Where You’re Going Wrong When Marketing to Gen-Z with Jordan Mulvaney

Jordan Mulvaney is a strategist at Mischief, with over a decade of experience across social, PR and strategy. He leads Mischief’s youth culture division cl!ckbait, channelling unique gen z research into insight-fuelled strategy to help brands stay culturally irresistible. His methodologies are rooted in putting culture at the forefront to give brands a reason to belong.

He’s worked with brands such as adidas, Disney, Spotify, Pernod Ricard, REN Clean Skincare, Unilever, NARS, Simple Skincare, Lululemon, Hotels.com, Hinge, Lidl, Amazon and Samsung.

Jordan sat down with LBB to discuss why lore, attention, exclusivity and rewards are key to selling to gen-z.

Gen z has become less of an audience and more of a projection of what the PR and marketing industry thinks. Despite every brand trying to market at gen z, our recent report at Mischief + cl!ckbait found that 90% gen z are telling us brands still don't fully understand their lives.

Generalisations will always be made when looking at demographics, what happened with millennials is happening to gen z and will happen again with gen alpha. Culture is obsessed with generational differences because it allows older demographics to reflect on ‘their time’ with nostalgia. Something that has become its own tired marketing tactic thanks to the internet. But gen z has become a version of a demographic, which is now a projection, a homogenous cohort with a convenient story that allows brands to feel good about saying the right things without doing the hard work of actually being useful to them. Gen z don’t need you to understand them as an entire unit; they need you to give them something worth buying into.

I’ve worked with multiple brands whose primary objective was to build a community of young consumers. Obviously, that’s fine, but don't think you can do that through trend jumping and internet slang. I find brands are scared of going niche to appeal to the mainstream. I get it, that’s a harder sell when budgets are tight as fuck, but look at how niche a Labubu was years ago, then it becomes the must-have item worldwide, doing the impossible and appealing to the internet’s version of ‘everyone’. Obviously, the pendulum swung and now they’re ‘uncool’ but their time will return; watch this space. Brands are frightened of being niche because they think scale has to come first. Culture often works in the opposite direction.

The industry has spent years trying to make brands culturally relevant to young people, but if everyone is using the same signals of relevance, the signals stop being relevant. If we’re all speaking the same language with the same references we edge further into creating nothingness, not connection.

We’ve lost the element of fun and curiosity about young audiences. What works with this audience is risk taking, but nobody wants to take risks for fear of backlash, failures or wasting resources. Brands would almost rather assume who the audience is, and assume why they'd want their perfect product pitch, rather than get into the really messy work of understanding. Again, I get it, avoiding risk is top of the list for stakeholders, but if you cannot allow your brand to live and breathe in the world without your control you’re spoiling the fun.

Fun is one of the mechanisms through which gen z participates in culture, not all the time, but it’s vital. In the socio-economic shitstorm we’re living in, gen z chooses joy through the unserious nature of being a human. Just because the budgets are gone doesn’t mean the fun has to go with it.

Don't ask ’how old are they?’ first, but ask ’what are they trying to do in the context of the brand?’

What is deemed a ‘child’s toy’ often has a high percentage of millennials buying into it too. What’s referred as something ‘for young mums’ might have a much better use on a single 20-something decorating their home.

Give young people something useful; their money is also tight and they want to spend it in the right places. Reward the ones who do show up and buy your product. After they purchase, what else is in it for them?

We have the following framework we use at cl!ckbait called L.A.E.R. when we want to target young consumers:

• Lore: Give people a story they can uncover and see themselves in
• Attention: Show up and benefit where their culture actually happens
• Exclusivity: Give them reasons to participate right now, not eventually
• Reward: Give participation a payoff beyond the transaction

That’s a start to target gen z (or gen z-minded people).

Any business that sees young people as a human and not as a wallet is making a good start.

Maybe the industry needs to stop asking ’how do we understand gen z?’ and start asking themselves ’What is it we are actually giving them?’