The BUG in Marketing to Generation Z

Today, the main force of China's consumption has gradually shifted to Generation Z. How to grasp the pain points of Generation Z consumption is a difficult problem facing modern marketing. "Social death" refers to social death, which means being embarrassed in public. It's so shameful that people just want a crack in the ground. This article analyzes new trends in online marketing by focusing on the consumer psychology of Generation Z and combining it with two real-life marketing management cases.

Recently, the tea brand Mixue Bingcheng has become popular with its magical theme song. Since the theme song MV was released on Bilibili on June 3, its playback volume has exceeded 10 million. Many Chinese netizens have also studied and created secondary designs for it, which has accelerated the viral spread of this music theme song.

The brainwashing melody, awkward lyrics, and MV made many netizens shout out, "I will feel uncomfortable if I don't listen to it for a day, and I will feel uncomfortable for a day if I listen to it." One netizen commented, "Before listening to it, I thought that Mixue Bingcheng must have made money and even spent money to make a song of its own brand. After listening to it, I found that they probably didn't make much money."

Most of Mixue Bingcheng's stores took advantage of this favorable situation and launched the "Sing a Theme Song for the Store for Free" campaign. However, there are still many Mixue Bingcheng stores that did not participate in this event, which led to many people running to the stores to sing the theme song at the risk of "social death", but were told by the confused store clerks that the store did not participate in the event, which directly led to a second "social death".

Coincidentally, in early March, miHoYo's game "Genshin Impact" and KFC launched a limited edition "Teyvat Fun Bucket" meal and character badges. At the same time, from March 13th to March 14th, purchase the designated set meal and say the password "Meet in another world, enjoy delicious food" to the store clerk, and you will get a pair of Genshin Impact x KFC collaboration badges.

This package was jokingly called the "social death package" by netizens, because the audience of two-dimensional games such as "Genshin Impact" generally gives people the impression of being introverted, "middle school" and "otaku", and most of their emotions are injected into the virtual world, and rarely expressed in the real world. So when they stammered and shouted the slogan for their favorite game props, they would feel very "socially dead" due to the psychological gap, especially when this event went viral, many passers-by also went to watch the excitement and watch the "social death" scene.

Why do these companies' marketing activities make consumers "die" but enable consumers and bystanders to buy?

In fact, "social death" marketing, in other words, social marketing, is a product of adapting to economic development. In an era where everyone has a smartphone, customers are not just customers, but also the immeasurable network of relationships behind them. However, many companies only see this network and rack their brains to make consumers like, comment, and forward their content, but they ignore the contradictory psychology of Generation Z consumers.

On the one hand, Generation Z is adept at using the Internet. They are at the forefront of new information every day and are exposed to new things and new ideas. Their social circles are indeed a good platform for sharing and communication.

However, on the other hand, as the generation with the largest proportion of only children, they are alone but not lonely after leaving the Internet. They will deliberately avoid socializing by pouring their emotions into the virtual world, and are relatively indifferent to people and things that they are not interested in, and do not want to be disturbed by others.

For example, they would rather go to Weibo to find a mutual aid group of strangers than send mutual aid links to relatives and friends to help them "cut a hole". They are immune to word-of-mouth from simply sharing products on social platforms, and helping others collect likes is their "last resort."

For Generation Z consumers, they are more inclined to experience a lifestyle rather than buy a product.

American futurist Alvin Toffler also said in "Future Shock": "The next step of the service economy is to move towards the experience economy, and businesses will win by providing this kind of experience service." He proposed the concept of experience economy: emphasizing the customer's sensory satisfaction and paying attention to the customer's psychological experience when consumption behavior occurs.

What influences the decision-making of Generation Z consumers is not necessarily the quality of a product's production performance, but the discovery of their inner needs and a sense of belonging to the value of self-education in the process of perception, consumption, experience and products. They use consumption as a way to shape their own personality, to express "I am this kind of person" and "I have this kind of feelings."

And "social death" marketing is a combination of the two. On the surface, it is an experience of "social death". In fact, it is not only a large-scale identity identification website of "proving that you are...", but also a way for young people of Generation Z to return from the virtual world to the real world, while giving them enough sense of security in their familiar online environment so that their emotions can erupt on a small scale in the real world. This is a brand new experience and a new way to stimulate consumption in the context of widespread emotional deficiency.

When consumers share their own "social death" experiences with mixed feelings on social networking platforms or among friends and family, aren't they conveying to their circle of friends, "Even if this practical activity will cause me to 'socially die,' I still want to contribute to China's global brand/product"? This kind of social word-of-mouth communication will have more spiritual power and spread further.

The success of "social death" marketing can be replicated, but there are still several conditions that need to be noted:

1. The offline carriers of marketing activities need to have a certain degree of popularity and customer traffic, such as the Mixue Ice City direct stores and KFC mentioned above;
2. Before entering the offline stage, you must do enough publicity online, otherwise passers-by will only be confused and the publicity effect will not be achieved;
3. Appropriate staff should be assigned to this activity and relevant training should be provided.

Author: School Fruit Research Institute

Source: School Fruit Research Institute