There are few things on the internet more painful than watching a corporate marketing department try to be “cool”.
You’ve almost certainly seen it happen. A brand wants to appeal to a younger demographic, so they assemble a committee of millennials, consult Urban Dictionary, and put out a tweet that says something utterly horrifying like: “Our new accounting software is absolute fire, no cap! Log your expenses and slay the day, besties! 💅🔥”
It is the digital equivalent of your dad turning his baseball cap backward, doing a kickflip on a skateboard, and asking your mates if they want to “hang out”. It doesn’t make you look youthful; it makes you look like you’re having a massive, public mid-life crisis.
Gen Z (those born between roughly 1997 and 2012) are the most digitally savvy, cynical, and marketing-resistant generation in history. They can spot corporate desperation from a mile away. If you want to communicate with them effectively, here is how to do it without turning your brand into a laughing stock.
1. Ban the slang immediately
The absolute golden rule of talking to Gen Z is to never, ever use their slang in your copy.
Slang moves at the speed of light on TikTok. By the time a corporate marketing team has noticed a word, written it into a social media brief, sent it to the compliance department for approval, and hit publish, that word is already dead, buried, and deeply uncool.
- The fix: Just speak normally. Gen Z doesn’t expect a corporate entity or a B2B brand to talk like a teenager from South London. They respect plain English far more than a middle-aged copywriter desperately trying to figure out what rizz means.
2. Embrace the “anti-aesthetic”
If you grew up on Instagram, your brain has been trained to love perfect lighting, beautiful grids, highly curated filters, and corporate sleekness. Gen Z, quite frankly, hates all of that. They find perfection boring and untrustworthy.
- The fix: Drop the glossy production values. Shoot videos on a smartphone without editing out every single breath or stutter. Post memes that look like they were thrown together in Microsoft Paint in thirty seconds. Keep your graphics simple, raw, and unpolished. The less it looks like a traditional advertisement, the more likely they are to actually stop and look at it.
3. Use self-deprecating humour
Gen Z’s collective sense of humour is deeply ironic, slightly surreal, and highly self-aware. They absolutely love it when a brand acknowledges exactly what it is, rather than pretending to be a life-changing philosophical movement.
- The fix: Don’t take yourself too seriously. If you sell something fundamentally boring, like spreadsheets or office insurance, lean into it. Acknowledge the absurdity of corporate life. Look at how Ryanair or Duolingo behave on social media—they treat their own brands with a healthy dose of mockery, which makes them incredibly endearing to younger audiences.
4. Give them the facts, fast
This is a generation that has grown up with an endless scroll of short-form video. Their attention spans aren’t necessarily shorter, but their “rubbish filters” are incredibly sharp. They can tell within two seconds if a video or an article is wasting their time.
- The fix: Get straight to the point. Cut out the long corporate preambles, the historical context, and the fluffy introductions. Tell them what you’re offering, why it matters, and how it helps them—and do it in the first five seconds of your video or the first sentence of your caption.
5. Be authentic about your values (Or don’t mention them at all)
Gen Z cares deeply about ethics, diversity, and sustainability. However, they care even more about hypocrisy. If your brand puts up a colorful graphic celebrating a social cause, but your actual business practices don’t back it up, they will find out, and they will publicly call you out for it.
- The fix: Do not engage in “performative activism” just to look trendy. If you want to talk about your company values, show actual proof of what you are doing. If you don’t have anything concrete to show, stick to talking about your product. It is far better to be a quiet, honest business than a loud, hypocritical one.
The takeaway: Just be yourself
At the end of the day, Gen Z doesn’t want brands to be their “bestie”. They just want brands to be transparent, useful, and slightly entertaining. Pull down the corporate barrier, speak like a normal human being, and leave the teenage slang to the actual teenagers. Your dignity will thank you for it.
