up where our target audience is and optimize the entertainment value of the evening by delivering them fresh content featuring their favourite creators.”



Some numbers:

• The campaign reached more than 95 million people on TikTok during the Super Bowl (source: Mobile Marketer)
• It also generated 2.5 million engagements after Bieber shared details with his more than 230 million fans on Twitter and Instagram
• To put things in perspective, the Super Bowl audience drew 102 million viewers on Fox (source: The Wall Street Journal)

It’s not the first time that Chipotle experiments with branded hashtag challenges on TikTok, and by promoting its free delivery service during a demand peak moment such as the Super Bowl, the brand opened an alternative channel for campaigns to reach their target audience at big events.

Question is: is that move more effective than spending $5.6 million on a 30-second TV commercial while trying to reach Gen Zers?

We don’t have the data yet, but this is definitely one of the most interesting examples of second screen campaign to compete with traditional advertisements running around the big game (no, it’s not the only example, in case you were wondering). 
 

Meanwhile, the actual Super Bowl

It turns out, the peak of branded content — Super Bowl ads — are a thing for Gen Zers too, at least in the US (much, much less in Europe and UK).

Some young people go as far as thinking that the ads ARE the actual real deal during the Super Bowl, just as the midtime show and all the rituals involved.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Zoomers perceive the brands and their (expensive) stories as relevant, nor does it mean the ads are effective. So, how did this year’s Super Bowl go?

While you’re waiting for actual data (hence: brand growth and sales), you could give a look at some clues on perception. This is not a full analysis, though, and it’s only meant to inspire you and open a window to young vibes. By any means, we’re trying to simplify the Super Bowl advertisement outcome in a few lines subsection of a free digest ;)

If you want to have a feel of how young generations react to super bowl branded content, there’s probably no quicker way than study their un-filtered reactions while watching the ads. Sure, creators on YouTube are aware of being in front of a big audience, which influences their way to show the reaction — as my social sciences colleagues remind me. But hey, YouTube is one of the best resources you can investigate quickly, for free.



Award-winning multi platform media FBE is big in reaction videos, and trusted by Gen Zers, so I’d say that “Generations React To Super Bowl Commercials 2020” is a good place to start.

I’m spoiling the quote of the year right here: “Dude, old people are the greatest marketing tool in the world”.

Ok, Zoomer. :D

Reactions aside, YouTube is, in most cases, the best platform for analysing young audiences’ perceptions of video content. This includes Super Bowl ads, so we’ve picked for you the most popular video in the target audience and came out with a couple of insights:

• 😕 The #babynut campaign was awkward for Zoomers too.
• 😢 Google made them cry as much as it made us cry, and it was a winner
• 💞 They associated the Snickers ad song with the “Let it Grow” song in The Lorax, which generated a nostalgia moment
• 💣 Sam Elliot’s moustache was the real star of the Doritos commercial
• 👑 They loved how Tide’s Super Bowl ad was coming back during the game and the other commercials, ’cause it felt “like a story” and it was funny’. Quite memorable, as a result.

Now, if you have time, go and analyse all the conversational territories in YouTube (all the channels, videos and influencers talking about Super Bowl ads) and you’ll have a pretty legit idea of what Gen Z is thinking about this year’s Super Bowl brands and their content. Unnecessary spoiler: Pringles & Rick and Morty marriage is a big winner among Zoomers. 
 

Bringing some inspiring UGC content to Adland

And to close this, just a few more ideas that come from our Gen Z trendsetters and could quite easily become viral branded content among young audiences. 

In all cases, they are not promotional content, but we feel they should be.

🠞💡 Nike Butterfly. “When you a bug, but you still know ball is life.”

(cit. TheMajesticJewnicorn on Imgur). Source.



🠞💡 MCDONALDS HACK CHECK. The Best Way to Carry Chicken McNuggets. Original source. You can also watch a whole Lifehacker video here.



🠞💡 The Airpod proposal. Watch the extract here or the whole video here.


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This is part of YAD — Understanding Young Audiences Digest: a free monthly digest on young audiences for VOD and TV professionals. We’ve analysed millions of data points and we don’t mind sharing some of them — if this could help channels and commissioners to reach Gen Z, by understanding their needs, behavioural traits and intrinsic cultural values. 

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