How fragmented youth identities will shape brand strategy
Youth relationships are changing with brands, with content, with creators, with institutions and even their own identities. Shivani Gorle studies these emerging trends and their impacts for advertiser partners at Paramount Advertising. She’s thinking about how these shifts all intersect and she thinks the answer is ... intersectionality.
Matt Carmichael: How are teen viewing habits changing?
Shivani Gorle: They have faster processing speeds. That goes against the myths about their attention span. There’s also the perception that there’s just too much content out there for them to consume and that they don’t know where to begin. But very few of them actually feel overwhelmed by the content that is out there. Younger adults are the most likely to feel like they don’t have enough content to stream. On social, you see that manifest a little differently. Have you heard of sludge content?
Carmichael: Um, no…
Gorle: It’s mainly happening on TikTok. Essentially it is one vertical video format cut up into different videos all playing at the same time. Like a clip of a TV show or a movie that’s placed directly next to something that is low substance and high interest. Like someone playing Subway Surfer or an ASMR video of someone chopping up soap, to be able to watch all three things at once. I’m not sure what that says about their attention span, but it does signal to me that they aren’t as overwhelmed by the content that is out there as we think them to be. It makes sense in our age of complete context collapse. You just lean into it and embrace it. They’re like, “Yeah, screw it. Let’s just watch everything all at once.”
Carmichael: What does that look like for the future of content?
Gorle: Teens have a malleable perception of truth and reality. Nothing is fake and nothing is real. It’s all kind of one and the same. The movies and TV shows that they are gravitating towards also reflect that fluid sense of time and reality. That’s the driver for the rise of multiverse storytelling, a device that has been prevalent in comic book genres. But then we saw that permeate the ordinary storytelling space with “Everything Everywhere, all at Once.”
Carmichael: How are producers and advertisers adjusting to the increasing diversity of youth?
Gorle: In partnership with Ipsos, we interviewed professionals about how they think identity is represented in advertising. Young people are seeing identity as increasingly complex and intersectional. But intersectionality isn’t on advertisers’ radar like it should be. We heard from this younger person [who defined intersectionality as] a “kaleidoscopic view of the human experience.”
Carmichael: How can advertisers adjust to that?
Gorle: Marketers are looking for ways to solve for and navigate in the gray. For consumers, the expectation for portraying nuanced and intersectional identities in advertising is light years ahead. That will be the next big shift to think about a diverse generation. I feel like Gen Z is more fluid than static. We all know the problem of culture being fragmented, but the more we come to terms with that then that kaleidoscopic form might make it easier for advertisers, too.
“Young people are seeing identity as increasingly complex and intersectional. But intersectionality isn’t on advertisers’ radar like it should be.”
Carmichael: How are teens using content differently?
Gorle: They see several ways into the same piece of content, especially when they are streaming. Depending on who you are as a person, you might look for connection within it or for community or comfort within it. Content can be a mood management tool, right? There’s a Reddit about fans being able to point to hyper-specific scenes from “Survivor” that make them feel a certain way. It’s like a remote control for mood management.
Carmichael: How is this changing teens’ relationships with the institutions around them?
Gorle: They explore the cynicism of existing systemic challenges and structures in place, whether that is questioning what the American Dream is or what capitalism is. This tells us that they want to unlock access to something that feels exclusive or unattainable otherwise.
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