Why Does Gen Z Trust These Brands?

It can often be misleading to make sweeping generalisations across generations. Indeed, there is plenty of research to show that we often have more in common between different age groups than we have differences.

But there is an exception to this rule: who (and what) we trust.

Analysis by Morning Consult* shows that Gen Z’s average trust score for all brands was more than 10 points lower than other generations. And there were also big differences in terms of the brands they trust.

To quote AdAge (paywall):

“TikTok, Snapchat, Spotify, Twitch and Discord were singled out as “standout brands” for Gen Z, meaning they had a considerably higher trust score with the coveted cohort born between the late 1990s and early 2010s compared with other generations.”

Perhaps these results aren’t that surprising, but do we really understand why?

Let’s dig into the three key reasons…

Game of Thrones

The obvious commonality between the brands that are more popular with Gen Z is that they are all - to different extents - related to building communities.

The less obvious connection is that they all lean heavily on aspects of gaming culture. Whilst not entirely a youth phenomenon, it is arguably the biggest difference between the generations, as outlined in this WARC article:

“The shift to gaming has propelled Gen Z towards gaming as a social experience.”

Bad News Day

The younger the person, the less attention they pay to traditional news sources, according to research. There is also plenty of evidence that this is increasingly true for other demographics.

So it makes sense that they do not care much (or at all) if various governments and other entities are engaging in legal disputes with the social media platforms and other tech-led companies.

Even as Meta is trying to turn against news as a key content pillar (as per this paywalled Business Insider article), it is seemingly only growing as a place that we trust for all kinds of daily information updates.

Trust is a Long Game

Amy He, head of industry analysis at Morning Consult said:

“There are legacy brands Gen Z’s been less exposed to throughout their lifetimes compared to millennials, Gen X and Boomers.”

By contrast, the social platforms and technology in general, are utility brands for Gen Z. They are as natural and as subliminal as water and electricity.

It is also worth noting that brand recognition is not necessarily synonymous with trust (more on that here).

Why does this matter for marketers?

Brand trust is incredibly important because it helps keep customers, even when one-off experiences might not be up to standard (e.g. disgruntled customer service or delayed product delivery).

Just like person-to-person trust, it takes a long time to build and can be broken in an instant.

The smartest approach to start building that trust is to show up where the audience is.

For a lot of younger people, that is the multi-dimensional world of gaming and it’s a marketing tactic that is severely overlooked by most brands.

*This is US research, but the findings are likely to be relevant to a global audience