Content Loyalty and Gen Z: the new episode of Loyalty Revolution
The Loyalty Revolution that goes straight to the point. Selected professionals from the world of loyalty are called upon to discuss the new cross-sector scenarios. A dynamic photograph: where we are today, where we’re going tomorrow.
Moderated by Enrico Gentina, curator of TedxTorino.
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If we’ve learned over time to be relevant to Millennials, today we’re facing a new challenge: attracting the attention of Gen Z...in just 8 seconds!
Everything has been said about them: they are irreverent, open-minded, multitasking, addicted to social media, attentive to social and environmental issues, followers of temporary trends. Gen Z is without doubt the generation that, more than any other, has changed the way brands communicate and interact with users. How are companies behaving to attract their attention? Let's find out together!
Who are Gen Z consumers?
Gen Z is the generation of people born between 1997 and 2009, also known as Zoomers. There are over 2 billion of them worldwide, and by 2025 they will make up 30% of the workforce. Constantly bombarded with information, they have an attention span of only 8 seconds: 4 seconds less than their predecessors, the Millennials.
Their favourite device is the smartphone and theirs is a 100% social-media life: they spend 4.5 hours a day on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, where they interact with their peers and follow the lives of their favourite content creators. The fact that they are omnichannel digital natives means they are fast in their use of content and innovative in their shopping experiences:
● they are always ready to buy, including starting from links on social media networks or capsule campaigns through temporary digital stores,
● rather than watching a football match they prefer the match highlights; they do not support a team but become fond of an individual player, whose life they follow on social media,
● rather than films and TV series they prefer to binge watch short and immediate content.
How are brands behaving to engage Gen Z?
We asked some industry experts in the last appointment with Loyalty Revolution, the podcast created by Advice Group in collaboration with TedxTorino to encourage discussion on the new perimeters of loyalty, involving cross-industry professionals and marketing managers.
The Loyalty Heroes who took part in the last Loyalty Revolution shared some interesting insights into the direction companies are taking to relate to Generation Z and the strategies they are implementing to capture their attention, with the aim of building their loyalty over time.
One thing is certain: content is king. And it builds loyalty.
Offering valuable content has now become vital for all brands, because it is the content that guides the relationship with the user and allows their market positioning to be defined compared to that of competitors. Through their own channels, companies can convey content dealing with topics that, even if distant from their core business, are nonetheless:
- consistent with the brand’s tone of voice,
- in line with its value proposition,
- interesting for the target audience
- able to generate valuable action by the public
Consistency helps to build trust and to keep the brand front and centre among users. In order to create valuable content with a real impact on the relationship between the brand and people, it is essential to start by collecting and interpreting users' behavioural data and actively listening to their needs.
Content creation is a circular process: the ability to listen to your audience yields continuous stimuli to suggest content that is in line with the expectations of the people who will use it. With a view to continuous engagement, content comes with specific user activation stimuli - such as quizzes, surveys - which help a brand to acquire information about its target and to give people value.
A data-driven loyalty also for GenZ, therefore. In 8 seconds you certainly want to see only content that is truly relevant for you.
This result is achieved only by working in a data-driven way, thus offering people a space in which to find personalised content that allows the brand to build a relationship based on the mutual exchange of value.
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Simona Zanette
CEO of Hearst Digital
"Cosmopolitan has changed its face to speak to the Next Gen. We have gone from 12 copies per year to 5. In this scenario, paper magazines become collectibles and at the same time we have a positive impact on the environment. We have revolutionized our idea of editorial staff: the team is no longer made up only of journalists but of multimedia functions that manage to construct conversations closer to the Next Gen. We have rethought the relationship model, not only to be able to tell stories, but above all to be able to listen. And active listening also involves the ability to read data."
Lorenzo Giorda
Group Digital Marketing Director at Lavazza Group
"We have always produced a lot of content, but we have changed our point of view. We need to start from listening to people to build content that can generate valuable insights for corporate and business. We want to bring Gen Z closer to the world of brands before they even become consumers, which is why we work with content that can speak their language, starting from the world of music. "Basement Café" and "L'Italia che would like" are the two projects with which we are working on a different brand narrative. For both of us we chose music as the driving force for change."
Sheila Bagattini
Head of Brand, Media & e-commerce at Kraft Heinz
"We have embarked on a growth journey to change our mindset. We went from having a cross-brand communications team to an internal team with attached creativity. This has been a revolution because now we can build more coherent brand discourses. The Adamo project is part of this path: we are acting as spokespersons for a social problem that needs to be addressed, we want to bring the institutions to the table and create a network between all the companies that want to support it. We wanted to talk about Adamo to many targets, including the Next Gen. We therefore defined different channels, tone of voice and content style, in order to be relevant to every audience."
Stefano Fiorentino
Senior Director Base Management of Sky Italia
"Sky is a service that has content in its DNA. For our business, the real challenge is not content design, but content delivery: the right content, to the right person, at the exact moment of conversion. Our loyalty program works on tenure and returns "money can't buy" experiences to people, who then generate value by in turn becoming content transmitted on the platform. The future for subscription content business is to build real schedules, following the model of public TV, so that the customer has appointments on the platform on a weekly basis."
Alberto Raselli
Media & Communication Manager of Bauli Group
"Brand coherence and consistency: fundamental in building content. Our consumer base has exceeded one million: today we therefore have the size to make that leap forward and build further brand value through content that stimulates real interaction from people. Five years ago we abandoned the socio-demo approach in favor of behavioral analyzes that allow us to be relevant to a person in a given moment and context. Knowing how to collect information in compliance with the public's expectations means being able to recover that bit that can make the difference in building a two-way and valuable dialogue."
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