 Welcome everyone to the generation zeitgeist podcast by lowstriumindia. This is the podcast where we discuss all things Gen Z. This is the second podcast of the series and today we will be discussing how Gen Zs interact with brand and therefore how the brand should interact with Gen Zs. If you are new to the podcast and you like listening to this, you can add to your podcast list and share with your friends, colleagues and fellow marketers. We will be dropping a few podcasts in the coming few days and you can go back and listen to the previous podcast on what are the key factors that really stood out to us about the Gen Zs. I am Kulana and you will have to bear with my voice through the podcast. Along with me there is Aditi who is the CEO of Lowstri India, our Mark Darshiva strategy guru, just to balance the voices we have with us. Hi Aditi. Hi Kula. Thank you for the introduction. For those of you who are new, a quick snapshot of what our study and our podcast is all about. Over the last two years we have done a fair amount of research using a mix of techniques both quantitative as well as qualitative and depth discussions with Gen Z. The unique thing that we have done in this approach is to actually do an insider view by roping in Gen Zs to do this study for us and it has given us very very interesting insights in terms of how this group of people think, how do they engage with different products, categories, brands, what is their life view and what can we learn as marketers and communicators in terms of designing our approach for them. Hopefully you will enjoy this and take away some bits for how you want to work and design your brand campaigns. Yep. So we will get on with those a few things that we want to talk about how Gen Zs interact with brands and therefore brands should interact with Gen Zs. The first point is this that Gen Zs appreciate brands with strong fundamentals or strong proposition. So therefore the brands should focus on getting their core proposition right. So they appreciate brands and this is something that we ended on our previous podcast and if you can go back and listen to that also is something that Gen Zs have a very pragmatic mindset and they see brands what adds value to their lives. Brands which has very strong functional benefits, they evaluate various parameters and definitely skew more towards the functional parameters like quality trust, access price, reviews, recommendation. These are the things that they definitely value a lot. So those are the things that they appreciate and that's how they evaluate with a very rational and thought through perspective. So whichever brands focus on that tend to thrive a lot today. So as we saw you know Gen Z because of the information that they are exposed to because of the kind of access they have to different kind of things are a lot more aware than previous generations. They are also very rational in terms of making their choices and hence you know the way they evaluate a brand is to look at what is it that the brand is doing for me. For me is you know yes that seems to be obvious obviously all of us look at brands and what they do for us but for them the for me is defined very very tightly in terms of the individual. So a very strong sense of individuality in terms of what is it doing for me as an individual and it's okay for me to make my brand choices and my brand decisions based on that versus what maybe other people in my group or other people that I know have chosen. So yes I do take the learnings there is a lot of exposure that I have to what influencers are saying or what my friends are saying I watch the reviews and everything but the decision is a very rational and in a sense thought through and what it does is you know brands which are established brands which are large and have been around for some time not necessarily they will by default become my go-to brands. They will be probably carried forward with me once I evaluate and see their relevance in my life today and reaffirm my decision that I will be choosing this brand because it is making sense for me at this stage. So this journey of helping them reaffirm that the brand is meaningful for you it is a brand which holds true to whatever your requirement is is a critical part of how any brand or marketer needs to engage the Gen Z. Yeah so and brands which has very strong proposition of strong value proposition for this audience and also consistently communicate that over a period of time that tend to build loyalty for from the Gen Z. So that's what we've kind of have seen and observed through the entire research process that we've done so brands which actually offers something very functional and offers it consistently and communicates it consistently kind of takes that mind space of the consumer and then therefore leads to loyalties and whenever they do those brands some of those brands and we have spoken that which are the brands or some of the controversial time what we what were with the Gen Z is thinking of the brands they lot of the brand a lot of the Gen Z is actually stood by and that's what we'll probably hear now is a jesseth jesseth he is from Mumbai he's about 19 years old so how during the whole controversy around Maggie what's his point of view was so we'll listen to jesseth now It wasn't like I was buying jippie noodles or like dog noodles but I never left my jesseth Okay and I mean when you kind of bother you that Gen Z has lead in it or were you thinking that I've been having it for so long and honestly I thought that you know there might be some fault in the production but that's never really stopped me So there so jesseth is like one person who actually through and through like Maggie and what of the core proposition of Maggie so and stood by Maggie during their tough times so that kind of tells us how a brand which really captures a strong proposition and consistently deliver it over a period of time can sail through some of those hard times as well yeah so I think it's interesting now because the research that we did was spanning through the COVID times and now you know if you can call this current time rationalized COVID I would say is that brands which they know as long as the brand continues to fulfill the core that the brand is supposed to fulfill stays strong in their mind so there is there is a sense of loyalty with the familiarity but at the same time they do layer it with what is available what is possible and they are choices which are made saying okay I know what is available I know the other brands I know what is there but because of these rational reasons I have decided to stick to Maggie for example in the current case and similarly for many other brands that we saw in the last few years yeah yeah so yeah in last two years also that this this lot of things have evolved and also the ways of marketing is also evolved and that has kind of brought us to the second point that we'll discuss now is all about how there are a lot of growth of modern brands which are saying what we are observing these days that there are a lot of brands with they appreciate the genesis appreciate which are primarily a D2C brand or a direct to consumer brands as what we call it and those brands are also you leveraging lot of the techniques or a lot of the avenues that they have which at the disposal of modern marketers like for example influencer marketing so that's what a lot of these brands are doing and are connecting well with the genesis brands like rich coffee mama earth wow shampoo and even Nike as a brand so those are some of the brands that really stood out and captured the genesis imagination yeah so actually if you go back and think it's really about you know the rational decision making that genesis looking at based on information so a brand or a product which seems to fulfill their need is the brand that they will choose with technology has come this option of making brands available and you know sort of powering the growth of D2C brands a lot of the names that you spoke about are really D2C and if you see what is it that is the offer the offer is is a more focused personalized option for you yeah in a way which is also easy to do so you know the two dual things of a great product and easily available easily accessible or customizable to me is what makes it very strong because they seem to be brands which are more purposeful they seem to be brands which are more for me kind of a space and hence the connect that these audiences have wherein they are willing to experiment they are willing to look at and rationally evaluate whether this is a choice which sort of holds true for them yeah and I think along with that along with the new brands I think the digital ways of marketing and then which is constantly evolving expanding and there's a whole host of new offering that are there there also which has kind of helped a lot of these brands to cut through and and presents their modern brand in a very new and fresh light I think we spoke with a lot of the consumers where they really appreciate Nica and that's what will probably now here Manvi Jaiswal she's from Noida she's 17 year old and she really likes Nica as a brand so here the her benefit is clearly accessibility all kind of brands she wants she can get it so accessibility is the value proposition with Nica that she gets and obviously the trust that obviously you'll get the actual right product not the not some fake product from Nica so that the trust and accessibility is one factor that kind of helps her to like be very big fan of Nica these days yeah so one of the other things that I think we have to look at when we look at the growth of D2C brands or specialized brands is the fact that they built trust because of also the specializations they offer yeah so you know you can you can buy similar products on multiple places you could you could buy products on the product websites you could buy products on one of the general e-commerce sites yes but Nica is specialized Nica is focused and and that single-minded focus which is possible in today's digital world is something that is enabling them to hold and then finally the trust that she has built is over a period of time and what we are realizing now is that it's no longer just enough to have a product available and accessible at the right price it's really about how we are designing the entire consumer experience journey and making sure that you know at every point of time the levels of engagement are pretty much seamless so that's another story and you know mostly the way brands and larger companies are structured is these are siloed structures how does it all come together yeah and the same thing in communication that you know how does what what a dealer or on-ground person deliver versus what is the the brand ad perhaps talking about yeah how do these really sort of you know contextualize one story yeah versus talking different kind of things yeah and hence this whole importance for the marketing community to make sure that we have this one view yes one and yes consistent view and therefore us as a communicator partners how do we make that something which comes alive how do we look at this one single element which can be driven through and through so that the consumer experience the consumer journey remains very very true to what is the requirement from the brand like you said so they are very they they prefer consistency and that's absolutely true and something what we discussed previously on the previous podcast is all about seeing through it today so that kind of brings us to the third point which is all about how they want brands to be authentic transparent and stay grounded with their core proposition and they can see really see through all of the frills and they can get down to the brass decks and they appreciate those brands who are very authentic and driven by purpose so that's what all the Gen Z's always prefer yeah so it arises from the what they call democratization of knowledge around brands you know historically brands used to be one way wherein brand would tell something and everybody would have that same view yeah today because there is democratization of knowledge the story of a brand is also not just one way it spread across people know a brand not just from what they see or what the brand says but what other people say what is their own experience and all of it is available together yeah you know earlier I would talk to 20 people I know today I can talk to 2000 people and understand from them what this brand is all about and that is is forcing an evaluation in terms of how real is the brand promise yeah how authentic it is how honest it is yeah you cannot you know so-called fast and I pretend to be something or not no because it will come out yeah and I think all those all these forums reviews and the areas that they discuss and share opinions that kind of really a obviously like anything you're anything the brand try tends to hide obviously it comes to the fore naturally and also the fact that if the brand has some flaws but also has certain benefits like they will rationalize the flaws if they like the benefit too much so that's that they will let them let forego that those flaws they'll rationalize it so that's another good thing that the brand should embrace it I guess in going forward they should embrace that reality yeah so in a sense you know if you look at what this really means is because there is acceptance of reality there is also no expectation of perfection yeah you know they are not expecting a brand to be perfect yeah or they are not expecting something to be perfect but they're expecting it to be real yeah so if you can deliver something talk about it if you can't then do not pretend yeah because pretends is something that is not yeah and if you tend to hide it they will find out and once they find out rather like you telling them honestly then it's a bad news for the brands yeah yeah so and also along with that they also appreciate the brands which are not just in it for the money they they appreciate brands with longer vision and which vision is shared with the genzies and genzies also simultaneously believe in that vision so if that happens that also really like builds that bond for the audience and the brand so we'll listen to Pranjali now she talks about a dead aspect of the brand so brands that clearly have a vision I think you know they are not just present in the market for selling their product I mean definitely everybody is in the market for sales revenue profit and all of those things but brands who maybe go beyond it they are concerned about the society they're delivering quality products you know they are concerned about the consumers and yeah they're just not like a very money-driven company but rather a value an ethically driven company so you prefer it is a quality that you look for yeah yeah yeah I would be I would be really happy if the brand does offer that and can you state an example I don't know if this is a relevant example but Kama Ayurveda it's an Indian brand and it is you know averaging the power of Ayurveda and sort of spreading that message into the Indian society that we already have our own Ayurveda skincare and why would you want to go for foreign products you know with chemicals and things like that already have already already already already already have that is organic firstly and yeah and definitely like a luxury brand so why not have that luxury inspire Indian products and Bahar products like that so yeah so there she talks about that how she prefers a brand which has a stronger vision a larger vision and also cares for the consumer so that care that authenticity that authentic care is also helps brands to cut through to the changes yeah so you know this this particular quote is quite interesting because it helps you decode what does this value care mean actually so while one would automatically assume that it means you know purpose like marketing you want a brand to think larger about society and the consciousness that Gen Z has but in this particular quote what interestingly comes out is the perspective of taking India to the world it's not so much about what the brand is doing in terms of purpose within society it's a larger view and maybe a nationalistic view of the brand saying why should I look at a foreign brand when I have something which is Indian and which is Ayurveda and all and there is another aspect I think which which has come across we spoke a bit about it in the last podcast as well this whole sense of nationalism being Indian taking India to the world and therefore pride a lot of pride in that so that's an interesting area that you know when we say authenticity and transparency and value of what the brand means to society it's not just about the traditional way we look at purpose yeah this is also a purpose yeah yeah yeah certainly another factor which will move over to now is all about how they appreciate agility from the band dynamism from the brand so that's something is very appreciated so therefore the brands also should provide that obviously we went through this whole time of like two years where the brands constantly have to adapt to things or change their product or offer new new things which kind of helps people through this tough time and those whichever brands kind of have done certain addition or given some addition to their offering has definitely stood out like like for example during this whole time period when Swiggy kind of helped or Zomato kind of adapted to delivering products at home which are groceries at home which kind of really helped even on entertainment like I think Amazon and introduced watch parties and all of those things the platform like house party really really stood out and Gen Z and became a rage amongst the Gen Zs quite a lot so it's interesting you you sort of spoke about this this is also an age you know Gen Z is an age when you go through rapid change it's it's a multiple series of life changes which happen you know from from being a teenager to graduating from school to graduating from college and studying work so it's a it's a very concentrated period where you are going through rapid change and what they want a brand or an offering to partner with them is the speed or the agility with which you can also be with me in this journey of change so because I have now information available easily at I mean they are digital natives you know mobile is almost an extension of their hand you you want everything to come to you very quickly and rapidly basis your requirements and that interestingly now we are seeing in the growth of what we call fast commerce yes you know delivery in 10 minutes 15 minutes because you don't have possibly the time to plan for it long term you know life is changing fast things are changing fast and I want things to be available to me also as fast yeah and not just in terms of delivery where you know it probably is a bit logical saying okay I want something quickly you also see it in the way a lot of content gets consumed and created where there's this rapid growth of bite-sized content yeah you know short form simple views memes you know something which doesn't take too much of time yeah it gives a message it is pertinent to me but it's very quick yeah and therefore the ability to consume or live life in a very bite-sized multiple form manner yeah yeah that that certainly has like the content consumption has definitely changed that but also the fact that a lot of these brands which kind of constantly evolved and add certain value ads and and change their product which kind of adds more value to the consumer that kind of really like the genesis really appreciate that so that's what I think Daksh Parik he's a 17-year-old guy from Mumbai so he'll talk about how he really prefers shopping in Minthra and his reason why I would I would I love buying clothes from online mostly of clothes not any electronics yeah Minthra it's like it has a good UI basically good design and you know you can just easily search stuff and you'll get it and there are many things multiple brands and yeah that's the thing and you know there are onto source for a particular type of clothes so you can get it easily and you know there's there's a there's a feature where you can just click a photo and you will get that let's go the related to like basic so that's a good thing about the online thing so so like what we were talking about that whole thing about the quickly I want my thing to be done so I like a style I click a picture and then I get to see okay I can get these are the similar style that I can get so that's a very quick way that they shop and they like to shop and so yeah so that's what it's all about agility it's all about being dynamic adding more while getting the your core proposition right but still evolving with the time and at the right time yeah so it's a you know it's like a balancing act that brands have to do in terms of what's a way to give something more in a manner which is deliverable yeah so technology keeping pace with what is the experience or what is the brand offer that you want to give and rapidly adapting trying so two things I think brands need to look at one is making sure that you're aware of what are the opportunities which technology offers you quickly experimenting and trying to see what works so this clicker picture is something now available across size yeah voice and use of voice and how it has grown over the last three four years is another place that that we are seeing a lot of growth so there will be newer and newer options like this it will be mostly about looking at what can be adapted for a brand try and then probably you know what we call in our typical jaganize terms I would say is fail fast you know try works brilliant scale out otherwise fail fast and move to the next yeah because this experimentativeness this ability to continuously refresh the way you are engaging with the audience is critical yeah and moving forward this is something that brands will need to you know possibly make a part of how they operate you know rather than the typical traditional way of thinking long term and short term and short term is a six month view or a three month view you have to be able to refresh your cycles maybe much more rapidly whether it's through an innovation budget that's through an experimental focus whatever is the kind of way that one wants to design yeah those would be the things to you know sort of look out for the future and design the way you want to yeah I guess dynamically evolve yourself very fast yeah absolutely yeah so I think so the now we move towards the fifth and the final point on this podcast which is all about how they appreciate experiences so the brands have to enable experience while advertising and one way communication is good but they prefer getting their hands on experience on the brand or at least a first hand experience of the brand that kind of builds more appreciation towards the brand and more judgment towards the brand whether they the brand is for me or not so more and more and I think we spoke about it a little earlier in the podcast as well is that it's no longer just my ad it is no longer just my product it's no longer just my page it is about the entire experience and how the marketing team the brand team the product team everybody is together in crafting the experience journey that's becoming critical yeah the other thing is it's not an experience journey from a communicator's end or a marketer's end it's also an experience journey where Gen Z is as co-opted as much a part of it and contributing contributing to it so so how does that meshing in a way you know how does that meshing or how does that building happen yeah what are the interventions that we are thinking of what are the interventions that we are enabling yeah which can allow us to have this go forward you know in tandem you know yeah yeah I think in the code that built here it's all about like how advertising informs but one needs to move beyond information and also needs to experience so Nina he talks about that part I would say I would use the technology first I'm going to use that future first it can maybe even be really like when people came in they were like you know experience with each of your friends and I love them and my days they used to do everything so I knew that they are going to sell me a you know a new product but when I know I can make a buy myself at my home buy myself at my home I try to work in music it can change that perception to a web the product is so so there he speaks about that how ads inform him he knows about the features he knows about whatever the product offers but as long as can't get an experience of the brand a physical experience of the brand or or or even virtual you cannot make the final decision of whether or judge the brand or judge the product whether it's good for him or not so that's something that's very important how brands enable like across multiple categories he speaks about laptop but across multiple categories multiple product segment how one can offer that experience first an experience of the brand or the product that's when the the the genese or the the user can actually make up their mind and like I was just thinking like when we were young and ads tend to do a lot more because that's that's the first communication that or the main communication that you see and you did not have too much avenues like we did not have too much avenues like going into the forums and all that stuff and too much like obviously there would be occasions there'd be a situation occasion where we would end up in forums and get here get to hear from others but now there's so many youtube videos around product reviews you can get detailed understanding of all products not just not just technology maybe not just auto but all kind of products are reviewed these days like like toys gaming toys reviews a massive thing among kids so so that way they get to listen to so many opinions so many views and then they when they experience themselves then they can decide which which kind of really helps them for to make up their mind okay these are the features I I appreciate though some of the features might be like critiqued by others but I value this so that experience kind of builds the whole thing the the the in the journey yeah so two things I think and it's a pretty much running thread one is this whole ability of identifying what's in it for me from a brand therefore what is it that I really want so also clarity in terms of their own thinking and their their own requirement and therefore looking at which brands or which products fulfill that the second one that this also draws out is the difference between a brand and a product I may love a brand yeah does not necessarily mean that I'm consuming or using the brand and and that distinction that you know it just because I love it I will therefore do everything with it is not there so so very compartmentalized in a way yeah so Genzi I think and much more than millionaires they have they have managed to compartmentalize this aspect yeah and therefore important for brands to to make these things go together yeah you know my brand story versus my product for us what is the the way that these two are coming together what's the way it's not a one-time thing you know consumer journeys as we've seen have become more complex there is no more information lot of ways that people evaluate you don't know when they will come into your journey they might come into it by seeing that they might actually just want to buy a product today and just go to the shop and check it out or go online and check it out so at each point or each connection you must be able to deliver that story in a powerful way yeah yeah certainly and I think going forward like all these things that we've heard about the web 3.0 and then therefore the metaverse and all also would enable the brands to kind of give them experience of the brand in a more maybe not physical way but also in a much more powerful way they can they can build those powerful connections going into the future so that's an interesting opportunity that the brands can explore moving into the future yeah so the most powerful thing I think that the concept really of metaverse offers is the merging of virtual and real yeah so how do you enable the power of what is digital and technology into bringing an experience in the real world and how do you offer a seamless journey across yeah and that's going to be the challenge that brands will face that as we move into a world which is powered by metaverse we still continue to live real life and how do these come together what is it that I offer in a metaverse which carries forward to real lives and how does your real life then can have a translation in the metaverse so that's that's something to think about as we you know look at some fristly raising yes yes yes now looking back at this discussion today like what was like the interesting thing that you kind of have noticed so I think the key thing about Gen Z and the way brands need to engage is to understand that one a choice that the Gen Z makes today is not necessarily a choice for life so therefore you need to continue to engage and continue to stay relevant yeah and and therefore be a lot more sharper in terms of bringing your authentic self the brand's true self to the fore for this genuine connection yeah I think that's that's the key and and while technology is all pervasive but technology eventually at the end of the day is a facilitator yeah it's not the endpoint in itself so how do we make technology a facilitator and not get stumped by you know what technology is asking us yeah I think that's really important yeah I think one thing that really like I took forward was from this was that definitely like you should get your core proposition there like fit in but also you should constantly evolve and open to failure but like you said fail fast and move on fail fast and move on move on to something which is better so that thing the brand should definitely do they definitely cannot rest on their laurels forever that my okay I just my proposition this has been fine and I'll learn innovate that is not an option they should constantly evolve innovate and if there's a failure understand move and understand and move away from that and move to something which is more successful yeah that thing was really like like really stood out now guys if you like listening to this and want to listen to more of such podcasts do add generations I guess and share this with your friends and fellow marketers colleagues have a nice day thank you so much bye bye