The future of social media, AI-powered search, and organic-led marketing. Explore data-driven insights for modern marketers navigating digital transformation.
Social Media’s Evolving Demographics & Role
Social media is no longer a youth club. In the UK, Facebook and YouTube already reach every adult segment, while TikTok’s fastest-growing cohort is the over-40s. Feeds now double as newsstands, price-comparison sites and peer-review hubs.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
TikTok adoption is accelerating up the age ladder:
What began as a Gen Z playground now counts 41% of 30–49 year-olds and a quarter of 50-somethings among its daily users. Content strategy must reflect a truly blended audience. (Pew, 2024)
Graph showing TikTok adoption by age groups.
What brands need to know...
Social = Primary News Desk
One-third of under-30s get daily news on TikTok* – the platform is now an editorial gate-keeper brands must earn coverage in, not ignore. (*Pew, 2024)
Wallet-Shaping Feeds
72 % of UK shoppers say they’ve made at least one purchase via socialmedia ads* — purchase drivers now ignite inside feeds, not search engines. (*Performance Marketing World, 2023)
Time = Influence
The average adult scrolls 1 h 50 m of social media daily, overtaking broadcast TV viewing for the first time* – it’s now about owning a share of that pie by creating a surround sound of content. (*Ofcom, 2025)
The Economist’s channel posts 60-second explainers on news, climate and elections.
Audience:
1.3 m followers
1/3 aged 35+
This results in subscription conversions from a demographic the title rarely reached through print.
Company in Action
Takeaway: If your social targeting starts and ends at “18–34”, you’re five years behind the behaviour curve.
Social Media: The New Search & Shopping Tool
Nearly half of people’s product searches start on TikTok or Instagram, not Google. A typical path: see a seven-second skincare clip, hop to YouTube for longer reviews, sanity-check on a Reddit thread, then buy via TikTok Shop. Social is no longer the top-offunnel - it’s the entire funnel.
of Gen Z prefer social apps to search engines for information. (Ofcom, 2024)
Illustration of "46%"
What brands need to know...
Video Search Kills the Messy Middle
57 % of consumers start how-to queries on YouTube before Google (GWI 2025) - SEO budgets must pivot to answer-in-video, and social-search strategies need to optimise captions and community comments or risk irrelevance
Trust Lives in Communities
“Add ‘reddit’ ” searches are up 40 % YoY (Google Trends 2025) - brand-controlled reviews are losing credibility to peer forums, and consumers are taking search into their own hands.
Checkout Moves In-App
45 % of UK TikTok users will make at least one purchase inside the app this year (Hootsuite 2025) - the funnel compresses to a single platform, demanding native storefronts.
Gymshark’s #Gymshark66 campaign
Directs TikTok viewers to TikTok Shop bundles
Result:
This results in subscription conversions from a demographic the title rarely reached through print.
Company in Action
Takeaway: Brand clip > Creator review > Peer comments > One-tap checkout. If you’re invisible in that flow, you’re invisible.
AI and the Future of Social Media
Your feed is now half machine. Instagram admits that 53 % of what users see comes from accounts they never followed, chosen by AI. Meanwhile Twitter’s usage has dropped by a third, splintering public discourse across Discords, Substack Notes and niche Reddits.
Consumers, flooded with AI-generated media, gravitate to content that feels unmistakably human. Marketers must play two games at once: satisfy the algorithm and satisfy the authenticity test.
AI curation boosts dwell-time but makes organic reach unpredictable—
brands need agile creative pipelines and tight data feedback loops. (Ofcom, 2024)
of AI-recommended content bar over blurred feed.
Illustration of "53%"
What brands need to know...
Algorithmic Overspill
53 % of Instagram feed content is AI-recommended (Meta 2024) —creative must win unfamiliar audiences, not just existing followers.
Post-Twitter Fragmentation
Twitter/X usage down 30 % YoY as conversation scatters across Discord, Substack, Reddit and Threads (Edison 2024; Noahpinion 2025) — brands need multicommunity listening to keep a pulse on sentiment
Authenticity Premium
62 % of Gen Z say behind-the-scenes posts boost trust while Meta now labels AI images (Kyra 2025; Meta 2025) — human storytelling becomes the key differentiator in an AI-noisy feed.
Duolingo uses internal GPT tools to draft daily TikTok scripts but keeps a human writer for humour and mascot personality.
Result: 2.2million...
Average views per post and a brand that feels both prolific and authentic.
Company in Action
Takeaway: From one town square to a thousand cul-de-sacs: the next winners will balance algorithmic scale with unmistakably human storytelling.
Social Search: Why
the Algorithm Has
Become the Oracle
Google is no longer the front door to the internet for under-40s. Six in ten young adults now type first into TikTok or Instagram, trusting the algorithm to predict what they want before they even search. These AI-picked feeds – 50 % machine, 50 % social – have become oracles shaping news, shopping and culture. If a brand isn’t optimised for that opaque curation layer, it’s effectively invisible.
TikTok, YouTube & Reddit are now the first port of call:
of UK 18-24s prefer social apps to search engines for finding information (Forbes, 2024)
The oracle has shifted from keywords to curated feeds – brands must optimise for social discovery, not just SERPs.
64%
Reddit-to-TikTok Loop
Partnered with dermatologists on TikTok and joined skincare subreddits to demystify its ingredients
Result: A 226 % spike in Google searches and #1 TikTok skincare brand by mentions.
Peer reviews, expert voices and social-first storytelling helped CeraVe surface wherever people were asking questions.
Company in Action
Caption SEO feeds discovery
Brands that make videos including targeted, natural-language keywords in their captions – and also speak those keywords on-screen – see a 20-40% lift in discoverability via in-app search bars and recommendation surfaces (SeoSherpa, 2025; SkedSocial, 2025). For you? It means treating every caption like a micro-query, if your audience would type it, your video will surface, turning your captions into your brand’s new keywords
Trust lives in communities
“+ reddit” add-ons to Google queries are up 40 % YoY as users bypass corporate content to reach peer threads – forum credibility is the new domain authority (Search Engine Land, 2025).
Creators shape consideration
37 % of shoppers trust influencer content more than brand ads; creators are the algorithm’s answer. TikTok’s feed shows what performs, not what’s official – if your brand isn’t featured in credible, relatable creator content, you’re behind the curve. Think less SEO, more SFO: Scroll Feed Optimisation.
Takeaway: If you don’t engineer content for the oracle, you risk fading into irrelevance in the search universe
AI & Search: The End of the Search Bar
Search is shifting from blue links to direct answers. Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity are changing how search queries are satisfied – often even without a click.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) isn’t just schema and Q&A blocks: it’s a threepart play of prompt design, source curation and model-specific tuning (Nielsen, 2025). Brands must adopt this holistic GEO approach or risk disappearing behind summary boxes. (xfunnel.ai, 2025; Semrush, 2025)
When an AI answer appears on Google, organic click-through on the #1 result plunges 70%! (LinkedIn, 2025)
Q&A formatting wins AI citations
AI engines surface content formatted as direct Q&A up to 3× more often than narrative blog posts, according to a study of 768,000 AI citations (xfunnel.ai, 2024). Structured Q&A about your brand/product with clear questions and concise answers is now table stakes for being cited by ChatGPT, Bard or Perplexity
LLM traffic is a tsunami on the horizon
Research shows LLM referral traffic could account for up to 75 % of total search-driven revenue by 2028, with e-commerce conversions jumping 500 % in just 90 days on ChatGPT referrals (MMC Ventures, 2024).
Now what? Integrate AI-sourced visits into your attribution model, then optimise those high-intent referral pages with Q&A schema and concise, data-rich snippets so your brand owns the answer-box every time. Ignoring this cedes a massive share to early movers, preparation today locks in future discovery.
Conversions from AI are real and high-intent
ChatGPT referrals convert at 4.2 %, outperforming SEO by 112 %, and Perplexity now sees 22 million monthly active users with rapidly rising search intent (LinkedIn, 2025; Perplexity, 2025). Being cited by AI not only drives traffic; it drives high-quality conversions that traditional search struggles to match.
What you can do:
1. Implement Best Practices for GEO
Prompt Design: Think like your customer — what are they asking? “Is X good for Y?” “How do I use X to Y?” Ensure your pages answer clearly.
Prompt Design: Think like your customer — what are they asking? “Is X good for Y?” “How do I use X to Y?” Ensure your pages answer clearly.
Prompt Design: Think like your customer — what are they asking? “Is X good for Y?” “How do I use X to Y?” Ensure your pages answer clearly.
2. Optimise for Decentralised Search
Use tools like Brandwatch to track keywords on platforms like Reddit. Host branded Q&A threads, engage actively, and repurpose top answers into FAQs. Community upvotes and shares now act as ranking signals—real value matters more than keyword stuffing.
3. Blend Human & Machine
Craft unmistakably human commentary around key answers – AI can summarise specs, but only genuine expertise and narrative nuance keep users clicking further.
Takeaway: From queries to conversations: optimise for answers, not just links.
Personalised Discovery:The Next Battle for Attention
Algorithms have trained customers to expect a feed built just for them. 71 % of consumers now demand personalised interactions, and 76 % say they’ll switch brands when they don’t get them (McKinsey, 2024). Half of Americans are even willing to hand over their data for a better experience (Deloitte, 2024). Meanwhile, 71 % want generative-AI woven directly into their shopping journeys (Capgemini, 2025). The bar for relevance keeps rising – and marketers who can’t clear it will simply disappear from the scroll.
of consumers expect brands to deliver personalised interactions (McKinsey, 2024)
70%
Voice & Visual Search Explosion
57 % of Gen Z now use voice assistants weekly for product queries, and 38 % have used their phone camera to search by image in the last six months (Capgemini, 2025). Optimise for zero-UI search – think voice prompts, alt-text and image metadata as much as keywords.
First-party data is your search fuel
Two-thirds of marketers say the cookie-pocalypse is their top challenge, yet only 4% of usable customer data is first-party (Digiday, 2025). Your ability to power personalized search experiences hinges on building direct consumer data pipelines – loyalty programs, interactive tools, gated content
AI speeds decisions & shrinks funnels
48 % of shoppers report that AI recommendations shave at least one step off their purchase journey – accelerating time-to-cart by up to 30 % (Capgemini, 2025). The faster your answers, the fewer clicks needed – and the more captive your audience. Design search experiences for speed and relevance
Search is no longer just text - voice and image queries are mainstream, consumers crave one-stop AI aggregation of results; brands not optimising for the future of search will remain invisible in the digital shadows.
of global internet users now use voice search (DemandSage, 2025).
of consumers have used visual search at least once – and ecommerce sites early to adopt see 30 % revenue lift (Invesp, 2021).
of consumers want Gen AI tools to unify results from search engines, social, and retailers (Capgemini, 2025).
Takeaway: In one-to-one feeds, relevance is your entry ticket to discovery.
The State of Events: From Mega-Conferencesto Micro-Moments
In-person B2B events have returned, but in smaller, higher-impact formats. Brands now favour pop-ups, roadshows and office demos that prioritise quality interactions and measurable business outcomes over sheer scale.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
In-person event attendance has rebounded strongly:
of event marketers say in-person events are theirmost impactful marketing channel. (Bizzabo, 2024)
>80%
The value of “being there” has shifted – it’s no longer about booth size, but about creating moments that connect deeply and stick in the memory.
What brands need to know...
Smaller Scale, Bigger Impact
Intimate formats like pop-ups and customer dinners are delivering higherquality conversations than mass events – and higher lead conversion
Community Meets Creativity
Brands are blurring the lines between event and experience, from showroom-on-wheels tours to interactive demos that bring the product into the customer’s world.
ROI in Relationships
These moments create stronger nurture paths - better first interactions that can be extended with targeted, value-led follow-ups across content, email, social, and more.
Hands-On
Roadshow
The Economist’s channel posts 60-second explainers on news, climate and elections.
Audience:
1.3 m followers
1/3 aged 35+
This results in subscription conversions from a demographic the title rarely reached through print.
Company in Action
Takeaway: The future of events isn’t bigger – it’s closer, sharper, with relationship-first activations with measurable conversion metrics.
The State of Surround Sound: Owning Share-of-Mind Organically
B2B marketing’s loudest voices aren’t necessarily the ones paying the most – they’re the ones showing up everywhere that matters. Brands are swapping ad blitzes for “surround sound” strategies, building a consistent presence across LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts, and niche communities. The goal isn’t just clicks – it’s share-of-mind.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
of B2B buyers say thought leadership content is a more trustworthy way to judge a company than traditional marketing. (Edelman, 2024)
73%
In a world where ads are increasingly ignored, the brands that educate, entertain, and connect across multiple touchpoints win trust long before a sales conversation begins.
What brands need to know...
Trust Beats Targeting
Decision-makers are tuning out overt ads, but they engage with brands delivering consistent, valuable content in the spaces they already inhabit.
Communities as Channels
Owned spaces like Slack groups, LinkedIn communities, or niche forums create ongoing dialogue – and build loyalty – without media spend.
Content as Currency
Newsletters, podcasts, and well-crafted LinkedIn posts don’t just inform – they keep a brand’s voice in the conversation 365 days a year.
ProfitWell by Paddle’s Media Play
Instead of pumping money into ads, ProfitWell built its own media arm, Recur Media – producing video shows, podcasts, and benchmarks for the SaaS world.By leading with expertise and never forcing the sell, they became a go-to voice in subscription analytics, creating inbound demand organically
Company in Action
Takeaway: Be the brand your audience hears from everywhere – without buying every billboard.
The State of Personalisation: From CRM Data to Bespoke Journeys
Today’s B2B buyer expects to feel like your only buyer. The modern personalisation stack blends ABM platforms, CRM insights, and creative design to deliver hyper-relevant touchpoints – from bespoke microsites to sales decks tailored to an account’s specific challenges. The result: stronger engagement, faster decisions, and higher deal values.
Any brand that still equates “social” with “teenager” is talking to only half its potential market. We’re here to show how every age group now treats social feeds as their default newsstand, shopping mall and community hub.
of customers expect companies to deliver personalised experiences – and they’re 80% more likely to buy from brands that do. (McKinsey, 2024)
71%
Personalisation isn’t a “nice to have” – it’s the cost of entry for serious B2B growth.
What brands need to know...
From Data to Dialogue
First-party CRM data fuels messaging that speaks directly to a prospect’s industry, goals, and pain points -then scales across channels for hyperpersonalisation in email, paid, landing pages, and more.
Creative Makes it Count
Custom design and content turn raw data into memorable, relevant brand experiences. Translate insights into memorable formats - microsites, tailored decks, and on-brand assets that make the data feel personal.
ROI on Relevance
ABM campaigns consistently outperform broader marketing, delivering higher ROI and shorter sales cycles. Fewer, sharper touchpoints increase engagement and shorten sales cycles.
Account Pages
RollWorks built account-specific landing pages for target prospects, backed by LinkedIn “air cover” ads that mirrored the messaging. This synchronised approach tripled appointment booking rates and boosted close rates by 15%, proving that personalisation drives performance
Company in Action
Takeaway: If you want their business, show them you already know it.
Where B2B Buying Happens Now
LinkedIn delivers exceptional B2B leverage for demand and pipeline. Decision-makers research openly, trust practitioners over brands, and can move from a post to a live opportunity within a day.
If your experts are not speaking on LinkedIn, your competitors are doing it instead of you. 2026 tech-forward marketers must use people-led content to create demand, then capture it.
Purchase intent
from ad exposure
LinkedIn members drive
business decisions
Lower CPL than
Google Ads
What brands need to know...
Expertise wins
The feed rewards original knowledge, useful comments and consistency. (HOOTSUITE, 2025)
People beat pages
Named experts outperform brand handles: organic posting drives higher engagement, platform ranking now favours personal authority over brand pages, and employee-generated content is rising fast as a reach channel. (LINKEDIN, 2025)
Ads perform exceptionally on LinkedIn
Paid formats on LinkedIn drive strong commercial impact (LinkedIn reports ~33% lift in purchase intent and 2–3× brand-attribute uplift); combine people-led organic with Thought-Leader/paid creative for best pipeline results. (LINKEDIN BUSINESS SOLUTIONS, 2025)
The Funnel That Converts
People-led post
Thought Leader Ads
Consideration Content
Engaged Customer
Takeaway
If your experts are silent on LinkedIn, you’re invisible where buying now starts.
The Growth Flywheel for B2B
A repeatable system:
Experts
share
Audiences
engage
Brand
compounds
authority
Pipeline
accelerates
Six blocks make the machine work.
People > Logo
Lead with named experts, not the corporate handle. Pick spokespeople with clear roles and lines to customers. Post from people first; amplify winning posts with Though Leader Ads to scale trust and reach. (LINKED, 2025)
Cadence & Consistency
Create a predictable publishing programme buyers recognise. Aim for 3–5 high-quality posts per expert each week and 1 company post. Use themed days and repeatable series so audiences learn when and where to look for your POV.
Content Mix & Clear Roles
Make each post earn its place, and split your mix.
- 50% Teach: frameworks, templates and quick how-tos that buyers can save and reuse.
- 30% Show: short case studies, screenshots and outcome-first clips that prove value.
- 20% Believe: sharp POVs, takes and thoughtleadership that sparks discussion
Formats That Travel
Prioritise formats that increase dwell and reuse: native documents and carousels for saves, short subtitled video for attention, and single-image proof posts for quick social proof. Plan repurposing routes so every winner becomes an ad, an email asset and a sales slide.
Turn Your Team Into Confidence Creators
Make posting easy for staff. Ship a one-page playbook, simple scheduling slots and a one-click asset folder (images, captions). Amplify everything and post consistently.
Measure & Loop Back
Track three leading signals (saves, profile taps, qualified comments) and two business metrics (LI-sourced MQLs, demo conversion). Review weekly, amplify what works, pause what does not, and feed creative learnings back into the expert queue.
Case Study 1: Passionfruit
Objective
- Build authority with CMOs and
- Heads of Growth in FS, SaaS, CPG.
- Drive qualified briefs.
Objective
- MQL source re-mix:
Start:
~90% events
~10% other
Now:
~40% Henry’s LinkedIn
~50% events
~10% inbound
- CPL vs channel columns: events ~£1,600; content-led always <£1,000
- Pride & Prejudice parody → 5 MQLs, 2 customers in <2 weeks, £156 CPA.
What We Did
- Building Passionfruit episodes
- Comedy sketches and parodies on LinkedIn
- Thought-leadership posting through both company and employee
Case Study 2: Norges Bank
Why this is elite B2B
Investing is usually closed-door. NBIM’s CEO Nicolai Tangen runs a long-form podcast, interviewing global CEOs and publishing openly — turning a sovereign wealth fund into a public masterclass in leadership and strategy. (NBIM, 2025; WSJ, 2024; REUTERS, 2025). NORGES BANK INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
Why it works
- Radical transparency builds trust with institutions and the public.
- Executive-led content compresses discovery → credibility → meeting.
- Episodes double as sales enablement and PR assets.
What they do on LinkedIn
- Post and amplify podcast episodes from In Good Company on their corporate and executive feeds. (NBIM LINKEDIN, 2023). LINKEDIN
- CEO account reinforces reach with episode clips and calls-to-listen. (NICOLAI TANGEN LINKEDIN, 2024). LINKEDIN
Companies we love right now
Partnerships with founder-led podcasts, then slicing clips for LI. Example: Ramp partnering with “Founders Podcast” live conversation; strong equity even where attribution is fuzzy. (RAMP LINKEDIN, 2024; TBPN LINKEDIN, 2025). LINKEDIN
Relentless exec visibility CEO content and cultural moments (e.g., annual holiday videos) make a massive firm feel human. (BLACKSTONE LINKEDIN 2025, BUSINESS INSIDER, 2024) LINKEDIN
Founder-led weekly video series that teachers and ships progress in public. (LINKEDIN POSTS HIGHLIGHTING “BUILDING FYXER”, 2025) LINKEDIN
Crisp feature-release videos during “launch weeks” that drive saves and trials. (JULIUS LINKEDIN, 2025)
The Trust Deficit: Why Creator Content Beats Traditional Ads
Consumers have learnt to tune out polished advertising and lean on people they trust instead. Six in ten now trust what a creator says about a brand more than what the brand says about itself. (Edelman, 2024)
User generated and creator content feels like real life, not a media buy - and delivers stronger click through and conversion than studio assets. (Tint, 2023)
say authenticity is important when deciding which brands they support. (Stackla, 2019)
Authenticity has become a core buying filter
Graph showing TikTok adoption by age groups.
.webp)
Trust gap
Roughly 60% of people say they trust creator recommendations more than a brand’s own ads. (Edelman, 2024)
Performance gap
UGC powered campaigns deliver higher marketing ROI on average than brand-only creative, particularly on social and paid social. (Nosto, 2024)
Feeds favour familiar content
- Algorithms push what people watch and share, not what looks expensive.
- Native formats like GRWM, “I tried X so you don’t have to” and stitched reactions routinely beat static ads on completion and cost per result. (TikTok For Business, 2024)
Lululemon’s real-runner reviews outlift traditional campaign assets
Lululemon invited everyday runners and microcreators to test its running shorts and film unscripted “km-by-km” feedback clips. These simple creator POVs generated 6× higher engagement than the brand’s studio creative and delivered a significant lift in add-to-cart rates when used in paid social. (Lululemon, 2024)
By foregrounding real sweat, real movement and realbodies, the brand proved that credibility - not polish - drives performance in modern apparel marketing
Company in Action
Why creator content works better...
Creator posts blend naturally into the feed: phone-camera framing, real environments, rough edges. That familiarity lowers defences and keeps people watching for longer. The same pattern holds across verticals. In the B2B world, operators and niche experts on LinkedIn and YouTube now drive stronger engagement and trust than brand pages. (LinkedIn, 2025)
In the B2C/D2C world, campaigns that include creator or expert-generated content deliver around four times higher click-through rates and roughly 30% better conversion than traditional ads alone. (Tint, 2023; Nosto, 2024)
Why audiences ignore traditional ads...
Highly polished brand work now triggers scepticism. Shoppers say they place more faith in reviews that feel unfiltered and mixed, because a few imperfections signal honesty. (PowerReviews, 2023)
Perfectly manicured brand content looks like it has something to hide.
Takeaway: Authentic creator and customer voices now beat polished brand ads on both trust and performance. If your campaigns do not feature real people, they will increasingly be ignored.
Niche Is The New Mass: Where Micro Communities Move Markets
The most persuasive marketing now happens inside tight communities, not broad demographics.
Micro and nano influencers consistently generate higher engagement than big names because they feel like peers, not celebrities.
Their smaller audiences are far more likely to comment, save and buy when they recommend something. (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2024; Traackr, 2024).
higher engagement rates from micro influencers compared with macro creators, as smaller audiences reward authenticity and direct interaction. (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2024).
64%
Hello Klean and Fable & Mane back smaller creators
Shower and hair brands Hello Klean and Fable & Mane shifted spend from a few large influencers to dozens of nano and micro creators. The result? deeper engagement, more saves and stronger ROI because their content “feels personal, authentic and human”, with increasing micro influencer budgets as a result. (Traackr, 2024)
Company in Action
How decisions happen inside micro communities
Niche creator
Beauty nerd, plant parent, home décor geek, running coach - creators rooted in a specific passion.
Micro community
Twitter Communities, DMs, Discords, niche subreddits, IG Live, Threads and side-of TikTok clusters.
Trust and proof
Repeated interactions, honest reviews and visible results build belief and reciprocated engagement.
Purchase
In-app checkout, social shop, or click through to site e.g. Linktree.
Takeaway: Authentic creator and customer voices now beat polished brand ads on both trust and performance. If your campaigns do not feature real people, they will increasingly be ignored.
The Content Supply Chain: How Creator Pipelines Change The Economics
Old creative processes were built for a handful of big campaigns each year. Social platforms now burn through assets in days, so leading brands have moved to creator led content supply chains that deliver more assets at lower cost than traditional shoots (Meta, 2024; Nosto, 2024).
reduction in content production costs when brands adopt UGC and creator content at scale compared with studio only approaches (Nosto, 2024)
64%
Takeaway: If you don’t engineer content for the oracle, you risk fading into irrelevance in the search universe
Creator pipelines lower the effective cost of each winning asset while increasing the volume of tests a team can run, improving both CAC and ROAS over time. (Nosto, 2024; Meta, 2024).
Three moves to modernise your content ops
Shift to continuous creation
Move from campaign calendars to content velocity. Plan how many fresh pieces you will ship each week across paid, organic and CRM, then back into the creator and UGC resource you need to hit that rhythm.
Standardise decentralised production
Give creators clear guardrails, not rigid scripts. Provide brand guidelines, example hooks and required formats, then centralise the strongest outputs into a shared library that ads, email and sales teams can all reuse.
Invest in many small bets
Use creators to test lots of ideas at modest cost instead of betting everything on one hero concept. Scale the winners with paid spend and quietly retire the rest, improving CAC and ROAS over time (Meta, 2024)
Resident turns influencer content into an evergreen UGC library
Mattress brand Resident merged its influencer programme with its affiliate channel to build a continuous flow of highquality UGC for paid and organic. Influencer content was repurposed into an always-on campaign that created a library of evergreen demos and guides, guiding shoppers through the research phase and then being re-used at peak sales periods (Impact, 2025).
By owning this UGC library, Resident reduced its reliance on fresh studio shoots and used only top-performing creator assets in major promotions, driving significant incremental revenue at lower production cost. (Impact, 2025).
Company in Action
.webp)
- 2 to 3 large shoots each year.
- A small set of hero assets that must last for months.
- High fixed costs and limited room to test new ideas
.webp)
- Weekly briefs to a roster of creators and UGC partners.
- Decentralised filming in real environments, with a central asset library everyone can pull from.
- Constant flow of new hooks and formats in the market, informed by performance data.
- Raw creator footage that can be re-cut, captioned or repurposed across channels.
- Far more A/B variations with performance data – no guesswork.
Takeaway: Creator led content supply chains deliver more assets, faster learning and better economics than traditional production. Scaling creators is now a financial decision as much as a creative one.
State of Gen Z Marketing 2026
For Gen Z, social feeds are how they discover, evaluate and buy. Social is their whole operating system, not a single channel.
Gen Z consumers spend 5.1 hours a day on socials - double millennials and roughly three times boomers.
(S&P Global Kagan, 2025)
Teens say they are online ‘almost constantly’. YouTube, TikTok and Instagram dominate that time.
(Pew Research Center, 2024).
Globally, social media is the default attention layer for Gen Z.
(GWI via Smart Insights, 2025)
turns skincare into a social accessory
Starface built a Gen Z acne brand by embracing the feed rather than fighting it. The product itself is designed to be photographed and shared. The result is a $90m revenue brand rooted in creator reposts, inside jokes and cultural collabs.
- Every product and campaign is built mobile first, assuming it will be screenshotted, stitched and duetted.
- They use creators and fans as the primary distribution, with paid media amplifying what already works organically.
Brand in Action
What this means for marketers
Design journeys that start on social by default – treat search, retail and CRM as support acts, not the opening act.
Brief creative to work as native content in platform feeds first, then adapt for owned and traditional.
Invest in measures that connects social discovery to downstream sales, not just top-of-funnel metrics.
From vibe check to basket: How Gen Z decide what to buy
Gen Z’s path to purchase is filtered through friends, creators and social proof. Traditional brand assets still matter – they just enter the story later.
of Gen Z say ads or product reviews on social media are the most influential factor in their purchase decisions.
60%
Ads on streaming services come a distant second at 28%. (Deloitte, 2025)
Spark
Sees a product in a TikTok, Reel or creator story, often in context of a trend or joke.
Social Proof
Checks comments, saves the video, searches for ‘real reviews’ or ‘dupe’ content.
Deep Dive
Googles ingredients, price and alternatives – search and YouTube are still workhorses here.
Sanity Check
Sends a link to a friend or group chat. Peer yes or no often trumps the ad.
Deal and Delivery
Looks for the best way to pay – bundles, promo codes or loyalty points – then purchases in app or via retailer.
Younger consumers buy brands they find on social media, and complete the purchase somewhere else.
(McKinsey, 2025).
2 Gen Z’s. 2 Trust Equations.
- 32% of Gen Z say an influencer has increased their trust in a brand over the past year.*
- Separate research finds that over half of Gen Z and millennials trust influencers more than brands, and around two thirds have bought a product after seeing it recommended by a creator**
(Edelman, 2024) ** (20Something/Edelman synthesis, 2023).
- Still believe brands and systems can be influenced and improved.
- More willing to ‘work with’ brands if they see real effort and transparency.
- Sees brand choice as a way to build their adult identity – career, stability, status
(McKinsey, 2025; Edelman, 2025)
- Expect brands and institutions to fall short – default scepticism*.
- More emotionally taxed, more likely to expect brands to help them enjoy the moment rather than fix the world.
- Quick to punish missteps publicly, especially when trust and values feel performative.
*(Edelman, 2025).
turns micro creators into a trust engine
Sephora replaced single influencer deals with a year-long ‘Sephora Squad’ of diverse nano-to-macro creators. This long-term ambassador network, rather than a campaign list, consistently provides relatable tutorials and testimonials. For Gen Z, this makes recommendations feel like trusted advice from a friend.
- Long term creator relationships – not one and done posts – so recommendations compound over time.
- Application programme – aligns with Gen Z’s expectation that brands ‘look like’ their audience.
Brand in Action
Questions to ask your team
Where in our funnel does the real ‘vibe check’ happen – and are we present there with the right proof?
Do we have a structured creator and community strategy, or just ad hoc placements?
How are we measuring the impact of creators and peers on conversion, not just awareness?
What works creatively with Gen Z (and what does not)
Gen Z do not hate ads. They hate being spoken at.
Channel 4 research (2025) shows Gen Z discovers TV mainly via social platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, often watching clips before an episode.
- Lo-fi vertical video shot on phones, with real people and real environments.
- Narratives that start in comments, stitches and duets – creative built as a conversation.
- Specific hooks rooted in Gen Z internet culture – oddly satisfying, hyper niche, in jokes.
- Over produced 16:9 TV assets, cropped into Reels or TikToks.
- Closed stories where the CTA is just ‘click link in bio’ – give them a reason to talk about it.
- Generic ‘be yourself’ or ‘live your best life’ messages that could come from any brand.
Gen Z is the most video-native cohort, heavily using TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram Reels compared to older generations. (GWI, 2024).
builds a creator-powered social culture
Liquid Death has built a cult Gen Z brand by acting as a content studio that sells water. Their visual world (heavy-metal cans, “Murder your thirst” copy, absurd stunts like Tony Hawk on a can half-pipe) is instantly recognizable on social feeds. They run a social-first, entertainment-first process, testing ideas on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Performance dictates scaling, with irreverent, lo-fi creative proving most effective.
(Goat Agency, 2025; House of Marketers, 2025; Optimonk, 2024; The Guardian, 2024).
- Creators are briefed as partners in building the brand world, not just product placement slots.
- UGC and creator content feed performance ads – the best performing organic ideas are scaled with media.
Brand in Action
Creators are the new media owners
Younger generations find social media content and creators as trusted guides that shape their sense what is cool, credible, and worth buying (Deloitte, 2025)
From funnel to loop – performance marketing for Gen Z
You have to join up creators, social, search and CRM into one looped system.
Gen Z and millennials buy on social media about four times more than older generations. (McKinsey, 2024).
60%
Hook
Creator content, short form video and memes that introduce a product or problem.
Prove
Social proof, reviews, how to content and side by side demos to de-risk the choice.
Convert
Native checkout in TikTok Shop or Instagram Shop, or hand off to retailer or D2C.
Recycle
Turn purchasers into content – UGC, referral, loyalty – and feed learnings back into creative.
- Share rate and saves from creative – early indicator of cultural fit.
- On platform viewing and click through, segmented by creator and content theme.
- Cross channel assisted revenue – how many journeys start in social but convert via search, affiliate or retail.
- Incremental lift tests for creators and social campaigns, not just last click ROA.
- Optimising to the cheapest clicks rather than the most influential creators or content clusters.
- Running social in isolation from search – when social often sparks the search that closes the deal.
- Not tagging and testing enough creative variables to learn what actually resonates with Gen Z segments.
A home services brand generated local demand using continuous social video, retargeting viewers with search and display. Content leveraged real customer stories and mobile-first explainers, not old TV ads. Connecting social impression data to their call center and CRM for a full performance loop, rather than just awareness, yielded the biggest uplift.
- Geo targeted creative and offers that match how Gen Z actually experience the category in their city.
- Lead handling scripts and email journeys that reference the original content and creator, keeping the experience coherent.
Brand in Action
Designing a marketing system that can grow with Gen Z
The brands that win will treat them as a system design challenge, not a cohort campaign.
Gen Z is on track to become the largest and wealthiest generation in history and could add...
($12trillion) to the global economy by 2035.
(McKinsey, Balderton, GfK, Nielsen IQ, World Data Lab, 2025)
The System
From generic Gen Z to living segments
With 2 cohorts of 13-22 and 23-29, the expectations are different. Your system needs dynamic segmentation that reflects life stage, geography and attitude. You need strategies that can hit:
- Students
- Early Careers
- First time Parents
- All under the same brand
From campaign calendars to continuous feedback loops
They expect brands to listen continuously and respond visibly. They put a premium on always listening – social, community, support – and the ability to turn that into rapid creative and product iterations.
Brands like Glossier have used customer feedback and community input as a core part of product development and marketing. (Glossier, 2025)
Recycle
Turn purchasers into content – UGC, referral, loyalty – and feed learnings back into creative.
as a Gen Z system, not just a campaign
Glossier’s growth with Gen Z came from building a community first system – listening to comments and feedback, letting customers co create products, and using everyday faces in ads. Its social, CRM and product roadmaps are qualitative and quantitative insights from its audience.
Brand in Action
Final Takeaway
Gen Z growth comes from systems that listen, learn, and compound - not campaigns that reset.
