What Creative Elements Make Gen Z Tick?

Our Guide to Creating Gen Z-friendly Creative Assets.

Gen Z is a tough market to crack. With trends changing by the second and social media increasingly changing the way we interact with content, Gen Z attitudes and opinions are often hard to pin down.

To find out what creative elements make Gen Z tick, our strategy team conducted a YouGov survey asking Gen Z consumers, Which creative assets appeal to you most?

Participants were shown a number of illustrations, as shown below.

What We Discovered…

We found that bold and detailed illustrations performed best with the respondents, with some mixed-media formats also indexing high.

This audience is constantly exposed to new information, trends and designs; they need to see something different and eye-catching in order to be impressed.

We found that branded visuals (containing logos or heavy sales messaging) indexed the lowest; Gen Z will respond to ads that don’t appear to be ads.

For Gen-Z, representation and diversity is expected as a base level from brands and organisations, both internally and in their communications. They are unlikely to fully engage with anyone they perceive as less embracing of difference.

As Gen-Z has grown up on the internet, they are experts at detecting when content is inauthentic or inconsistent with a message. To ensure authenticity, it’s important that you sound human in all copywriting, feature real people in your assets, and interact with the audience frequently. Always speak the truth and own up to mistakes. Consistent branding and quality of posting is also paramount.

Other creative elements that Gen Z are drawn to:

Images of people smiling
Young people who look like them
Statistics
Positive testimonials
Tangible outcomes
Consistent tones
Authentic messaging

Here at Influence Digital, we work with a number of companies that look to target Gen Z consumers – StudyUK, Jigsaw, Strawberries & Creem and realme, to name a few. Whilst these clients differ largely in their goals, messaging and content-types they all seek to connect with this dynamic, and often puzzling, demographic. That’s where we come in.

Check out some of our work below, and here for more examples.