Introduction & session overview on. Before I move on to tell you more about what this session is about, I have a few quick announcements to make. First is that we have the event survey live on the chat. So if you can see there is a button that says go to survey. Make sure that you click it, leave your feedback and let us know how we did. Obviously, we would want to know that because we want to improve the event experience for all of you. Uh because this is obviously a recurring event, an annual thing that we do every year. We want to do it in a better way for you folks. So, make sure that you leave your feedback over there as well and make sure that it’s uh it has a bit of detail so that we can understand what specific things that we need to improve on. Uh secondly, I want to announce that I want to renounce that we have the Cloud Awards live. Uh you can check those out in the pinned section in the print pinned comment on in in the chat. Uh so you can start submitting your your entries. And finally, I will be announcing the winners for all the giveaways after this session. So make sure that you stick around till the end of this session so you can so you can you know find out who is the winner and you might be the lucky one as well. Moving on to this session I have a very special guest with me today who is going to be discussing a very very special topic. So the theme of the event was all about how we can futureproof our online stores for the next generation of buyers and Grant McKenzis, the founder of Bad Brain Media, is going to be doing exactly that. He’s going to be teaching us about Gen Z buying habits and how to sell to a generation that doesn’t like spending. Grant, how are you? How you doing? And it’s so lovely to have you here. Yeah, thanks Moyes. I’m I’m really excited to be here. It seems like you’ve had uh three days of amazing sessions. I’m I’m very grateful to be uh to be one of those and to be the last one, no less. Yeah. So, I will uh give you the floor, Grant. Uh without any further ado, uh you have the floor. You can carry on with your presentation. Amazing. Thanks so much. Uh and thanks Digital Ocean for arranging this and thanks for everyone tuning in to watch. I’m really excited to take you through uh the session that I’ve put together on the topic that you can see on screen, Who is Gen Z? Gen Z buying habits and and how to sell to this generation that maybe do or don’t like spending. That’s something that we’ll go into. See the survey. Sorry guys, I could Is everything coming through? Okay. Just give me a yep so I can carry on. Guys, everything okay? Can you see my screen? Not hearing anything on my side. Just give me a thumbs up. Oh, cool. Okay, seeing some thumbs. I’m going to carry on. I love a technical hitch. Okay, cool. So, who am I uh before we go into it? My name’s Grant, as you’ve known. I’m a founder of Bad Brain. We are a consultancy specialized for the creator economy. So, among a few different things that we do, one of the main things is helping uh sort of small to medium businesses, startups, scaleups establish what their creator program looks like, what their influencer program looks like. and by the same token helping uh established brands, global brands um maybe kind of optimize their existing mature creator programs. We found that as the the market and the industry has matured uh some of the first movers to adopt creators have found themselves in a place where their work streams are tangled, there’s lots of different departments doing lots of different things. We help to optimize that. Uh, so based on that, based on what you know now about Bad Brain, you probably have an idea of uh of where I’m going to steer this ship in terms of Gen Z buying habits. Um, but let’s let’s kick it off and and see where we get to. I think first and foremost, it’s really important if we’re going to talk about generations or age ranges to kind of define who exactly we’re talking about. Um, it is one of, you know, generations are one of those things that we have a broad understanding of. people kind of roughly understand what we’re talking about when we say millennial or boomer or gen X. But there are nuances to um to kind of the exact classifications depending on what school of thought you subscribe to. Uh for this um purposes of this, we’re using the uh the Pew uh research institute in terms of what they define as Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and we’re saying that Gen Z are anyone born between the years of 1997 and 2012. Uh so that would make the youngest among Gen Z 13 today or the oldest 28. By the same token, while there’s actually a little bit of debate on when Gen Alpha started, but um broadly speaking, we’re we’re classifying Gen Alpha as anyone born between 2010 and 2024. So kind of hot on the heels of Gen Z, Gen Alpha are very soon about to start uh making their strides into the working world and into becoming consumers themselves. Um, so the the kind of topic at hand, are Gen Z spending less? This was something that I thought was, you know, to my mind kind of clashed with what I understood about Gen Z because the last I’d heard this generation, uh, generation zed were the kind of largest portion of our global population, which is in fact true. Um, so Gen Z make up 24.6% of the entire global population. So by that token you would think that their spending power would would equate to that and would maybe even outsize other generations but um according to studies that is not quite the case. Uh Gen Z’s spending power sits at roughly 17% which is smaller compared to their size. Um when you look at the likes of the millennial age group who are 22% of the global population, 22% of our spending power and Gen X who actually occupy a smaller Macroeconomics & rising cost-of-living impact uh percentage of population but the largest um overall uh percentage of spending power. So why could that be? Well, the easy answer uh I suppose we could all come back to is is the economy, right? Um when GWI ran a survey this time last year, respondents to that survey u with the question being kind of like how are they going to how do they see themselves spending over the next 12 months? Uh a third of those respondents said that they were in fact going to be spending less like actively spending less money. And when they asked the the reason why cost of living and the inflation of essential goods was listed uh right up there as the top of the list. So there’s obviously some macroeconomics at play as to why Gen Z may be spending a little bit less than some of their older counterparts. There could also be, and this one may be one up for debate, that Gen Z may just be better at uh saving their money uh i.e. not spending, actively putting their money away. According to uh another GDWI study uh looking at 18 to 27 year olds in 2017 and then looking at 18 to 2017 year olds in 2024 revealed a stark difference in how much people were investing money uh in different um kind of institutions whether that being gold or in stocks and shares bonds uh or investment funds. Now to me, while I Gen Z’s savings mindset & digital banking habits think this does say that there’s uh some better financial literacy among a younger generation, it’s probably also fair to say that in that kind of seven-year period, we’ve really seen a huge rise in digital banking, right? In challenger banks, in your Revolutes, your Robin Hoods, um, etc. So, and and anyone that’s used those apps will know that actually it’s pretty easy to kind of chuck money into these different pots quite easily at very small and high scales. So, there’s probably something to be said for the idea that Gen Z are saving more and maybe that’s why they’re not spending. But, I don’t think that’s it. I think if you want to ask me my personal opinion, it’s because this is still a very young generation. I think just because us as a society and as as marketers and as business leaders have we’ve gotten so um acutely aware of this idea of generation labeling. We’ve maybe got a little bit over our skis in terms of the fact that just because Gen Z have now come of age that they should be spending like every other generation. Going back to that first slide, right? Remember the youngest in the Gen Z cohort are still 13. They’re still not really in the working world. they don’t command their own income. The eldest among Gen Z are 28. Uh so while they are in the working world, they aren’t necessarily by comparison at the kind of peak of their their potential earning career where they’ll have the most disposable income. So I think, you know, there’s there’s maybe a little bit of of hot air over the idea that Gen Z aren’t spending as much as their population should be. But if you are sat there at Understanding youth income stages (13–28 years) the end of this kind of presentation thinking you know about your brand and about your company and looking at your customer base and saying you know our product should be doing better among this generation than it is then then it is something that’s worth going deeper on. And I think if it isn’t, you know, economics, if it isn’t truly spending decisions, I actually think the the alternative is that it’s the way that we as brands interact with this generation. And I think, you know, there’s there’s one big thing that’s happened over the last 20 years, and that is the complete upending of our media ecosystem. Um, so the next few slides are going to be hitting some very obvious, you know, nails on the head. So just bear with me. I’m going to make a point. Um, I know that the next few slides are going to be like, “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know, Grant.” But just bear with it. Um, if we look at the last 20 years of media consumption, right, the basically the whole lifespan of the Gen Z kind of The media shift: TV → Mobile → Creators cohort, um, there was a study by uh, Offcom in the UK who basically measured uh, what the kind of media diet was like for people back in 2005 in the UK. And sure enough, uh, three and a half hours a day was the average amount of time that people spent in front of the TV. and TV was the kind of predominant uh kind of media uh media kind of deliver delivery system in the home. Mobile existed, right? But we were just playing snake on it or, you know, texting and calling. Maybe I was just playing snake on it. Uh so in the in the last 20 years, obviously that’s completely changed. Um we now have more of our time spent on mobile as a pure media consumption device and TV has somewhat shrunk. We all know on this call that that blue circle hides many different nuances of what the new TV ecosystem looks like. You know, it’s it’s not just broadcast linear TV anymore. It’s streaming. It’s adupported TV. It’s connected TV. We also know there’s going to be an overlap, right? That we know that the time that you spend on mobile is is not always the only focus of your attention. It’s likely that the TV is on in the background. So just in those 20 years in terms of how we get information, how we consume media is it’s completely changed. Some other stats that kind of back that up that I think are interesting that in in 2023 uh less than half of 16 to 24 year olds watched broadcast TV within the space of a week. So basically over half of that Gen Z’s media diet: podcasts, gaming, social, YouTube age range didn’t tune in to live TV uh within a given week, which again going back 20 years would be mad to think of. in the UK uh in terms of like share of viewing, YouTube has become the number two video service behind the BBC, which is really really pretty significant. And I know that there’s been talk of kind of studios and networks and broadcasters having all of their focus on on Netflix and the streamers. They kind of taken their eye off the ball when it comes to YouTube and it’s now become such a big part of the ecosystem. So these are all of the obvious things, right? the the way that we get um get media and by association advertising has completely changed. Let’s go a little bit of a step further and and look at what that media diet um comprises of across generations. This is a study from Deote and again it’s going to show you things that you’ll probably be aware of. the oldest among our population spend uh the kind of least amount of time with media and the most amount of time of that um of that time they spend with traditional broadcast live TV and Gen Z of course their media diet is uh typically nearly seven hours a day and it’s comprised uh more so than any other generation before them of uh playing video games, listening to podcasts, consuming social media, watching UGC content which study kind of categorizes as YouTube content. Um, so you know, no big surprises there, right? No revelations. Um, but the one thing that I kind of take away from this and the one thing that’s not immediate obvious is, you know, what do all of these platforms on the left hand side have in common? Almost all of them. In fact, maybe all of them. To me, it is creators have become part of part of all of those platforms. You know, you might think of podcasts as being, you know, Creators as the new mainstream media podcasters, but ultimately people that started in podcasts and because of the migration to video and YouTube have become creators in their own right. Creators have have launched their own podcasts, video games, you know, it was really easy on the surface to think of that as a solitary activity, but instead it’s become a place for people to connect online. It’s become a pe place where people watch great gamers play who then in turn become creators. You’ve obviously got UGC, you’ve got social media, and even you’ve got the likes of Amazon Prime and the streamers starting to bring YouTube creators like Mr. Beast over into their world. So, you’re seeing the creator landscape really start to touch all of these different points of media. The point I’m making is that when we’re thinking about Gen Z, keep in mind that their media diet is is pretty vast. It’s pretty varied. It’s very digital and it’s very creator first. But the interesting part about that is that if you ask Gen Z why why do they go to social media for instance, very few respondents in this survey that we’re showing here would actually site specifically following creators as the reason that they go to these platforms. They they say that they’re there to find Why Gen Z doesn’t “follow influencers” — they live among them funny posts, look at memes, find out what’s going on in the world, see what’s trending and being talked about without any kind of paying mind to the fact that the sources of all of those things that they’re seeking are coming from creators. Creators are the absolute wallpaper of these platforms. You know, funny story anecdotally, uh, last year my my partner, she’s a teacher, she invited me to the school’s career day. And naively, I went along thinking that as someone that works in social media and works with influencers that, you know, I might I might be able to get in the good graces of of these guys that they might actually be interested in what I have to say. And I was completely wrong. Right? I think teenagers are a tough crowd no matter what you’re saying. But they they they were really really not interested. And when I was speaking to them and saying, “Hey, you know, I know you use social media. Um, what what influencers do you follow? What creators do you follow?” They scoffed at the idea of them following creators or influencers. And and to me that says that that they just the to them creators are just part of the wallpaper. It’s it’s not something that you would categorize. It’s so intrinsic to the content that they consume that they don’t even think of it in the terms of influencer. And that I think is one of the reasons that I’m very very resistant to the idea that younger generations are um pulling away from from advertising or the advertising wouldn’t work with this younger generation that’s coming up because all of the content they consume is in some way related to the creator economy and the creator economy is just another word for the advertising economy. The difference is it’s how these ads how these sponsorships are communicated with this um younger audience. is the big difference of like whether or not they’re going to respond to you. But I’m getting off track. If we go back a little bit to our kind of like media diet, our landscape, not only do I think that something that all of these platforms have in common are the the creators, I think another part is that these these platforms are no longer Participation culture: comments, stitches, and remixes purely passive. Almost all of these channels on the left hand side here uh actually offer and in some respects uh live and die by some form of participation some where they’re getting something from the user. You know podcast like I said they’ve they’ve migrated over to video where there’s a comment section. Video games we know that that young people like Fortnite is considered a third place for young people because they will go there not just to play the game but to actually chat with their mates and hang out. Um, of course, user generated content, social media is a place that there’s participation, but it goes beyond just speaking to people in DMs or comments, the content itself is there to be remixed, to be kind of taken apart, to be reused in a different way. Grab the sound here. I’m going to stitch this piece of content there. I’m going to sync up with this part. the and so thinking again in terms of Gen Z like every piece of content that they consume is in some way shape or form kind of coming from a creator i.e. someone that they don’t know personally but isn’t backed by a big media conglomerate behind them and has some form of of feedback that they’re able to give and and receive in kind. And so when I think about brands saying that they’re not resonating with Gen Z, this is the the big kind of insight from my point of view is that that in order to communicate and be heard by Gen Z, you need to come to these platforms ready to Why brands must speak the platform’s language speak their language. You know, the feed is a playing field. That’s kind of like the insight that I would I would take and run with from this. like this is no longer a a um kind of world in which you can just broadcast the message and expect to get nothing back and expect it to be heard by everyone specifically by this younger generation. It’s only going to get more so with Gen Alpha. I want to hit you with a few examples and then give you some practical of guidance on how you could incorporate this. Um, if anyone has been on social media in the last six months, you you probably, depending on on geographically where you’re from, but I know it’s been quite far and wide, you probably have been exposed in some way, shape, or form to Jet 2 holidays. For those of you who don’t know, they’re a budget airline in the UK. And if you’ve ever flown with them, from the moment you sit in your seat to the moment you you leave and go down the corridor into the airport at the other side, you’re bombarded by their advert, which is um it’s Jess Glenn, who’s like a dance pop singer over here, her song uh with an ad read over the top telling you about uh your family holidays and how you can save Case study: Jet2 Holidays trend & user participation more money. And it’s so incessant, it’s so continuous that people started to create videos on Tik Tok using the sound and kind of created like a a comedic funny or ironic um kind of spin on that by applying video content of people basically, you know, either misbehaving on holiday or having funny fails. and by the kind of juxtaposition of the optimistic ad read uh and song blended with you know people just doing funny stuff uh it just took off and so everyone was doing this by building on this um trend. So taking the song and putting videos of fails on top of it and you know it’s basically took over all of social media in the UK. If you were in the room with people playing Tik Tok on loud you would hear the Jess Glenn song kind of pop off every now and again because it was that permeating the feed that much. Um it became like it got to a point of national awareness. The video that you’re seeing here is someone going up to people in the street, singing the initial um ad, the song, and then having people basically off the top of the dome recite the ad uh read back to them. So, not even sing the song back to them. They would actually say that Jet 2 Holidays ad read. This would then find its way into the real life where you’d even find the lady who delivered the original ad read speaking at events and kind of doing the ad read in live time for for people to enjoy. Jess Glenn would be on stage singing the song and people would be in the audience holding up the Jet 2 holidays ad read and we even found that despite Jet 2 not having a presence outside of the UK as far as I know or at least not in America that actually the trend made its way all over to the other side of the Atlantic with um people from the US joining in on the fun as well and also kind of taking it in various different directions before finally Jet 2 themselves have adopted it as part of their strategy. Now this is like a specific example. It’s quite large scale and it’s not to say you know what I’m saying not saying here is that brands need to start replicating just like spin up a global sensation off the you know overnight. Uh what I am saying though is that this is a prime example of how there’s this kind of dialogue in media now and the the expectation that audiences should be able to play a part in that story is is quite quite um entrenched and more so with younger audiences. one and a half nearly one and a half million videos were created of the Jet 2 Power of comment sections & audience dialogue Holidays uh song. So, you know, it’s crazy how much people kind of adopted it um and uh and ran with it. Let’s look at how you can participate maybe in a in a slightly scaled back way. The comment section arguably now becoming one of the main reasons to go to something like Tik Tok or Instagram. Um sometimes the comments are even better than the content. I uh follow an agency called okay call who recently did this amazing study on comments and as part of their survey there actually respondents said that 29% of users um regularly comment but over 90% of people are here for the comments. They’re there to read and enjoy the commentary and will spend more time flicking through comments and laughing at the witisms of random strangers. Uh and you’d even have creators leaning into this. You’ll see examples here on the screen where basically they’ve posted some content and they’re saying make the comment section look like X Y and Zed. Um, so it’s it’s become again this kind of two-way street of communication. And I love this quote they said that, you know, the comment section is is the audience revenge for being underestimated by brands for years before. And I think that’s so true. You know, we before maybe the advent of Tik Tok, um, social media in particular was kind of just like very one way. um is very, you know, much like consume this, we don’t want to take your input. And and now it’s basically been proven that the general public are probably funnier than most marketers think they are. Um and so leaning into it is the best way to move forward. I’d really encourage you to check out and seek out this okay cool study. It’s called Let Them Eat Law. Uh there’s this great graph here where they talk about unintended platforms versus intended platforms and the kind of intersection of those two things. Um, but let’s talk, you know, specifically about how we can kind of harness all of this. The idea, the concept here is that media is “The feed is a playing field” — what it means for marketers participatory, that the feed is a playing field. These are examples of that idea, but I’m not saying that you should go and replicate them. I’m not saying that we now all overnight need to become like witty commenters in the feeds of every single you know piece of content that you see or that you need to spin up a viral uh you know jet two holidays campaign overnight or you need to become the Duolingo owl. Uh there are more kind of smallcale ways of adopting this kind of new language of social and I’ll take you through a couple of my favorite some practical applications. I want to go through uh an example of a creator that I love called Veronica Sloacowska. Anyone that is maybe into comedy might be aware of her now because I think she’s just been announced as one of the latest members of the Saturday Night Live cast. Um, her brand of Tik Tok comedy, which got her to that position, is very, very esoteric. It’s very specific. Um, it’s like a blend of The Office meets It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with some musical theater thrown in there and just chronically Creator example: Veronica Sloacowska x H&M collab online Gen Z kind of brain rot. Um, I won’t explain any of the jokes and that’s almost one of the jokes. her comment um section is filled with people saying, “I have no one to share this with because it’s so specific and no one’s going to get it.” And yet, the irony is every one of those comments has about 5,000 likes of people thinking the same thing. Not only does she have a very specific style and comedic tone, there is law behind her channel. There is a story, there’s a backstory, and there’s nothing audiences love these days more than some law. Uh, the conceit with Veronica’s page is that she um is she’s kind of the central character. Kyle is like the straight man, the the one that kind of like plays straight to her weirdness. And then there’s Michael, the cameraman. And throughout all of the comments, there’s always this kind of back and forth with the audience of like, is there something between Veronica and Kyle or is there not? People consistently comment on that. My favorite piece of branded content that I recently saw, I think this was, to be fair, this was last year, but it stayed with me, was Veronica’s partnership with H&M. The the way that they’ve done this is so kind of Gen Z forward. It’s so the feed is a playing field. It’s perfect. Um the the video is effectively Veronica um kind of showing off a new outfit she has from H&M and pretending like she’s got a date which she then cancels so Kyle might ask her out. So immediately the video is playing into what the audience love about her feed which is this element of law. It’s also incredibly funny but it also features the outfit pretty front and center. She mentions H&M by name. Um but it’s really her having free reign. You look in the comment section, not only are people kind of like shouting out the fact that her and Carlo are finally going out on a date, there’s so many comments of people saying, “This is the first ad that I’ve watched all the way through. I’m coming back to watch this ad.” Like the person from H&M needs a raise. And all H&M did in this situation is just find the right creator and let them run with it and have the confidence to let them them run. So when I’m talking about having this participatory approach to social media, it doesn’t always mean you being the one to kind of like drive that. It just means finding the right partners and and kind of showing like you know uh you know the culture. Uh I have this phrase that I like to use which is like participate before you create. You don’t need to be doing all of the t like starting a Tik Tok dance or starting a craze. like just absorb what is going on in Tik Tok, what your audiences are responding to, and find the right partners to lean into. There’s some great examples of that. I know we’re kind of coming up on time, so I’m not going to linger, but um some great examples recently of of brands that have done this in many different ways. Severance, uh this is a branded ad where they actually took a user song where they’re singing along to the theme tune of Severance and then they got the cast to to basically sing along with it. Uh so again using some usergenerated content and building upon that um Amazon Brand examples: Severance, Amazon Ads, Loewe, CeraVe ads from last year where Adam Driver is reading reviews in a very earnest tone of voice. This is very high level ad stuff right but there’s still an element where it feels connected to the culture and what people are saying. One of my like most inventive ones is Leev who’s a luxury fashion house. Someone tweeted that a tomato they had looked like one of the designs that Lee would typically come out with. And what did they do? They brought out a whole tomato based range of products. Um, what, sorry for the trigger, I should have trigger warned on this one because it’s a bit uh abrupt. Um, but one of my favorite creators has this whole bit where he’s a sleep paralysis demon. He partnered up with Saravee and the skit is hilarious and is so clearly an ad at the same time. It’s brilliant. Um and big shout out to bus auntie in the UK as well who has become a phenomenon by um videoing herself in like precarious positions as a bus comes past is the whole thing. We don’t have time to get into it but again that is an example of of this kind of culture that brands are tapping into. Now the thing that I would think about if I was kind of in the audience listening to this is like that’s great. This is all great brand building stuff but where’s the commerce? Where’s the commercial element? That’s where the 7030 rule comes in. Of course, the examples that I’ve spoken about are very very more very much aligned to leaning into culture, building that top of funnel, building that brand. They aren’t necessarily closing sales. So, how would The 70/30 rule: blending culture & conversion you construct a campaign that does both? Well, the idea the the answer to that is that you don’t create one piece of content and expect it to do all things. The 7030 rule is where you would construct your campaign around having a small amount of content from your creators that are tapped into culture and that you’re going to give free reign to and that are going to build your brand and show Gen Z and audiences that you know their culture and that you know what’s up. That’s going to be 30% of your content. It’s probably going to be 70% of your budget because these creators will come at a high cost and that is the way that it should be. But you should be making astute decisions on who you work with and that’s something that obviously hopefully your your brand team or your agency partners can support you with. But it is about giving them free reign. Now where does the commerce come from? To me the best way to activate commerce underneath that element of kind of brand building is with UGC. It’s with gifting and it’s with nano micro and mid-tier creators. This is where 70% of your content is going to come from but at 30% of the cost because you’re tapping into economies of scale by working with low reaching creators that can do this on a smaller budget. The final kind of piece of the puzzle is adding an accelerator. What I would call an accelerator is either adding an affiliate commission for creators so they’re incentivized to keep driving people to to uh click the link and to check out or to boost that content with paid media. Now, there’s so many different things we Building campaigns with aspirational + relatable creators can go on and I’m just conscious that I’ve really rattled through so much uh in in in that time. I thought I was going to have more, but I like to yap. Um, so let’s wrap things up with some takeaways and then I’ll happily take some questions if there’s time or, you know, feel free to reach out to me afterwards. But my takeaways from this, if you could take anything away, would be that, you know, Gen Z is still a growing consumer base. I don’t think we can say that they’ve fully formed into what they’re going to be in terms of their spending power. Uh but the thing to keep in mind is that their behaviors are set. They’re still go they’re going to grow to be a much um more influential um you know holder of budget strings in years to come. But the behaviors they have now in terms of their content consumption are pretty much set and Gen Alpha is just behind them, right? who are going to be further down the the track in terms of um participation and content. The other thing I would say is that Jenzi are not passive consumers. There’s an expectation that content comes with a Q&A two-way communication. The feed is a playing field and if you want to work with them, you need to show that you understand it and you you need to prove it. So, participate before you create. And finally, don’t forget the 7030 rule. Don’t expect this one piece of content that you’ve done that really taps into Gen Z culture to be driving tons and tons of sales. You need to construct a campaign that does both for you. Uh that’s how you combine culture and commerce and ultimately reach Gen Z. Guys, thanks so much for listening. I feel like that was a lot and um you know, I I just really appreciate you uh taking the time. If there are any questions, I’m more than happy to ask them. Um but also feel free to uh to reach out with the email as well. This was this was amazing grant. I mean one of the clearly one of the most interesting sessions that we’ve had uh in this prepon and we are rightly sort of saved it for the last. So thank you so much Grant for that insightful and interesting presentation. We do have a few questions that I wanted to take on stage. Uh first one is uh let me put it on screen first. It says what underused channel or format is quietly working for Gen Z right now? Oh, that’s a great question. Um, I think that, you know, underused channels would probably be channels like Snapchat. Um, I mean, I that might sound like an obvious one to some people, but Snapchat has this really unique position in the the kind of social ecosystem where it’s been like the I don’t know, I don’t want to say like the stepchild um because they haven’t grown to become an Instagram or a Tik Tok. it they it gets largely ignored by brand managers, but at the same time it consistently shows in its user numbers that it is a place where younger audiences um engage. So I would definitely look at places like Snapchat and I would also you know I didn’t include too much of it because it’s a topic all of its own but I think gaming is definitely an area to investigate as well. Awesome. So Snapchat is one of the you would say underused platform right now. Another question is that what do you look for in a creator brief to ensure that the content feels like their feed and not an ad? So it sort of sort of you know resonates with the rest of their videos. It doesn’t look like an ad suddenly popping up in the middle of you know their content. That’s that’s a great one actually. Do you know what? I’ve I’ve seen a phenomenon a few times now when I’ve worked with brands that are, you know, very big is that sometimes creators actually will will change their style because they’re so excited to be working with the brand. So, that’s actually something to look out for um in the process. I would say um you know, have a brief that that basically makes clear that you’re looking to tap into their sort of style. Always come with examples. always say, “I want to work with you because I’ve seen this piece of content and this piece of content and this piece of content and we love it for these reasons.” Uh, and so they kind of understand and just and and I guess have a dialogue. Don’t just have a brief send it out and expect to get the content back. Get their concept and workshop that with them as well. Awesome. Let’s just take one last question and then we can wrap this session up. Uh, what content format most reliably moves Gen Z from an interested phase to the phase where they will, you know, try the product and also why? Um, I’m going to I’m going to answer this question and I’m going to immediately answer one other just because it caught my eye in the chat and I think it’s really important to say because I wanted to say it. um moving people from that kind of like awareness into the conversion piece. It is about for me it’s about frequency and that’s why I say about constructing a campaign that involves um those kind of big heavy cultural hitters and then smaller creators um that kind of are a bit more relatable. I actually talk about it in terms of and this kind of dovetales into what I was going to say. Someone asked does it always have to be humor or what if the brand doesn’t align to humor? Yeah, the same principle applies in different industries. And the better way to think about it maybe is aspirational versus relatable. So a good example is I’ve worked with a sportsear brand before and I would say that 30% of their creators should be really highly aspirational like maybe borderline athletes or kind of semi-pro and then what you want to do is distill that down to people that are a bit more relatable. So if you’re talking about running for instance, you’ve got an ultramarathon runner as your aspirational, they’re in your 30% and then you’ve got someone just going and doing their first 5k 10k uh as part of the 70% and those are your relatable people. So it’s this idea of of kind of reaching in that 30% and then bring it down to ground level and that answers the first question about how you move people I think from the interested to the conversion phase. Awesome. Uh I think this is with that we will uh we will wrap up this this session. Grant thank you so much Grant for being here. It was an absolute pleasure having you with us and obviously thank you for the amazing presentation as well. I think a lot of people in the comments section related with what you talked about uh especially with the with the trends on Instagram and Tik Tok. So that was that was amazing. Thank you so much Grant. Uh it was lovely to have you. As for the rest of you folks, uh this is uh this was the last session for for the Prepathon 2025, but don’t go anywhere because up next we are going to be announcing the winners of this year’s giveaways. So if you have participated in any of the quizzes or any of the activities and if you think that you are topping the leaderboard, make sure to stick around because winner announcement is next. Stay tuned.