Here's the most important thing to learn from Gen Z
A boots on the ground report from ZCON
quick summary ⚡️
What attendees took away from ZCON, a conference for Gen Z, by Gen Z
Cultural gems for your to-read list, including how companies are ditching the MLM model and the internet is celebrating ‘Gay Halloween’
You might know you should design content by platform, but what about by device?
there is so much to learn from Gen Z
We talk a lot about Gen Z - but do we hear from them enough?
Last week was a step in the right direction with ZCON, a conference for Gen Z, by Gen Z. It was put together by our friends at UTA and brought over 500 “besties” to Brooklyn.
There was a lot of culture and star power in the room, but also a lot of desire for connection.
Shaina Zafar, who’s part of UTA’s Next Gen team that put on the conference, told Variety what she hoped people were going to take home with them: “The buzzword for ZCON is ‘bestie.’ So I hope everyone finds someone new that they actually had a meaningful conversation with…So much of ZCON is just bringing our best friends together across generations and across industries, and that’s what I hope ZCON feels like.”
MTD client GoFundMe was there to host a panel as part of ZCON’s social impact programming. “Closing the Gap Between Content & Community” covered how creators have emerged as powerful advocates for the causes they care about. It’s not just about making stories go viral or even the money raised, but the community that forms when these creators are doing it.
Mo O’Connor is a Senior Engagement Manager at GoFundMe, AKA she is responsible for a lot of the amazing creator content you see the brand show up alongside on social. She attended both days of ZCON and shared a few of her takeaways with us:
⚡ Gen Z only wants to work with brands that stand for something. They appreciate entities who stand for something they care about - this is how influencers and brands win their hearts and minds.
⚡ Authenticity is the most important part of the content they make and consume. The connection they have with their community is powerful yet fragile, and the only way to make a lasting impact is to be truly and utterly themselves.
⚡ This generation is eager to learn, willing to admit their mistakes, and be vocal for the change they want to see in the world. They are willing to do the research they need to in order to make informed decisions. Then, they will share those findings with their audience to influence more change.
Hear more from Mo in her vlog from ZCON ⬇️
All of us at MTD have been talking about authenticity for years, and it really feels like Gen Z is the group that figured out how to actually do it online. [Makes sense, since most millennials had phone-free childhoods and grew up alongside social media, rather than with it.] We love Mo’s point about a willingness to make mistakes, because that is how authenticity happens.
Speaking of authenticity, ZCON was the perfect place for GoFundMe to show up. A lot of this panel was focused on the Social State of Giving, a collaborative report between us at MTD and the GoFundMe team that focused on the different generations' giving habits in today social landscape. If social impact is any part of your strategy - and it should be - bookmark this report so you can come back to it again and again. There’s a lot to learn about how different generations are sharing their philanthropic efforts on social, and what we think will be the next big type of creator: impact creators [shoutout to Arjun Das for naming them]. We’ll be talking more about them as the giving season ramps up.
more in the Social State of Giving report
💎cultural gems💎
The cultural moments and news that caught our attention this week:
THE GROUP CHAT THE SECRETLY RUNS CONGRESS, elle magazine
“For the increasing numbers of young women helping run the House of Representatives, serving as chief of staff means being mistaken for the intern, having your outfits go viral, dating in ‘the cesspool’—and changing the face of Capitol Hill.”
COMPANIES LIKE TUPPERWARE MADE MULTILEVEL MARKETING FAMOUS. NOW SOME NEWER MLMS ARE DITCHING IT, wsj
“‘If you talk to people about Beachbody, one of the things that comes up is, ‘Is it legal?’ ‘Is it a scam? Is it a scheme?,’ said Shubhranshu Singh, associate professor of marketing at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. ‘Being classified as an MLM can be harmful to a brand’s image, he said. “
‘I HATE GAY HALLOWEEN’ MEME TAKES OVER SOCIAL MEDIA, nbc news
The internet loves ‘Gay Halloween’ where the more obscure and niche your costume is, the better.
WHY IS HORROR SO POPULAR NOW?, dazed magazine
“Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of horror’s cinematic popularity lies in the paradoxical allure of the genre itself: why do we find comfort in discomfort, retreating from our already difficult lives into even more unrest and panic?”
the type of content to prioritize
Even if you spend a lot of your day on a computer (same!), scrolling habits are just getting more mobile-first by the day:
This number isn’t shocking for Gen Z, and while we know millennials still love their desktops for things like big purchases, they’re big phone scrollers, too. Imagine where we’ll be in a few years as more Gen Alphas get their own social accounts.
So, depending on your audience, make sure you are producing for the device they will most likely see your content on.
we share tips on how to reach your target audience here