Love Island & New Year's Backlash | Gen Z Marketing Insights - 11th January

Welcome to?Gen Z Marketing Insights,?where we showcase the latest news, trends, and insights into student and Gen Z marketing. Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date with everything that's happening in the youth marketing space!

This week we bring you the most recent social media & marketing updates from TikTok, a look into the huge changes to this year's Love Island, and an interesting lack of marketing for the latest Avatar film.

?? Marketing News - Love Island, Avatar & TikTok

Love Island will back on our screen in a matter of days, but ITV has announced a big change to this year’s show. Previously family and friends monitored and posted on the accounts of the contestants, but ITV is now banning them from posting whilst they are in the villa. This is to both protect them from trolling, and also protect ITV from controversial posts. Last year, Love Island winner Davide’s friends got into trouble and were forced to make an apology over a ‘heat of the moment’ post.

The latest film Avatar: The Way of Water was released last month in the cinemas. As we all may know, the 1st Avatar film was a huge success in the box office and was named the highest grossing film of all time. The original Avatar had a huge variety of marketing efforts, from collaborations with fast food chains, to even debuting an Avatar game before the film. However, have you seen much marketing for the latest Avatar film? According to Disney who have produced the film, the are ‘betting that the film itself will be this sequel’s most important marketing tool". Will the risk pay off?

TikTok has announced its latest addition to the app, which will enable users to tag TV shows and films in their upload. These tags will also link to IMDb for more information about the film or show including details like release dates and cast notes. This is a great way for TikTok to hop on any trends and will allow content creators to directly promote new films and TV shows that are hitting your screens.

?? What's been happening in the student world?

In the Prime Minister's most recent speech, he stated that he is looking into plans to make it compulsory for all students in England to study maths in some form up until the age of 18. Rishi believes this is very important because: "In a world where data is everywhere and statistics underpin every job, our children's jobs will require more analytical skills than ever before”. This has been met with backlash.

The number of people speaking Welsh is declining and TikTok influencer Bethany Davies is trying to stop this. Welsh influencer Bethany has started to teach people key words and phrases in the Welsh language to spark more interest. Bethany has around 44,000 followers on TikTok and has been teaching people about Welsh language, culture, and history. It's great to see young people taking such a keen interest in preserving culture and traditions!

21 Russell Group unis across the UK are giving Afghan women the opportunity to study short courses for free for as long as the Taliban has a ban on their participation in higher education.?

?? Trend of the Week - 'New Year, new me'

As soon as the New Year hits, we often hear the phrase: “New year new me”. In January, many fitness and weight-loss brands take full advantage of this to promote their products to help kick start everyone’s weight loss. Whilst the culture around dieting and fitness has started to change, we have still noticed a number of dieting ads and juicing discounts popping up.

However, are we starting to see a backlash to this? A number of influencers have started to use their platform to encourage self-love and reduce the pressure around getting fit and healthy again. Are we finally fed up of January 'fitness' or 'new me' culture? Here's what our students think:

We first asked our students if they have noticed the influx of fitness-related promotions and ads this January, and as expected, a huge 75% of them said yes. Following this, we wanted to know whether the number of ads that they had seen had put pressure on them to lose weight and get back into a fitness routine after the Christmas holidays.

Almost half our students have felt pressured to get back into shape due to brands and organisations, which is shocking in itself...

Fortunately, over half our students have noticed influencers starting a backlash to this, so it's obviously a trend that's starting to pick up pace! Gen Z are fed up of feeling the pressure to look a certain way, or do a certain thing just because it's January, and it's great to see some steps being made to try and reduce the 'new me' fad.

?? Freshers Festival Tip of the Week - Fading the Fads

We all know that marketing is about trends. If you can hop onto a trending idea, you've got the chance to go viral and appeal to more people. Simple!

But don't forget about the 'anti-trends'. If something (like 'new year new me') is considered an unhelpful 'fad' by enough people, then going against the trend can sometimes be more powerful than sticking with it. The brands & influencers fighting against January diet culture this month have seen huge success with Gen Z. Evidently, fighting a trend can be just as beneficial. You just have to understand how your audience think, and the marketing success will follow...

That's all for this week, see you next time!

Freshers Festival Group