Gen Z and Trust in the Holocene era

Finding myself in London less these days, it was great to be able find time to attend a session at BIMA House recently on Gen-Z and Trust. It left me wondering why no one really seemed to voice the gut-reaction I did amongst the hand-wringing about reaching unaddressable customer segments.

As an Industry, Marketing and Advertisings has spent 70 years lying to people, on the basis of 100-year old studies into human psychology^[1]; Manufacturing a need for their clients' products^[2] by suggesting consumers are somehow less-than, and need to consume in order to be happy.

Now we're in a hyper-real media environment ruled by deep-fakes and sythetic images. What began as hallucinatory Chiuhahas^[3] only a few years ago are now moving images which are way past the uncanny valley and into a place where even expert eyes sometimes find it hard to spot the tells of AI-Slop.

Is it any wonder therefore, that a generation which has grown up entirely online is now hard-set to a default state of distrust? Theorising and strategising about new ways to reach these consumers^[4] who are divesting from Corporate platforms, distrust mass-media, and have developed a new slang around reality 'Is it AI?' for 'Are you lying?' won't address the fundamental issue. The reason for the distrust is the human lifetime of bullshit on which advertising and marketing is built.

You don't pivot away from one platform^[5] or idiom to another in order to regain trust. You don't find a new 'genuine' voice for your brand as a way of becoming the more believable liar^[5], and somehow cut through to an unreached market segment. This is a new reality. Brands and corporations won't build community, they just build usage data on which other people can base their targeting decisions. The algorithm isn't the answer.

When his lips are moving, he's lying

• Ancient

I've long disliked 'Landfill Digital'. The Award-hungry and - albeit creatively interesting - communications which exist online for a campaign quarter then die, disappear, null DNS, never to be seen again. 3-6 months work for a team of experts, gone in a flash once the campaign reaches season end, or meets/fails its KPIs. As a business if we're just adding to this churn we're contributing to the Apocalypse. A Canne Lion can't stop the seas rising.

You know what might improve trust. Actually building things which make people's lives better. Burn less coal, use fewer compute cycles, don't keep attempting to sell people a better version of themselves which doesn't - and cannot - exist. We need to be content with less. if your product requires disposable consumptive patterns from your marketplace, you have a broken product.

Build for circularity^[6] and transparency, optimise your supply chain for ecological responsibility. You'll need to spend more. But the lies you've told for decades to get profit are the subsidy you've been receiving on actually providing value.

Don't change the message. Change your product.