Public phone experiment connects baby boomers and Gen Z across the country
A new social experiment is trying to bring Boomers and Zoomers together by having them talk to each other using old-fashioned telephones.
Millennials or Gen Z?
A new social media trend shows how big brands are marketing to Millennial and Gen Z audiences, with the latter including fewer words and more emojis. Applebee’s, Morton Salt, Baskin-Robbins, and Petco are just a few of the brands jumping on the trend.
In a May 4 social media post, Petco shared photos of two different marketing copies. One was created by a “Millennial PR team” and the other was created by a “Gen Z social team.”
The copy for Millennials says: “For pet parents who want the best for their fur babies. At Petco, you’ll find carefully selected products, trusted nutrition, and expertly assisted care to support every stage of life. Your fur baby needs quality you can trust, and your dogs will love it.” The text is long and detailed, but includes references to “dogs” and a touch of playfulness.
Meanwhile, the Gen Z copy reads, “So be it (it’s true) they need another toy,” with some star and face emojis filling the space. More succinctly, this copy is like a text sent between two friends. This is a better representation of how members of Gen Z talk to each other.
See examples of marketing trends for Millennials and Gen Z
Zaxby’s followed suit, advertising the deal on May 4th on Cinco de Mayo.
The ad copy, aimed at millennials, notes when the full Zaxby deal will be available and includes a blurb to tell readers more about the brand.
Gen Z copy is short and sweet. Replace all first letters of the sentence “zadd a zuesadilla zor zix zollars zabes” with “z”. Images of the chain’s quesadillas are also adorned with eyes, lips, and hands, which seem to lend a cheeky personality to the menu items.
“We leaned toward this trend because it was timely, its adoption into brand accounts was still in its infancy, and it gave Zaxby’s an opportunity to stand out in the feed with culturally relevant content,” Ali Ghosh, Zaxby’s vice president of brand marketing, told USA TODAY in an email. “At the same time, we had a timely message to deliver…and we thought the ‘Millennial PR team vs. Gen Z social team’ trend was the perfect format to communicate our offer in a way that felt native to Instagram and Facebook, was on-trend and easy to share.”
AMC Theaters and Keurig Dr. Pepper also joined in on the trend, using lots of attractive emojis and short text to attract Gen Z audiences.
Keurig Dr. Pepper describes the Keurig K-Mini Mate Plus to a Gen Z audience, writing, “She’s small, but she eats well.” In Gen Z slang, “eat” or “ate” is a sign of praise. The company said the small coffee machine is so powerful that it’s “edible.”
“This trend resonated because it highlighted a tension that most brands haven’t caught up to yet: People don’t engage with ‘perfectly curated’ brand language, they engage with something that feels real,” Alysee Schneider, social media manager at Keurig Dr Pepper, told USA TODAY in an email. “The gap between these two (generations) is what makes this so relatable.”
Marketing expert opinion
Some marketing professionals are turning to social media platforms like LinkedIn to buck this trend.
Harry Santos, a community manager at a Phoenix advertising agency, echoed Schneider’s comments.
“The joke is simple: one side is sophisticated, profit-driven brand copy, and the other side is the same message translated into internet language. It’s short, to the point, and funny,” Santos wrote in a LinkedIn post. “We’ve seen this particular version of Gen Z’s social media language in trends before, but now the contrast is even more stark when compared side-by-side.”
But social media consultant John Stephen Stansell isn’t a fan. A self-described “older millennial social media marketer,” he described the brand-oriented trend as “lazy, unoriginal marketing.”
“Seriously, shouldn’t we be perpetuating false generational stereotypes in advertising?” Stansell said in a LinkedIn post criticizing the trend. “Who besides marketers actually gets these kinds of self-referential meta ads? Does your target audience really care about the difference between PR and social teams?”
Greta Cross is USA TODAY’s national trends reporter. Story ideas? Email her at gcross@usatoday.com.
