Influencer marketing has emerged as a powerful force since the rise of Gen-Z consumers.

At the Pitch CMO Summit 2024, Pratik Gour, Co-founder, footprynt AI, engaged in a conversation on ‘what Gen-Z consumers want from brands’ with Anand Parmeswaran, Executive Director- Quantitative and Co-lead (West), Insights Division; Pranesh Urs, Vice President - Marketing, Ather Energy; Keerthana Rama, Chief Marketing Officer, 82°E; Neha Anand, Vice President - Global Brand and Communications, Mahindra; Pallavi Barman, Chief Strategy Advisor, HRX; Yogesh Nambiar, Marketing Director, JBL; and Jaikishin Chhaproo, Head - Media Buying and Brand PR, ITC.

According to Rana, content creators and influencers are important for every brand as they help in achieving goals as far as awareness is concerned. For 82°E, the breath goal is to make skincare accessible to all and even to people who have not yet started on that journey. Influencers lend us the reach to those communities.

“It is also about building meaningful relationships with our consumers and this again is a segment where influencers play a pivotal role as they can dimensionalise our brand ethos sometimes in better ways than we can,” she added. 

On the same lines, Barman underlined, “Influencer marketing has become the core of every media mix now because why spray and pray when you can have meaningful conversations with communities.”

The process of brand building has reversed today, according to the HRX executive. “We identify a community type, we start arriving at a problem, then we find a solution and build a brand on it. The priorities for the brand here are in community, content and then commerce.”

But what other than influencer marketing appeals to the Gen-Z consumer?

Nambiar of JBL opines that what a brand cares for is also what Gen-Z cares for. JBL, as a brand, is into the audio space. Hence, clean and smooth audio should be what the brand cares about and that is exactly what the consumers want too. If a brand is truthful about its products, the Gen-Z will buy.

Being real, being authentic is critical for a brand as they look to become the GenZ’s favourite, added Anand. “The GenZ also has much more awareness about climate change and sustainability. They actually care about it and that can be a great way to make a deep conversation with them to convey the brand message.”

“Today GenZ not only follow these topics deeply but are also able to influence their families and this is why even though the auto sector’s target audience is not GenZ, they become a very important secondary audience,” said the Mahindra executive.

Parmeswaran shared that GenZ is almost 1.8-2x more important at an overall level. “They pay a lot more attention to what a brand is doing from a sustainability or climate standpoint.”

On the flip side, influencer marketing also entails a great deal of cancel cultures and backlashes, so how do brands firefight it?

Chhaproo of ITC shared that being in the food business, the brand has come across a lot of backlashes and they have learnt two ways to deal with it. Priority is to figure out the validity of the news and if it's a malicious intent by somebody then the entire effort gets diverted towards mitigating its impact.

“Then a brand can figure out allies and influencer friends in the industry to start talking positive things about the brand. Anyhow the shelf life of any negative news is merely 72 hours, and a brand has to just wait,” elaborated the ITC executive.

The best way to capture a segment that is so well-informed due to the digital revolution is the experience a brand provides. Urs suggested this mantra is not just for Gen-Z but consumers of all segments because if a brand wants consumer loyalty and stickiness, then experience is the key.