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New Startups Translate Gen Z For Companies
The new playbook // Image by Kait Cunniff with DALL-E
A new wave of startups and agency divisions has one overarching goal — connecting with Gen Z’s tastes, preferences, and purchasing habits.
Why It Hits: Gen Z has become the dominant cultural force and is entering its prime consumer years, with $12.6 trillion in projected spending power by 2030. For brands, connecting with this fast-moving, fragmented generation isn’t optional — it’s survival. The real winners may be those who collect and apply Gen Z insights across branding, product design, and marketing.
Behind The Vocabulary: According to The WSJ, marketers have been chasing young-consumer insights for decades… but the speed of the internet has supercharged the search.
Top players have launched in-house divisions — like Edelman’s Gen Z Lab, which taps “400 Gen Z employees from across the firm as a resource for clients.”
Others have stepped into the space as well — like UTA, which acquired Gen Z marketing agency JUV Consulting last year and hosts ZCON, a conference spotlighting Gen Z trends for business execs.
Startups are scaling fast — like Cafeteria (which raised $3 million over the summer, hitting a $22 million valuation) and Alex Cooper’s new Unwell Creative Agency (already counting Google as a client).
Gen Z creators themselves are founding agencies — like NinetyEight (clients include Meta and PepsiCo) — arguing they’re best equipped to reach their own peers.
Final Translation: Unlike millennials or Gen X, Gen Z loves sharing opinions about brands. According to Edelman, nearly 60% feel connected to people who use the same brands they do, and 46% judge others based on brand choices. That’s why regular surveys and focus groups have become a cornerstone of Gen Z insight-gathering — Cafeteria pays a roster of over 6,000 US teens for survey responses, while NinetyEight taps a pool of young respondents it calls the “Koi Pond.”
Prediction: Given Gen Z’s love for remixing content from both friends and brands, the next great marketing campaigns may be those that invite interactivity — online and off.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.