Why brands are getting it wrong when trying to connect with Gen Z

Chaotic. It’s the label that’s hard for Gen Z to shake off. Sure, looking from the outside in, they’re known for switching interests overnight, abandoning platforms as quickly as they joined them, slipping through the cracks of every marketing strategy built to hold them in place. Forever mid-scroll, mid-change, mid-crisis.

However, this is a generation whose lives have been shaped by economic uncertainty, political instability, and a digital environment where attention is the most fought-over commodity and a huge list of social media platforms are competing for them. They came of age during Brexit, Trump, and Covid – a time when the foundations that older generations once relied on crumbled in front of them.

Money, once immutable, was undermined by crypto, NFTs and Mr Beast; jobs, by AI; school itself, by Covid lockdowns. Stability isn’t in their make-up, they’ve simply never known it.

So for me, Gen Z aren’t chaotic at all, they’re simply fluid. While older generations can be sceptical about change, Gen Z is remarkably at ease with change, contradiction and complexity, highly skilled at adapting with the times.

It’s a mindset that sees them quick to embrace new ideas and more willing to rethink old assumptions. Yes, they’re rule-breakers, but they’re not breaking rules just for the sake of it. They’re simply choosing not to follow frameworks that were never built for them in the first place.

This reality is exactly what our latest research report Shifting States shows, and for brands, not grasping this distinction between chaos and fluidity matters far more than most realise or dare to admit.

How to appeal to Gen Z? Follow these tips.

Strategies for making your brand appeal to Gen Z

Expecting Gen Z to behave like previous generations was always going to be wishful thinking – it’s time to look at our approach to building a relationship with them differently.

01. Design for evolution, not stability

As Tina Fey beautifully put it when explaining her modern take on the cult classic Mean Girls, “Gen Z are not better than us, they just do things differently”.

That difference isn’t a bug, it’s a blueprint. Gen Z’s behaviours may seem contradictory, but they reflect constant evolution, not indecision. So, avoid clinging to static personas, old data or rigid three-to-five-year strategy cycles and instead, embrace agile processes, iterate often, and let changing behaviours inform and enrich your brand in real time.

Continuous discovery and treating fluidity as a feature, not a flaw, is the only way to avoid getting left behind.

02. Make effortlessness your baseline

Brand love is an often overestimated factor in success, just as convenience is sometimes underestimated. With 90% of Gen Z saying that ease of use is very important to them, it’s now become a life or death difference for brands wanting a relationship with them.

While older generations can tolerate clunky experiences, Gen Z simply won’t. Understanding and appreciating Gen Z’s almost telepathic ability to find the most effortless path and flex to it is key.

Put simply, if the experience demands effort – whether it’s a checkout process, navigation flow or customer support – Gen Z will leave you to eat dust. Worry less about jumping on reactive trends to get a small superficial kudos, and focus more on looking at the end-to-end journey and removing friction.

03. Don’t assume Gen Z all want the latest in innovation

One Gen Z consumer told us in an interview within Shifting States: “I’ve seen one brand use AR/VR and it made me less likely to continue following and purchasing from them as it felt quite fake and inauthentic.”

In fact, 25% are perfectly happy to be late adopters and are rarely the first to try a new digital service amongst their friends, suggesting brands would do well to listen to wants and needs before jumping on the hype train.

04. Look beyond your own sector for inspiration

Benchmarking only against direct competitors is easily done. But this is not how Gen Z thinks. They’ll compare your brand’s every interaction with the best they’ve seen, anywhere and everywhere.

Organisations must measure their digital experience against tech-led, disruptive and challenger brand experiences, and be ready to adopt new UI patterns quickly.

05. Bring Gen Z to the table

If you want to create experiences as layered and dynamic as Gen Z’s world, and deliver experiences that reflect their reality, you have to hire Gen Z people and actually listen to them. Avoid preaching and instead question whether your instincts are shaped by your own generational bias.

When it works

Designing for this generation is no easy feat, but there are some great examples of the above principles in action. Take the UK cosmetics brand Made by Mitchell. With its maximalist colours, anti-perfect typography and unpredictable social content, someone from another generation could easily see it as utter chaos. But take a moment to listen to founder Mitchell Halliday and you realise it's the ultimate example of a fluid brand.

Responding to what customers want is their highest priority. Social-first, at the expense of more traditional channels, ensures they can pivot fast when tastes change. By listening and engaging with their audience, they fuel better decisions, and their of the moment marketing strategy (opposed to doggedly executing a long-term plan) remains true to the founder’s personality, allowing values like inclusivity and cruelty-free testing to feel authentic.

Finally, Made by Mitchell recognised that a TikTok shop was the most frictionless path to purchase, mastered it quickly, and beat the competition to reap the rewards.

But for every brand that gets it right, there are ten more missing the mark. While I won’t name names, for these brands, it’s time to stop doubling down on methods that used to work or revering old playbooks.

Start designing for the world Gen Z actually lives in, not the one you wish they did.

Find out more with the Shifting States report.