Gen Z and Gen Alpha are reshaping how brands are discovered, trusted and ultimately purchased.
Traditional advertising still has a role to play, but younger audiences increasingly rely on creators, communities and social platforms to inform their decisions. For brands, understanding these behavioral shifts isn’t simply a marketing challenge. It’s becoming a competitive advantage.
The opportunity is significant. Gen Alpha alone is projected to have a $5.46 trillion global economic impact by 2029, while Gen Z continues to drive trends, influence culture and shape purchasing decisions across almost every category.
The question for brands isn’t whether they should adapt; it’s how quickly they can.
While Gen Z and Gen Alpha share many digital-first behaviors, they should not be viewed as a single audience. Gen Z is increasingly making independent purchasing decisions, while Gen Alpha remains heavily influenced by parents and household purchasing dynamics. Understanding the differences between these generations is just as important as recognizing their similarities.
One of the biggest mistakes brands make when targeting younger audiences is assuming traditional advertising still carries the same influence it once did – the reality is that trust has shifted.
According to Pulse Advertising, Gen Z consumers are 3 times more likely to purchase from a creator recommendation (67%) than from a traditional paid advertisement (22%). Research from Amra & Elma found that 94% of Gen Z trust influencers more than traditional advertising, while overall consumer trust in influencers reached 67% in 2026.
The impact on purchasing behavior is clear. Research from The Drum found that 45% of Gen Z consumers have purchased fashion items they’ve seen influencers wear, while eMarketer reports that 33% have purchased from an influencer-founded brand.
For brands, this means creator partnerships are no longer simply an awareness tactic. They’re increasingly a trust-building tool.
However, creator recommendations are often only the starting point. Younger consumers increasingly validate purchasing decisions through community feedback, reviews, comments and user-generated content before taking action. Trust is rarely built through a single touchpoint; it is reinforced through multiple voices across multiple platforms.
The most effective creator campaigns don’t feel like advertising. They feel like recommendations from someone the audience already knows and trusts.
We saw this approach deliver strong results during the launch of JAECOO in the UK. Rather than relying solely on automotive creators, we partnered with photographers and content creators whose audiences were already engaged with travel, adventure and visual storytelling. Photographer Matt Pople documented a trip to St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps with the JAECOO 5, while creators including George Harper and Miles Shorten integrated the JAECOO 7 SHS-P into their own content during shoots in the North Pennines and beyond.
Crucially, these creators weren’t asked to simply promote the vehicle. They were given the freedom to showcase it through their own lens, embedding the car naturally within the type of content their audiences already followed them for. The result felt less like advertising and more like a genuine recommendation, allowing JAECOO to reach new communities in a way that felt authentic and credible.
The creator isn’t acting as a spokesperson. They’re acting as a trusted voice within an existing community, and that is a crucial distinction when marketing to younger audiences.
Before younger consumers visit a website, read a brochure or speak to a salesperson, they’ve often already formed an opinion through social media.
Platforms now play different roles throughout the purchase journey; TikTok has become a discovery engine, with research showing that 55% of Gen Z users use the platform for product research. Instagram often acts as a consideration platform, helping users explore brands and creators in more detail. Meanwhile, YouTube remains a destination for deeper research, reviews and education before purchase. This means the traditional customer journey has become far less linear.
A user might discover a product through a TikTok video, validate it through comments and reviews, watch longer-form content on YouTube and then make a purchase days later. Importantly, the brand is rarely the starting point, and instead, social platforms and creator communities are acting as the new gatekeepers of attention.
Gen Z’s buying decisions are increasingly crowd-validated. Community sentiment, peer reviews and social consensus often carry more weight than the messaging coming directly from the brand itself.
For marketers, that requires a shift in mindset. Rather than asking how to push messages to audiences, brands need to ask how they can become part of conversations that are already happening.
Yasmin Raache, Social CreativeYounger audiences increasingly discover brands through recommendation algorithms rather than actively following brand accounts. Content is surfaced based on relevance and audience behavior, not simply follower counts.
This creates both an opportunity and a challenge. Brands can achieve significant reach without a large existing audience, but success depends on producing content that earns attention rather than relying on audience ownership alone.
‘Authenticity’ has become one of the most overused words in marketing, but for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, authenticity isn’t a trend. It’s an expectation.
Having grown up surrounded by influencer marketing, branded content and digital advertising, younger audiences are exceptionally good at identifying content that feels forced, scripted or disconnected from reality. The strongest creator partnerships recognize this.
Rather than positioning creators as brand mouthpieces, successful campaigns allow creators to participate in experiences and tell stories in a way that feels natural to their audience.
We’ve seen this approach work particularly well during live events and cultural moments, where creators are embedded within an experience rather than simply reporting on it.
An example of this was during our work with The Boat Race, where we partnered with creator Frankie Foster to attend the event and document the day through his own perspective. Rather than delivering a scripted promotional message, Frankie brought his audience along for the experience, sharing a recap reel of the event alongside a series of Instagram Stories that captured what he saw, did and experienced throughout the day.
By allowing Frankie to engage with the event naturally and communicate in his own voice, the content felt far more authentic than a traditional brand-led activation. Audiences weren’t simply being told about The Boat Race; they were experiencing it through someone they already followed and trusted. The content generated almost 198,000 views and more than 3,200 engagements, demonstrating how creator-led storytelling can drive both reach and meaningful audience interaction when authenticity is prioritized.
For younger audiences, participation feels more credible than promotion. This is particularly true when creators are able to shape the story themselves. Audiences are increasingly familiar with sponsored content and can quickly identify when a creator’s voice has been replaced by a brand script.
This has important implications for influencer briefs. Brands need to provide direction, but they also need to trust creators to communicate in a way that resonates with their audience.
The more scripted the content, the less authentic it feels. And the less authentic it feels, the less likely it is to perform.
Winning attention is one thing, but keeping it is another. Research shows that 57% of Gen Z consumers are less loyal to brands than they were before the pandemic, while 43% have stopped buying from a brand simply because they became bored.
For marketers, this presents a challenge. Campaigns can no longer be treated as isolated moments. Brands need to remain culturally relevant, socially active and consistently visible in the spaces where younger audiences spend their time.
Authenticity plays a role here too – research suggests that brands using authentic social impact messaging saw a 22% increase in Gen Z loyalty, while performative purpose-led campaigns often had the opposite effect.
The takeaway is simple: younger consumers reward brands that demonstrate values consistently, not brands that only communicate them when it’s convenient. Brand loyalty today is built through ongoing relevance, not occasional campaigns.
Maintaining that relevance requires more than publishing content. It means actively participating in culture, listening to community sentiment and continually adapting to audience expectations as behaviors evolve.
While much of the marketing conversation remains focused on Gen Z, brands should already be thinking about Gen Alpha. Born from 2010 onwards, Gen Alpha is growing up in a world where creator culture, social commerce and algorithm-driven content are completely normal.
Unlike previous generations, they don’t remember a world before YouTube, TikTok or influencer marketing. They are also growing up in an environment shaped by recommendation algorithms, creator-led entertainment and personalized content experiences. As a result, their expectations of brands, media and digital experiences are likely to differ significantly from previous generations.
While Gen Alpha exerts significant influence over household spending decisions, parents often remain the final decision-makers. The brands most likely to succeed are those that can appeal to younger audiences while simultaneously building trust with the adults making the purchase.
For this generation, social media isn’t simply entertainment. It’s their primary gateway to discovering products, brands and trends. The brands building relevance with younger audiences today are also laying the foundations for future growth and therefore, waiting until Gen Alpha becomes a primary purchasing audience could mean arriving too late.
As younger audiences continue to reshape consumer behavior, influencer marketing strategies need to evolve alongside them. Three principles stand out:
A creator with a highly engaged community will often outperform a larger creator with weaker audience relationships – follower counts still matter, but credibility matters more.
One-off creator partnerships can generate awareness, but long-term relationships build familiarity and trust. The strongest creator partnerships feel less like campaigns and more like genuine associations between brand and creator.
Creators understand their audiences better than anyone – the role of the brand should be to provide strategic direction, not dictate every line of a script. The best-performing creator content rarely feels like advertising. It feels like content audiences would have chosen to watch regardless.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren’t rejecting marketing; they’re redefining what effective marketing looks like.
The brands succeeding with younger audiences are those that understand where trust now lives. They create platform-native content, collaborate with creators who already have audience credibility, and recognize that influence is increasingly earned through participation rather than promotion.
As the next generation of consumers continues to shape culture, commerce and digital behavior, the challenge for brands is no longer simply being seen – it’s giving people a reason to believe you.
In an environment shaped by creators, communities and algorithms, influence is no longer something brands can buy outright. It must be earned consistently through relevance, credibility and participation.
At Dig & Dig, we help ambitious brands connect with younger audiences through influencer marketing, social media and digital strategies built for today’s consumer behavior. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha buying behavior continues to evolve, brands need more than visibility. They need credibility, relevance and a genuine place within the conversations shaping purchasing decisions.
The rules of digital have changed. Algorithms shape visibility, attention is scarce, and traditional brand messaging often struggles to cut through. That’s why we don’t follow the old playbook.
We dig deeper into audience behavior, search intent, creator trends and competitive opportunities to build strategies that make brands impossible to ignore.
If you’re looking to build a strategy that resonates with the next generation of consumers, get in touch or email our team of experts at hello@diganddig.com to speak with our team.
Expertly led, expertly done. Our approach goes deep, and so does our experience.
Social Creative
Yasmin specializes in short-form video, graphics, and copy optimized for social platforms, whilst supporting community management and influencer collaborations. With a focus on trend-led campaigns and creative storytelling, Yasmin helps brands grow their online presence by producing engaging, shareable social media experiences that connect with audiences and achieve client objectives.
