Building Youth-Centric Campaigns
Why your brand should be moving from product-centric to consumer-centric marketing
Recently, our team put together a report profiling South African youth to understand how they interact with brands and to study their relationship with financial institutions. What emerged from the research confirmed what we already knew; the South African youth is not a monolith. Even if we had to set aside the significant age gap between 15 and 34-year-olds, the way South African Gen Z’s interact with brands compared to Millennials is quite distinctive.
We realised that we could not blanket the insights we had for millennials when dealing with the younger generation of South African youth (Gen Z).
Consumer-Centric Marketing is in
What our research confirmed was that as a generation young South Africans aren’t loyal to heritage brands. While in the past, campaigns were able to centre the brand and highlight products to entice consumers to purchase. This had to do with our parents’ generation and their proud association and loyalty to the heritage brands they associated with. This new generation of consumers requires a different approach — brands need to demonstrate how they resonate with consumers. Consumer-centric marketing became popular with the rise of the millennial generation and personalisation has only become more relevant with the Gen Z consumer.
Self-Expression is Key
Another key insight we unlocked was that the youth today are unapologetic about self-expression. Compared to the previous generation who were happy to consume content disseminated to them from media, the youth of today are primarily creators of their own content and enjoy consuming low-value content produced by their peers. Through a series of interviews with young people, our team was able to break this massive audience down into smaller segments for the report to dissect how brands could effectively address them based on what matters to them most.
Our research reinforced a key insight: young people are not logging on to these platforms to engage with brands.
The four different groups range from the Daredevils and Go-getters to Online Activists and Socialites who use social media to hold brands accountable for their actions, support meaningful causes and build community. Our research reinforced a key insight: young people are not logging on to these platforms to engage with brands.
Therefore, for your brand to stand out to this audience, it’s important to find resonance by leading with the solution to your consumer and not your brand or product. Young people know that they have options — in order to stand out a brand or offer should make their lives better.
How we brought this to life
Our Absa and Telkom teams worked on two award-winning youth-centric campaigns that leveraged some of the insights we’ve looked at above.
The Telkom team created a campaign that segmented products based on the lifestyle interests of six target audiences within the youth market. The team did this understanding that while data and connectivity are valued by most of South Africa’s youth, people have different reasons for logging on. We used that insight to create product offers and content that addressed each segment based on their individual interests. Personalization is key.
Watch the Telkom Varsity Vibe campaign video here.
For a youth brief in 2021, the team working on Absa built a campaign using influencers, giving them a brief to create content that would live only on Tik-Tok. Our influencers posted videos demonstrating how Absa’s student offering ‘upgraded’ their lifestyle. The stats were ground-breaking. Even better than the social media ROI, the business registered 20,000 new accounts in two weeks. By creating a campaign that allowed the consumer to collaborate with the brand and create content on their terms, our team reached the company’s half-year objective in two weeks.
Watch the Absa Zero Fee Swag campaign content here.
Understanding how young people today relate to brands ensures that creative work can evolve and resonate with the audience.
Acknowledgements: Wunderman-Thompson’s Team Pusle Strategy team who worked on this report included Lesole Kodisang, Tulisile Mhle, Modjadji Mashatola and Eugene Enslin.
