The Rise of BookTok & AI Updates | Gen Z Marketing Insights - 8th March

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 latest marketing news, new brand updates, social media changes, and whether the latest BookTok trend is having an impact on Gen Z's reading habits.

?? Marketing News - TikTok Limitations and AI Beer Tasting

TikTok are making some changes to their app, and have stated that they will be introducing an optional 60-minute daily screen time limit for their users who are under 18. Parents will be able to set a timer, and once the hour time limit is up, the user will have to enter in a code if they wish to continue scrolling through the app. TikTok have said they want to encourage teenagers to manage their screen time better. However, despite the new measures, under 18 year-olds will be able to opt out of this time-limit if they want to. Is this a pointless exercise, or a positive step forward?

Meta recently released their objectives for the upcoming years surrounding AR and VR, which includes creating smart glasses by 2025, AR glasses to be released in 2027, and more powerful Quest 3 headsets that will be launched at the end of 2023. We've been hearing about the potential for AR glasses for a while, but so far they haven't quite taken off. Meta aren’t the only company wanting to develop AR/VR glasses, with Apple also said to be developing new models. It will be interesting to see how this technology takes off in the coming years.

Would you take a beer recommendation from AI? Silicone Valley based Aromyx is using AI to help improve user experience in bars using Sensory Science for Consumer Insight. This technology is able to analyse taste and smell preferences to come up with more detailed consumer insights. In a latest innovation, people are asked to sit in front of a tablet and test 3 different beer samples. The tablet and AI technology will then analyse your preferences and facial reactions, before delivering a beer recommendation based on the results. The use of AI for product recommendations has exploded in recent months, and the technology certainly appears to be the next big thing in both marketing and product development.

?? The Student News - The US Supreme Court & ChatGPT

The US Supreme Court met last week to decide if President Biden’s ‘Student Loan Forgiveness Plan’ is legal. If the plan was put in place, it would allow 40 million Americans to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt each.

School and college students studying the IB will be allowed to use ChatGPT (the AI bot), as long as they credit and reference it, the head of assessment at IB has stated. Similar to when Wikipedia launched, it's usually best for schools to try to find solutions to deal with the technology, rather than banning it completely. However it will be interesting to see how this works in practice.

Universities are taking a more hard line approach to ChatGPT. The 'Turnitin' technology used by many institutions is now said to be able to detect if something has been written by AI. This comes after various students posted viral videos of essay scores they have received from using the software. Most universities have banned using AI software (for obvious reasons), but they may well have to find a better way to work around it moving forward.

?? Trend of the Week - BookTok Boost

Last Thursday was World Book Day, but do Gen Z really read books anymore? With the various distractions availale to young people, many believe that reading is something of a dying art. But not if 'BookTok' has anything to do with it...

BookTok is a more wholesome side of TikTok where young creators can share books that have inspired them, review them, as well as producing relatable content for other book lovers. BookTok hit headlines a few weeks ago where a relatively unnkown author went viral on TikTok (through his daughter) and suddenly became a bestseller on Amazon. Research by the Publishers Association has shown that BookTok is actually playing a key role in inspiring Gen-Z to read once more. Over the past couple of years, sales of print books have actually been rising dramatically across the world. The pandemic may have had a major impact, but the rise of TikTok and BookTok have also been making a difference.

We asked our Gen Z audience about their experiences with BookTok.

A huge 73% of our audience stated they had been inspired to read based off a social media / BookTok review video. This has contributed to over half our audience reading more over recent years. But was this simply a pandemic fad? Or do Gen Z continue to interact with BookTok?

Again, over 70% have seen BookTok content this year. The impact is significant. Gen Z are seeing BookTok videos, they are being inspired to read because of them, and their overall reading is going up as a result. This is a really positive consequence of social media that perhaps isn't talked about enough. We often hear negative stories about influencers or social addiction, but for people to be inspired to read due to BookTok 'influencers', and for authors lives to be completely changed as a result, is a fantastic bit of news. Go BookTok!

?? FF Tip of the Week - The Content Niche

What trends like BookTok show us is the power that niche communities can have in an online space. If you can create content that's appealing to a specific group of people, it can really help you build an engaged audience. As we've seen, AI and tracking software is getting increasingly powerful, particularly on social platforms, and is now being used to make sure your content gets shown to the exact people who may be most interested.

How can this benefit your brand? First, you need to focus in on your online niche. Who are your audience? What demographics? Who is actually watching your content online (it may be different to your traditional audience). Once you know this, you need to create more content focusing on this specific niche. The best type of content is series content (if your audience watch one video, they will likely be shown the rest) and trend content (what's been going viral in your niche, if they watched another video they will likely be shown yours too). Whatever the case, if you can build up a loyal audience within your niche, you are far more likely to drive conversions, as well as building an engaged online community at the same time.

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

Freshers Festival Group