Spot the meaning, not the trends

A couple of weeks ago, I did a presentation for the strategy team at Open X, the WPP unit that handles all the Coca-Cola work. First off, you know when you meet a group of people and immediately feel in the air the chemistry and loveliness between them all? They are that. Wonderful.

Anywho, the brief they gave me was simple. What are you seeing in the world of Gen Z? Which cultural trends fundamentally matter? And I thought about this, went back to my archives, my swipe file, did some more research, and... decided to not really make it about trends at all.

Because, as you and I know, the problem with trends is that we only focus on what is happening, not why it's happening. But why it's happening is a far more interesting brief because it makes it all about identifying what are people's sources of meaning. And meaning matters a lot, increasingly so.

In communications strategy parlance, you need to make choices about things like message and media. So far, so good. But how do you explain something like Pringles partnering with Crocs, or Pokemon creating a line of products with Tiffany's? What's the message? Is there one?

I believe we can resolve this seemingly hard question not by evaluating everything in terms of what is the message of a thing, but rather by what is the meaning people give to the thing itself. Sometimes, an absurdist collab can be meaningful in the absence of a commercial message whatsoever.

So, looking at it this way, it was far richer and more useful to unpack a lot of what I was seeing about Gen Z, with the necessary caveats that these are signals, not backed by proper segmentation data, so do that as well etc.

I identified 10 sources of meaning. There will be others but these are mine. Below I'll give you a few-paragraph summary of each, and I'd love to get more perspectives so feel free to send me an email with your thoughts.

In no particular order, let's go through what each of them means (hey!).

Roleplay

One way in which we might interpret "social media comedy" is the notion that every situation, no matter how mundane, can trigger a moment of roleplay. A more tangible version of the idea that "everything is content".

Curry’s do this well. They attract Gen Z by making tech moments – like losing your earbuds – feel like another comedy skit in the show of life.

Microwins

People under 30 drove a lot of London Marathon registrations this year, but the reasons why might be about more than doing the right thing.

I've seen some qualitative evidence that marathons are the sort of goals that younger folks get into, partly because they're (for once) achievable.

This says a lot about the state of how unsupported people feel about their own economic and social safety needs, career progression, ability to buy a house or raise a family, but psychologically tells us something more meaningful rather than just "Gen Z really care about running now".

Absurdism

The classic at this point, but it's how I make sense of collabs like Pringles and Crocs. It makes no logical sense, but that’s precisely why it works.

Being absurd creates cultural capital for the people who do it intentionally, not to mention things to talk about and *produce content for*, not to mention possible reselling power because we all need to earn a living.

Whimsy

Credit goes to to Salmon Crew member Mara Dettmann for this one, but the idea of whimsy is fascinating. Raised in a culture of hustle and fear of being cringe, Gen Z find comfort in everyday moments of cute levity.

Stuff like saying to the cat "you're in charge" before leaving the house, or asking "may I take your coats?" before peeling some garlic. When the world feels too big and uncertain, you create small pockets of meaning and niceness that keep you going. It's soft living tactics for hard times.

Coziness

Another classic. When culture demands optimisation at every level, another source of meaning is to find moments to feel a bit warmer inside. This explains why Nintendogs is apparently back in fashion in some circles, or why Animal Crossing was the phenomenon it was in 2020.

Scarcity

Scarcity is interesting because it takes us back to not only commercial but also cultural value. Creating scarcity, artificial or otherwise, injects a sense of specialness in even the smallest of daily treats others take for granted.

This is what Cadbury Twirl did when they decided to launch Twirl Orange by behaving like a music festival that was pre-selling tickets, rather than doing a simple trial-led campaign. And it won a bunch of effectiveness awards for it, despite the fact that the message was basically "this is here".

Emotional proximity

Things can give us a sense of proximity, but so can people. The way I explain people wanting more long-form content, and specifically younger generations over-indexing now with video podcasts (YouGov), is that it creates a sense of emotional proximity that snackable content can't deliver.

This is, by the way, one way in which we could interpret "authenticity". It's knowing there's enough wiggle room to see someone not come across as super perfect, but raw and with faults. It's reassuring when it happens.

People make gaffes, correct themselves, stumble in words, get brought to tears around certain topics... all of these things need to time to happen. But when they do, the intensity and impact are greater than the impressions.

Nostalgia

The great truth about nostalgia is that it’s less about a time you lived in, but more about a time you wish you had lived in. Often, a simpler time. This also explains, by the way, why movies like Superman and the new Fantastic Four take a retro-futuristic look to the genre. That's by design.

You don't have to have lived in the hyper-futuristic drive of the 1960s to find something about this aesthetic and worldview extremely appealing. Especially when the current cultural narratives feel infinitely more chaotic.

Wellness

Although it's now the new hot take that Gen Z also drink after all, the persistent preference for non-alcoholic drinks is the perfect example of “when the world feels too big to change, change small things instead”.

I can't change the nature of global geopolitics, but I can take better care of my gut health. When so much is outside of my control, I can control this.

Wellness therefore is seen as a rationally positive behaviour, sure, but one that often masks an irrational coping mechanism in the face of uncertainty.

Physical contact

The more our world gets digitised, the more there is meaning (and distinctiveness) to be found in small, cozy, intimate, deeply human spaces.

It's why Glossier now invests in private supper clubs for customers, or why people are now entertaining singles-only events over dating apps.

Of course, you may challenge the wording of have different references or sources altogether. The point is, this feels like a far more useful way to discuss cultural undercurrents than simply pointing at last week's trends.

Trends are useful to the extent they're signals, but the really important question is what they are signals of. My thesis is they're signals of meaning, but it is our job to pick those different signals and weave them into a story of what sorts of meaning people are truly craving for.

Armed with that, we can think about how we build meaning around our own brands. Through the right message and media placements, sure.

But sometimes simply through meaningful acts and objects that have no message per se, but can say oh so much about what people really value.

Ps. I'm running more of these deep dives around specific audiences' sources of meaning, for agencies and marketing teams. If you need an audience-oriented lens in your marketing comms, ​we should be talking​.