Yell is reimagining advertising as entertainment to connect with digital natives
Gen Z is the next significant group of consumers - as they range from young adults, adolescents, to teens – and brands must acclimate themselves to remain relevant in the rapidly shifting media landscape. Chalermpol Bowonruttanapran, Creative Director at Yell Bangkok, and Panisara Mothong, Creative Group Head, weigh in on cutting through the noise to engage this generation of consumers by creating content that speaks directly to their experiences and values.
What seems to be the biggest obstacle when it comes to grabbing the attention of Gen Z’ers?
How are you cutting through the noise to engage with them?
While you may not consume media as voraciously as Gen Z, your feeds are still flooded with thousands of content pieces vying for your attention. Now you can imagine how challenging it is to grab Gen Z's attention and get them to engage with a piece of advertisement.
As they navigate multiple platforms, scrolling through memes and entertaining content, their interests shift rapidly. One constant remains: they habitually skip ads. To capture their attention, we must reimagine advertising as entertainment. The era of a single big idea for traditional media is over. Today's successful campaigns revolve around one overarching concept with a key message, adapted to their language and tastes, executed appropriately, and delivered on the right platform.
What the brands offer must be either authentic or impactful – ideally both. By authentic, we mean genuinely fun, emotionally resonant, or results-driven, because Gen Z can easily spot inauthentic content. The insights, therefore, must be precise.
However, a challenge persists: content tailored for Gen Z is often judged through the lens of other generations. This disconnect can result in campaigns that fail to resonate, becoming just another ad they scroll past.
To truly engage Gen Z, we, as advertisers, must stay true to their unique preferences and perspectives, creating content that speaks directly to their experiences and values.
Gen Z is one of the first generations to have grown up with access to the internet. With the purchasing power Gen Z’ers now have, do you see them as informed consumers? How do they differ to past generations of consumers?
As digital natives who have unparalleled access to information, Gen Z are, indeed, well-informed.
Their decision-making process mirrors that of previous generation, but it is compressed into a remarkably short timeframe. They extensively research, compare, ask for opinions, and cross-check for alternatives or deals – all of these in a couple of days or even hours.
Their heavy internet usage, and rapid information consumption lead to quick decision, often driven by emotion or framed affirmations that back up their rationale. This is why key opinion leaders play an important role nowadays in the communication plan.
They also value genuine communication. Lies can easily be detected, and fake facts can easily be hunted down. Your communication must be authentic and creditable, or risk igniting negative viral reactions.
Is AI useful for connecting with younger audiences?
Younger audiences tend to look for refreshing experiences. These new experiences are like Social Currency that make them look good and up to date.
However, we have to remember that AI, however advanced, is just one of the tools brands can use in leveraging customers’ experience. The most important things still lay in authenticity and relevancy of the ideas and executions.
From our observation, they still value the authenticity of ideas and crafts – like film, photography or painting, but they are open for new experiences that technology brings.
Which social platforms are still relevant and how brands are using those to sell to Gen Z?
TikTok is undeniably the no.1 platform for Gen Z, yet it’s not made for typical branded contents. Any brands that want to connect with Gen Z go to TikTok. The question is how.
In order to reach Gen Z, the content has to be tailored for TikTok. An adaptation from YouTube or TVC wouldn't work here. The brand's key message has to be adapted into more relatable content by the brand or through KOLs. TikTok helps deliver the experience, and leverage the brand’s connection, not to drive sale.
Gaming platforms are also a good way to connect with Gen Z. We've done two campaigns that integrated gaming platforms like Roblox and Zepeto into the communication journey to enhance brand’s experience.
For Roblox, we created a new map in which the product’s key selling points are parts of the game and challenges the targets to create new records. After the launch, our objective was achieved as we saw the sale spikes in schools and university areas.
The same goes to Zepeto, an immersive avatar-based social universe where over 200 million Gen Z come in to dress up and hang out. We turned the product’s key attributes into clothing items and set up tasks that make them actively look for our ad to unlock the items.
With the overwhelming amount of information we have today, nostalgia for simpler times seems to be on the rise. Do you feel that the advertising industry will, or has already, shifted towards leaning into early 2000s nostalgia trend?
Today, 1990s-2000s nostalgia trends are everywhere – photo automats, city pop music, and Y2K fashion, to name a few. With no exception, the advertising industry has also embraced this trend. Gen-Z finds the early 2000s nostalgia trend novel and interesting, as it's not from their own era.
However, at the end of the day, it's still just a trend. Probably not enough to shift the big tide.