I was cruising down Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai last week in the back of an Uber when a billboard popped up over the horizon. The billboard was for Shake Shack’s Big Shack burger. Three buns. Two patties. Secret sauce. I stared at it the way you stare at someone wearing your favorite jacket. You know that jacket. You love that jacket. You know where they got that jacket. But, damn, they look great in that jacket.

And then it hit me. “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” I just recited that from memory without thinking. Maybe you did too. That’s what decades of McDonald’s media spend promoting the world’s most famous burger does to a human brain — it’s not advertising, it’s installation. And Shake Shack just borrowed the whole program for free.

I’m a Shake Shack loyalist from way back. They were a client. I know these people. I respect these people. And as I passed the billboard, I found myself genuinely admiring the move. Someone should check whether the Hamburglar was in the room when Shake Shack’s product development team held that meeting. Because the Big Shack is, brilliantly, a Big Mac that grew up in a better neighborhood.

The Tactic Everyone Uses and Nobody Talks About

What Shake Shack pulled off has a name in marketing circles: borrowed interest. The art of building something new on top of someone else’s cultural foundation — and letting the work speak for itself.

It’s not imitation. It’s not plagiarism. It’s a sophisticated creative and strategic decision that the smartest brands in the world make regularly, deliberately.

Consider the numbers. Approximately 59% of consumers prefer purchasing new products from brands they are already familiar with. The insight buried in that statistic is this: the familiarity doesn’t have to be yours. It just has to exist. Shake Shack didn’t need consumers to learn about one more fancy burger — they needed consumers to know the shape of what they were offering. McDonald’s spent fifty years and billions of dollars creating that shape. Shake Shack showed up and used it. That’s not a knock on Shake Shack. That’s genius. 

This is different from Burger King’s gleeful McDonald’s trolling, which is loud, proud, and brilliant in its own right. BK names the enemy. BK geofences McDonald’s locations to steal customers mid-craving. Shake Shack did something more elegant — they borrowed the architecture without ever mentioning the address.

The Six-Week Runway

Zara doesn’t go to fashion week to take notes. They go to take photographs. Within six weeks of a Chanel jacket or a Prada silhouette appearing on a Paris or Milan runway, a version of it is hanging in 2,000 Zara stores across 96 countries. No acknowledgement. No attribution. Just the look, the feel, and a price point that makes it accessible to everyone.

It is the most industrialized, most efficient, and arguably most audacious borrowed interest operation ever built. Inditex, Zara’s parent company, reported revenues of €35.9 billion in 2023. A significant portion of that is built on the cultural authority of designers who never see a cent of it. The consumer picks up the jacket, thinks of the runway, feels the connection, and buys. The designer’s equity does the selling. Zara takes the margin.

The genius — and it is genius — is that nobody is pretending otherwise. The consumer knows. The designer knows. And yet the transaction completes, every single time.

The Phone Everyone Recognized

When Samsung launched the Galaxy S in 2010, consumers picked it up and immediately thought of one thing. The grid of icons. The touch gestures. The rounded rectangle. The premium retail experience. The unboxing. All of it borrowed, with extraordinary precision, from a product that had launched three years earlier and rewritten the rules of an entire industry.

Apple sued. The legal battle became one of the most complex intellectual property cases in history, eventually resulting in Samsung paying over $500 million in damages. And yet the Galaxy continued to sell in its hundreds of millions, building Samsung into the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer by volume. Every consumer who’d ever held an iPhone knew exactly what a Galaxy was and how to use it the moment they picked one up.

Our brains are pattern-matching machines. When we encounter a familiar structure in a new context, we experience something between comfort and curiosity — the neurological equivalent of a jazz cover of a song you know. Same chord progression. Better band.

The psychological engine behind all of this is straightforward. 86% of consumers consider authenticity a crucial factor when selecting brands to support. Borrowed interest works precisely because familiar structures feel authentic — they arrive pre-loaded with trust, cultural resonance and emotional memory that would otherwise take decades and extraordinary media budgets to build. Originality can sometimes be overrated.  

The Biggest Borrowers in the World

Red Bull is the gold standard of transnational borrowed interest. Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz encountered Krating Daeng, a Thai working-class tonic, adapted it for Western palates, and built a global empire. He didn’t invent the energy drink. He repackaged it, repositioned it, and sold it back to the world at a premium. The category Red Bull created from someone else’s formula is now worth tens of billions. Krating Daeng still exists, costs a fraction of Red Bull, and almost nobody outside Southeast Asia has heard of it.

Dyson did something equally audacious. James Dyson borrowed the entire visual and emotional language of luxury goods — precision engineering, sculptural design, premium retail environments — and applied it to product categories nobody had ever considered aspirational. A vacuum cleaner. A hand dryer. A fan with no blades. Dyson didn’t invent the underlying technology. He borrowed the aesthetic codes of luxury and attached them to objects people had only ever bought on price. Today Dyson is a global multi-billion dollar brand and people genuinely feel good about owning one.

The global fast casual restaurant market reached $211.52 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 11.5% through 2034 — a sector built almost entirely on the borrowed architecture of fast food, dressed up in better ingredients and higher margins. Every brand in that space is playing some version of the same game Shake Shack played on Sheikh Zayed Road. 

When Everyone Knows Exactly What You’re Not Saying

Aldi has turned borrowed interest into a science. Walk into any Aldi store in Europe, Australia, or the United States and the shelves are a masterclass in precise, deliberate recognition. The triangular chocolate bar that isn’t Toblerone. The stackable crisps in a tube that aren’t Pringles. The energy drink that isn’t Red Bull. Each product engineered to trigger instant recognition of the original while being entirely, legally its own thing. Aldi operates over 11,000 stores in more than 20 countries. The borrowed recognition doesn’t just drive trial — it short-circuits the entire consideration process. The consumer already knows what the product is, how it tastes, and whether they like it. Aldi simply removed the brand tax.

And then there is Beats by Dre. When Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine launched Beats headphones in 2008, the audio market was dominated by utilitarian products bought on specification. Beats borrowed the visual language, cultural weight, and status signaling of luxury fashion accessories and attached it to a pair of headphones. Consumers weren’t buying audio equipment. They were buying a $300 object that looked like it belonged in a Versace campaign. Apple eventually agreed, acquiring Beats in 2014 for $3 billion. The borrowed fashion equity was worth more than the technology.

The pattern is consistent: find a cultural structure that consumers already trust, inhabit it more convincingly than anyone else, and let familiarity do the heavy lifting.

Tips for Marketers Who Want to Play This Game

1. Map the equity before you borrow it. Know precisely what trigger you’re pulling — nostalgia, format, ritual, flavor memory. Zara doesn’t borrow “fashion” — it borrows a specific look from a specific runway and delivers it in six weeks. That precision is everything.

2. Upgrade the signal, not just the ingredients. The premium version must pay off the implicit promise. Better beef, real tomatoes, fresh onions — or a $300 object that looks like a fashion accessory, or a vacuum cleaner that that makes people proud to own one. Your borrowed equity gets you in the door. A genuinely better product keeps you there.

3. The reference is the strategy. Treat it like one. Not naming the reference is a creative decision, not an oversight. Build your communication around that conspicuous absence. Let the consumer connect the dots and they’ll feel ownership of the idea. That’s worth more than any campaign. And it may keep you out of court.

4. The borrowed icon must be aspirational to your target customer. Shake Shack borrows upward from McDonald’s. Zara borrows downward from Chanel. Both work because the reference point is aspirational to the buyer standing in front of the product. Beats borrowed from fashion because their customer wanted to look like they belonged in that world. The direction isn’t the point. The aspiration is.

5. Time it when the icon is ubiquitous but slightly tired. The Big Mac is culturally immortal but not exactly zeitgeist. That’s the sweet spot. You want the recognition without the freshness. The reference should feel like a comfortable old sofa — immediately recognizable, slightly past its prime, ripe for reinvention.

6. Leave room for the consumer’s aha moment. The unspoken recognition is the entire point. Over-explain and you kill it stone dead. The audience needs to feel clever for noticing. Zara never says “this is the Chanel jacket you couldn’t afford.” They just hang it on the rail and let you arrive at the conclusion yourself.

The One Thing Worth Watching

Apple borrowed the graphical user interface from Xerox PARC in the early 1980s — and built the most valuable consumer technology company in history. Samsung subsequently borrowed so comprehensively from Apple that the resulting legal battle became one of the most expensive intellectual property cases ever filed. Both brands continue to dominate global consumer electronics. Borrowing, it turns out, is a renewable resource — right up until it becomes a courtroom.

The structural consideration is this: brands perceived as unique can increase their revenue by 10% more than non-differentiated competitors. Used consistently and deliberately, borrowed interest reinforces your positioning. Used lazily or too often, it can blur it. The Big Shack works precisely because it’s a one-time, knowing nod — not a new direction. Know the difference. 

The other thing worth watching is your audience. Social media consumers are sharp, engaged, and they enjoy spotting the reference. The internet noticed the Big Shack immediately — and the reaction was admiration and amusement in equal measure. That’s exactly where you want to be.

The Bottom Line

The best borrowed interest makes the consumer feel smart for spotting it. Done right, you inherit decades of cultural conditioning, redirect an established craving, and walk away with the equity, the revenue, and your premium positioning entirely intact.

Zara built a €35.9 billion empire on someone else’s runway. Samsung built the world’s largest smartphone business on someone else’s product. Beats turned borrowed fashion equity into a $3 billion acquisition. And Shake Shack renovated a Big Mac and called it innovation.

How is your brand using familiar cultural structures to carry unfamiliar ideas? That’s the question worth sitting with.

Sources: Expert Market Research, Linearity.io, Inditex Annual Report 2023, The Verge, Forbes, Apple Newsroom, Smithsonian Magazine, The Spirits Business, Into The Minds

As I write this, I’m in Dubai in the middle of a tenuous cease-fire involving Iran, US and Israel. I’m not going to get into the politics, just the impact of the war.

For businesses here, particularly in hospitality, it was immediate and brutal. Tourism paused almost overnight in an economy that depends on it. And the reflex is exactly what you’d expect: discounting. Hotels knocking down prices, in some cases making them fully redeemable against food and beverage; restaurants and other services impacted by the slowdown layering on offers, anything to generate movement.

It’s desperate. And it usually doesn’t work. Or at least, it doesn’t sustain itself. The places where it appears to work probably would have filled seats anyway because they have a loyal following. Others slash prices and still can’t get people through the door.

When demand suddenly softens, there are no good solutions. Keeping people employed and generating some volume—even at the expense of margin—is the natural reaction. Live to fight another day. Fair enough.

But if you believe you’ll survive the crisis, you also have to think about how you recover. And that becomes a lot harder when you’ve blown up your margins and muddied your brand with promotions that feel off-brand and reactive.

I’ve spent a good part of my career trying to stop companies from doing the one thing they instinctively do the moment things get shaky: slash prices. As if panic were a pricing strategy. I’ve sat in too many boardrooms watching otherwise rational executives turn into clearance rack managers overnight, trading brand equity for short-term cash, attracting bargain hunters who vanish the moment prices normalize, and creating those lovely peaks and valleys in sales that make forecasting feel like astrology.

My argument has always been simple: discounting is not evil. But undisciplined discounting is. And in a crisis, the difference between the two is the difference between protecting demand… and training your customers to wait you out.

I saw this play out in real time a few weeks ago. A restaurant I’d been to a few times offered 50% off brunch. That was enough to pull a group of us in one Saturday. It was excellent—lively, generous, great food, free-flowing drinks. We all said the same thing: it was worth every dirham at full price. At 50% off, it felt like a real bargain. A rare feeling in Dubai.  We said we’d come back.

A few weeks later, they ran another offer. This time, 25% off. And something strange happened. It didn’t feel like a deal. It felt expensive.

That’s the anchoring effect. The first price you experience becomes the reference point. Everything that follows is judged against it. By showing 50%, they didn’t just drive traffic. They reset the perceived value of the experience. At 25%, they weren’t offering a discount. They were asking us to accept a loss. That’s the problem with discounting. You’re not just changing price. You’re rewriting value. And in a crisis, that’s where most brands get it wrong.

Crisis doesn’t justify discounting. It demands precision pricing strategy. The smartest brands don’t ask, “How much should we cut?” They ask, “What behavior are we trying to trigger and what’s the least destructive way to do it?”

The Margin Grenade Problem: When Discounts Destroy More Than They Save

Most executives think discounting is a volume lever. In reality, it’s a margin trade-off that behaves exponentially, not linearly. Small cuts in price create disproportionately large gaps in profitability, which then require unrealistic increases in volume to recover. In a crisis, when demand is already fragile, that math becomes even more punishing—and yet it’s almost always ignored in the rush to “do something.”Deep discounts don’t just reduce revenue. They disproportionately crush profit. A 20% price cut can require a 50%+ increase in volume to recover the same profit depending on margins. That’s not a promotion. That’s a gamble.
According to McKinsey & Company, poorly managed discounting is one of the largest drivers of profit leakage across retail and consumer sectors. And yet, it’s still the first lever pulled in a crisis because it’s easy, visible and immediate. But easy doesn’t mean smart.
US fashion retailer J. Crew is the cautionary tale. Years of relentless promotions didn’t just move inventory. They trained customers to expect discounts. Full price became theoretical. Margins eroded. Brand perception followed.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, many luxury hotels in Dubai and Abu Dhabi learned the same lesson post-COVID. Properties that held rates, even at lower occupancy, recovered faster than those that flooded the market with deep discounts and had to claw their way back up.
The math is simple. The consequences are not. The moment discounting becomes expected, it stops being a tactic and becomes your business model.
Too Big = Desperation. Too Small = Insult
Discount size is not just a financial decision. It’s a signal. Customers don’t see percentages. They interpret meaning. Too large, and you look distressed. Too small, and you look disingenuous. In both cases, you lose control of the narrative and hand it over to the market. A 50% discount signals distress. A 5% discount signals irrelevance. Both damage perception.
Research from Nielsen shows that over-discounting reduces perceived quality, particularly in premium and luxury categories. Price, whether we like it or not, is a proxy for value.
That’s why Burberry at one time chose to destroy unsold inventory rather than dump it into the discount market. Extreme? Yes. But it protected the one thing that matters in luxury: perception.
Contrast that with Target, which uses structured, progressive markdowns tied to inventory cycles. Not emotional. Not reactive. Systematic.
Even in hospitality, you see the difference. Jumeirah Group has historically leaned more on value-added packages—dining credits, experiences—rather than aggressive rate cuts. The signal is clear: value is being enhanced, not eroded.
Discounts communicate. If you don’t control the message, the market will.

Always Have a Reason or Don’t Discount at All

Pricing without context creates confusion. Confusion erodes trust. In uncertain times, customers are already questioning value, stability and intent. Random discounts only amplify that skepticism. A price cut without a clear rationale doesn’t feel generous. It feels suspicious. Discounts without a story feel arbitrary. Arbitrary pricing destroys trust.

PwC has found that price transparency and fairness are critical drivers of consumer trust, especially during uncertain times. If a customer can’t understand why they’re getting a deal, they start questioning the original price.

Airbnb gets this right with long-stay discounts. The logic is obvious: commit longer, pay less per night. That’s not desperation. That’s behavioral economics.

Amazon does the same with Prime Day. It’s not random discounting. It’s an event. A moment. A reason to act now.

In the region, Emirates has historically used tactical fare promotions tied to seasonality or route launches, not blanket price cuts. Again, a reason.

If you can’t explain the discount in one clean sentence, don’t offer it.

The Smarter Move: Give More, Don’t Charge Less

There are only two ways to make an offer more attractive: reduce the price or increase the value. One weakens your position. The other strengthens it. The difference isn’t just financial. It’s psychological. Customers don’t evaluate price in isolation. They evaluate what they get for it. This is the hill I will die on.

Price cuts reduce perceived value. Added value increases it. Research from Deloitte shows that bundling and value-add promotions outperform straight discounts in driving both conversion and loyalty. Why? Because they preserve the integrity of the price while enhancing the experience.

Apple understands this instinctively. They rarely discount core products. Instead, they offer gift cards, services or bundles. The price remains sacred.

McDonald’s built an empire on this with Extra Value Meals. Not cheaper burgers, more perceived value. 

Spotify uses extended trials to lower the barrier to entry without touching the subscription price.

Even in luxury hospitality, value-add wins. Atlantis Dubai packages rooms with waterpark access, dining or experiences. The guest feels like they’re getting a deal, even when they’re not paying less.

A customer who gets more feels smarter. A customer who pays less feels lucky. Only one of those builds loyalty.

Behavioral Discounts Beat Blanket Discounts

Not all demand is equal, and not all customers should be treated the same. Blanket discounting assumes a homogeneous market. Real markets aren’t. They’re fragmented, behavioral and highly responsive to context. The smarter move is not to discount broadly, but to intervene precisely.

Not all customers are equal. Your pricing shouldn’t be either. Boston Consulting Group ighlights that targeted promotions can be 2–3x more effective than blanket discounting because they’re tied to specific behaviors.

Uber is a masterclass in this. Discounts appear when demand needs stimulation—off-peak hours, new user acquisition—not as a constant.

Sephora rewards its best customers with tiered benefits, not universal price cuts.

In the Gulf, Noon uses flash sales, app-only deals and targeted offers to drive urgency and behavior without permanently resetting price expectations.

Discounting everyone is lazy. Incentivizing the right behavior is strategy.

Crisis Promotions That Actually Worked (Because They Were Smart)

Pressure reveals strategy. Weak brands react. Strong brands adapt. The difference is rarely resources. It’s discipline. The brands that come out stronger aren’t the ones that avoided the crisis. They’re the ones that avoided the instinct to panic.

Each of these proves a different point, not just that they discounted, but how and why.

Nike leaned into member-exclusive digital promotions during COVID, protecting margins while accelerating direct relationships with customers. LVMH largely avoided discounting entirely, reinforcing the idea that scarcity often beats desperation. Peloton used financing to reduce friction without reducing price—a subtle but powerful distinction. IKEA pushed bundles and room solutions, increasing basket size instead of shrinking price. Starbucks doubled down on loyalty-driven, personalized offers rather than blanket promotions. Accenture found that companies maintaining pricing discipline during downturns recover margins faster. That’s not theory. That’s pattern recognition.

The winners didn’t avoid pressure. They avoided panic.

The Real Risk: You’re Reprogramming Your Customer

This is the silent killer. KPMG reports that promotion-heavy environments increase price sensitivity and reduce long-term brand loyalty. Discounting doesn’t just drive short-term demand. It rewires behavior. Customers start to wait. They compare more. They hesitate at full price because you’ve taught them not to trust it.

Macy’s has lived this reality for years where promotions became so frequent that full price lost its credibility. You see the same pattern across travel platforms. Constant “limited-time deals” that are never really limited create skepticism. Urgency stops working when everything is urgent.

Every discount teaches your customer something. The question is: are you teaching them to buy… or to wait?

A Better Framework for Crisis Pricing

Most pricing frameworks break down in a crisis because they assume stability. What you need instead is a decision model that works under pressure, one that protects long-term value while still allowing for short-term flexibility. That requires discipline, not instinct.

• Define the behavior you want (trial, volume, loyalty, urgency)
• Choose the least destructive lever (value-add, bundle, financing, exclusivity, timing)
• Anchor it to a reason (event, loyalty, duration, inventory, behavior)
• Protect your reference price at all costs
• Make it feel earned, not given away

Limited Time Only

Desperate times don’t call for desperate discounts. They call for disciplined thinking. The brands that come out stronger aren’t the ones that sold the cheapest. They’re the ones that protected their value while everyone else was busy giving theirs away.

Sources: McKinsey & Company: Pricing and promotion effectiveness research; Harvard Business School: Studies on promotions and consumer purchase timing; Nielsen: Pricing perception and discount impact studies; PwC: Consumer trust and pricing transparency research; Deloitte: Value-added promotions and bundling insights; Boston Consulting Group: Targeted promotions vs mass discounting; Accenture: Pricing discipline and post-crisis recovery performance; KPMG: Consumer behavior and price sensitivity trends

I’ve spent nearly five decades in marketing and one thing has always struck me as odd: brands talk about themselves far more than any polite human ever would. They praise their own values, their own purpose, their own superiority and their own good intentions—often loudly, often repeatedly and often with no visible sense of irony.

Even when it’s true, it’s rarely believable. And it almost never makes a brand more relatable or appealing.

This steady drumbeat of self-congratulation has trained consumers to be skeptical. Not hostile. Just unconvinced. People understand that brands are conditioned to say how wonderful they are. That doesn’t make brands dishonest. It makes them predictable.

There are exceptions, of course. Some brands can get away with arrogance because they’ve earned it. BMW can talk confidently about performance because there is a deep, lived foundation of excellence in consumers’ minds. Even then, it works because the product keeps backing it up.

But this rarely works for other brands. And when it does, it’s usually because the arrogance is delivered with a wink—clearly tongue-in-cheek, self-aware and deliberately provocative. Without that self-awareness, chest-beating doesn’t read as confidence. It reads as insecurity.

Over time, this relentless self-focus has had a predictable effect. Consumers didn’t stop listening because they became cynical. They stopped listening because they learned that brand messaging is designed to persuade, not to reveal.

So they went elsewhere.

Not to experts. Not to institutions. But to strangers—people with no obvious incentive to flatter, no obligation to stay on message and no brand to protect.

Trust didn’t disappear. It migrated.

The internet didn’t destroy trust in brands. It simply removed their monopoly on it.

Instead of relying on a single authoritative source, consumers now triangulate truth across forums, reviews, creators and private communities. Edelman’s 2024 Trust Barometer makes this explicit: “people like me” are trusted more than CEOs, governments or brands in most major markets.

That’s why platforms like Reddit now influence purchase decisions more than many media plans. Reddit isn’t a media company in the traditional sense. It’s a network of topic-based communities where people argue in public, correct each other and call out exaggeration. In 2024, Reddit reported over 73 million daily active users. The value isn’t polish. It’s visible disagreement. Consumers read that as credibility.

Brands speak with one voice. Strangers speak with many. And many now feels more believable than one. Reviews feel messier than ads—and therefore more honest

Consumers don’t trust strangers because strangers are experts. They trust them because strangers don’t sound managed. BrightLocal’s 2024 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 87 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That doesn’t mean reviews are always accurate. It means they feel less engineered.

This is why Amazon reviews still shape buying decisions despite years of fake-review scandals. The contradictions, the edge cases, the complaints about packaging or delivery delays—all the things brands would never include—read as authenticity. Imperfection has become a proxy for truth.

Marketing spent decades polishing away friction. Consumers now actively look for it.

Influencers didn’t replace brands. They replaced spokespeople

Trust didn’t move to creators because they’re aspirational. It moved because they’re accountable. Nielsen’s 2023 Trust in Advertising study shows influencer recommendations outperform brand ads across most age groups globally. When a creator exaggerates or misleads, the backlash is immediate and personal. When a brand does the same, responsibility dissolves into statements, disclaimers and carefully worded apologies.

This is why global fitness apparel brand, Gymshark, scaled globally without leaning on traditional celebrity endorsement. The brand built its following through a distributed network of fitness creators who spoke in their own voices. Trust wasn’t transferred from the brand to the influencer. It was borrowed repeatedly—and could be withdrawn just as quickly. That fragility is precisely what makes it credible.

Algorithms trained consumers to doubt brand intent

Performance marketing didn’t just optimize conversion. It educated consumers.

Meta’s own disclosures show users are exposed to thousands of ads per day across platforms. Over time, consumers learned that messaging is engineered to persuade, retarget and close—not to inform.

As a result, discovery moved sideways. People now consult WhatsApp groups or TikTok comment threads before they ever visit a brand site. Brand content is no longer the starting point. It’s corroboration, and sometimes a red flag. Marketing taught consumers how persuasion works. They adjusted faster than we did.

Younger consumers learned trust socially, not institutionally

Gen Z didn’t grow up trusting institutions. They grew up navigating them.

McKinsey’s 2023 Gen Z research shows younger consumers rely heavily on peer validation and community input before making decisions. They don’t assume brands are lying. They assume brands are curated.

That dynamic is visible in how Shein is evaluated. China-based Shein is a global fast-fashion e-commerce brand known for ultra-cheap clothing sold almost entirely online. Despite persistent criticism around sustainability and labor practices, Shein’s customers openly share sizing warnings, quality caveats and sourcing concerns with each other. Trust isn’t built on the brand’s narrative. It’s built inside the community that surrounds it.

Brands didn’t lose control of the conversation. They surrendered it by insisting on perfection.

Transparency theater backfired

When trust started slipping, brands responded with slick transparency. Consumers noticed the choreography.

PwC’s 2024 Consumer Trust Survey shows that while consumers say transparency matters, trust only increases when transparency includes trade-offs and limitations. Perfect sustainability stories now trigger skepticism rather than reassurance.

This is why Patagonia continues to stand out. Patagonia doesn’t just promote values. It openly discusses environmental costs, supply-chain limits and the tension between growth and responsibility. The lack of polish makes the message believable.

Transparency that feels rehearsed erodes trust faster than silence.

Trust is now earned in the comments, not the campaign

Campaigns still matter. They just don’t close the trust gap on their own.

Sprout Social’s 2024 Index shows over 70 percent of consumers expect brands to engage authentically in comments and conversations, not just post content. Silence now reads as avoidance. Corporate tone reads as evasion.

This is why Ryanair, despite its intentionally abrasive tone, maintains credibility with its audience. A clear example is their social media habit of publicly mocking complaints instead of soothing them. When passengers complain about legroom, fees or delays, Ryanair regularly replies with blunt, sarcastic posts like “You booked the cheapest flight in Europe. What exactly were you expecting?” or memes that openly joke about charging for “extra legroom” or “breathing.”  The brand leans into blunt honesty, which paradoxically makes it feel more trustworthy to its audience than airlines that apologize politely while doing the same things.

For many consumers, trust isn’t shaped by marketing at all. It’s shaped by what happens when something breaks. Zendesk’s 2024 CX Trends Report found that 75 percent of consumers judge a brand’s trustworthiness based on how it handles problems, not how it sells solutions.

This helps explain the rise of Monzo. The UK-based digital bank built trust through fast responses, plain language and visible humans. The brand didn’t claim transparency. It practiced it, publicly and repeatedly.

Strangers feel safer because they have no obvious incentive

Consumers understand incentives better than marketers sometimes give them credit for.

The Harvard Business Review noted that people increasingly evaluate motive as much as message when assessing credibility. Strangers online may be wrong. But they usually aren’t paid to persuade at scale.

This is why communities around Tesla often shape perception more than the company itself. Owners, critics and enthusiasts debate openly. That messiness feels more honest than any brand narrative.

What this means for marketers who still want to be trusted

Trust can’t be reclaimed with better messaging. It has to be redistributed.

Marketers who rebuild trust stop trying to sound authoritative and start designing for scrutiny. They allow third parties to surface flaws first. They make it easier for customers to correct them than to complain. They understand that control is no longer the currency—credibility is.

They don’t compete with strangers. They empower them.

Because once consumers trust strangers more than brands, the smartest move isn’t to shout louder. It’s to make sure the strangers are telling a story you can live with—and learn from.

Sources:  Edelman Trust Barometer 2024, Bright Local Consumer Review Survey 2024, Nielsen Trust in Advertising Study 2023, McKinsey Gen Z Consumer Research 2023, PwC Consumer Trust Survey 2024, Sprout Social Index 2024, Zendesk CX Trends Report 2024, Harvard Business Review – Trust and Incentives (2023), Company filings and platform disclosures (Amazon, Reddit, Meta).

We spend much of our time helping brands justify premium pricing by identifying a product lever and exploiting it with creative precision. Sometimes that lever is a genuine, superior feature or benefit we can expose and amplify. That has often been the case with brands like Samsung or Logitech, where technological or performance advantages are real and marketing’s role is to make them unmistakable.

But in many other cases—especially in FMCG—quality is already apparent and competitors, who almost always charge less, have reached functional parity. That’s where creative marketing becomes the only differentiator. For brands like Coca-Cola, Filippo Berio and TABASCO®, our goal wasn’t to prove quality. It was to create meaning, preference and justification where none existed on paper.

That’s the job. Find the thing that makes the brand worth choosing—and worth paying more for—even if we have to invent one. The assumption was sound: if you could credibly anchor a product to superiority, distinction or meaning, people would pay more.

What’s changed isn’t the role of marketing. It’s the nature of the premium itself.

Quality didn’t disappear. It became assumed

Across most categories, baseline quality is now high. In many cases, it is indistinguishable at the point of use. A search or just about anything on Amazon is proof enough. 

This isn’t a philosophical shift; it shows up clearly in behavior. Global cart abandonment still sits at roughly 70%, according to Baymard Institute benchmarks. People don’t abandon carts because the product suddenly became bad. They abandon because doubt creeps in at the moment of commitment. Too many options. Too many conditions. Too much effort to feel confident.

That’s why private-label products continue to gain share globally. NielsenIQ reports that private labels now account for over 22% of global FMCG value sales, with the fastest growth in Europe. Consumers aren’t rejecting quality brands. They’re rejecting the idea that quality alone justifies a premium.

When quality is assumed, the decision shifts from “is this good?” to “is this safe to choose?”

Premium has become risk reduction

Modern premium pricing buys reassurance. It reduces the chance of regret, hassle, explanation or blame.

Morgan Stanley’s research on the convenience economy shows consumers are willing to pay around 5% more simply to save time and mental effort. PwC’s Global Consumer Insights Survey shows consumers are willing to pay nearly 10% more for sustainably produced goods—not because sustainability improves performance, but because it reduces moral and reputational friction.

Starbucks illustrates this shift cleanly. Roughly 31% of U.S. transactions now run through their mobile order and pay. The premium isn’t just quality or taste of the product. It’s predictability. Skip the line. Know what happens next. Cognitive relief as value.

Costco operates on the same logic. Membership renewal rates hover around 90% in North America. That loyalty isn’t driven by aspiration or storytelling. It’s driven by trust in pricing and confidence in outcomes. Limited choice is not a compromise. It’s the premium feature.

Luxury and premium now operate on different logics

This is where many brands still get confused. Premium reduces anxiety. Luxury tests fluency.

Luxury works by signaling that not everything is explained or easily accessible. Hermès demonstrates this discipline relentlessly. Scarcity is protected, prices continue to rise and access remains uneven. In 2024, the brand delivered double-digit constant-currency growth while much of the sector struggled. That growth wasn’t driven by better products. It was driven by preserved desirability.

When that discipline breaks, the damage is fast. Gucci’s sales declined sharply in 2024 as overexposure and creative inconsistency eroded meaning, contributing to a double-digit revenue drop at Kering (the French luxury holding company that owns Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and several other brands). When luxury becomes too visible, it doesn’t become premium. It becomes incoherent.

Burberry’s retrenchment reinforces the point from the recovery side. After years of dilution, the brand narrowed focus back to core outerwear and pricing discipline. Analysts framed this not as a product fix, but as a necessary reset of brand meaning.

Premium grows by removing drama

As consumers become more cognitively overloaded, premium brands can often win by subtraction.

Capgemini reports that 32% of consumers now purchase via social commerce, up from 24% the year before. In that environment, no one has time to evaluate detailed quality claims. Trust signals, ease of return and brand reassurance matter more than feature lists.

Apple’s sustained pricing power reflects this reality. ACSI data continues to place Apple at the top of smartphone satisfaction scores, not because each product leapfrogs competitors, but because the ecosystem reduces learning cost, service friction and resale anxiety. The premium is confidence.

Where brands misread the moment

Luxury brands fail when they chase growth through accessibility. Broader distribution, louder campaigns and cheaper entry points may look like momentum, but they hollow out meaning. Bain–Altagamma research shows the global luxury customer base shrank by around 60 million consumers between 2022 and 2024, driven largely by price fatigue and loss of perceived value.

Premium brands fail when they borrow luxury’s opacity. Artificial scarcity, vague pricing and unnecessary complexity don’t feel elevated. They feel irritating.

Mass brands fail when they raise prices without rebuilding the experience. McKinsey reports that over 70% of consumers traded down or switched brands in 2023–2024 in response to price increases that weren’t matched by perceived value.

What this means for marketing decision-makers

The uncomfortable implication of all this is that premium pricing today is not primarily a communications problem. It’s a design problem. A decision-architecture problem. A reassurance problem.

If your premium story still relies on telling people that something is “better,” you’re likely overestimating how much cognitive bandwidth they’re willing to give you. In most categories, quality is assumed. What isn’t assumed is whether choosing you will create work, friction, second-guessing or internal consequences for the buyer.

This is why many premium strategies fail even when the product is genuinely good. Marketing adds more features, more messaging, more claims and more justification—exactly the wrong instinct in an environment where people are already overloaded. The real opportunity is usually the opposite: identifying where uncertainty enters the decision and removing it systematically.

That might mean narrowing choice rather than expanding it. It might mean simplifying pricing instead of “value engineering” it. It might mean making outcomes more predictable rather than more exciting. Or it might mean recognizing that the real premium you’re selling isn’t superiority at all, but confidence—the confidence that this choice won’t have to be defended, explained or undone later.

For luxury brands, the risk is over-communication and over-availability. Desirability doesn’t scale the way efficiency does. Once everything is explained and everywhere is accessible, the brand doesn’t feel generous. It feels diluted.

For premium brands, the danger is mistaking ambiguity for elevation. Mystery without meaning doesn’t feel premium. It feels annoying. Premium buyers aren’t looking to decode your brand. They’re looking to make a smart, low-risk decision and move on.

The marketers who get this right stop asking how to sound more premium and start asking where they can make the decision feel safer, calmer and harder to regret. Because today, people aren’t paying more to get something better. They’re paying more to stop thinking about whether they made the wrong choice.

Sources: Baymard Institute – Cart Abandonment Rates, PwC – Global Consumer Insights Survey 2024, Morgan Stanley – Convenience Economy Research, NielsenIQ – Global FMCG & Private Label Trends, Bain & Altagamma – Luxury Market Studies, Reuters – Luxury sector reporting, Starbucks Investor Disclosures, ACSI – U.S. Customer Satisfaction Index, Capgemini – Social Commerce Consumer Trends, McKinsey – Consumer Trading-Down Research

Forget “always on.” The smartest brands today are mastering the art of being just out of reach. From VIP-only launches to digital queues and manufactured friction, brands are rediscovering the age-old power of absence. In a world drowning in algorithmic availability, mystery sells—and “no” is the new “yes.”

We Could Sell You One… But We Won’t

I’m not going to tell you which global luxury brand’s regional head once outlined their handbag scarcity strategy over a glass of something grapey. Let’s just say it rhymes with Chanel. “We could flood the market,” he said, pausing to let the weight of that phrase hang in the air like one of their equally famous perfumes. “But we don’t. We sell them to loyal clients only. There’s always a waitlist.” Then he leaned in. “Of course, if we need to hit our financial targets—well, we suddenly will have good news for a few lucky ladies that month.”

The Chanel approach isn’t supply chain constraint—it’s controlled desire. Same goes for Hermès, where your chance at a Birkin increases if you’ve already bought a few ready-to-wear pieces, some shoes, maybe a little jewelry. Want the bag? Earn it.

In their rarefied world, scarcity isn’t a problem. It’s the plan.

We’ve Been Here Before 

Scarcity has long been luxury’s favorite aphrodisiac. Studio 54 had a velvet rope. Hermès has a registry. And now, brands from every industry are pulling the same trick. Why? Because scarcity works.

Products with limited availability see a 226% higher conversion rate. It’s not about having the thing—it’s about being invited to have it.

Kylie Jenner understood this perfectly. When she launched her Lip Kits, it wasn’t a business—it was a lottery. Drops sold out instantly. Scarcity made it buzzy. Buzzy made it viral. Viral made it a billion-dollar brand. All that, and it was still lip liner.

The lesson? We don’t crave what’s available. We crave what’s almost available.

The Delicious Pain of Waiting

There’s a reason 76% of luxury buyers say exclusivity is more important than price. We’re wired to want what’s just out of reach. It’s not just behavioral economics. It’s dopamine economics. The anticipation is the high.

Rolex doesn’t market scarcity—it just lets people wait for it. Authorized dealers play favorites, sit on stock and quietly call the chosen ones. If you’re on the outside, good luck. 

And guess what? Brands with intentional waitlists report 30% higher customer lifetime value. You waited. You suffered. Now you’re loyal.

When Friction Feels Like Foreplay

Scarcity isn’t just about limiting supply. It’s about adding friction—just enough to make people feel like they’re part of something rare.

43% of Gen Z say they enjoy waiting in online queues if it feels exclusive. These are the same people raised on Prime shipping and infinite scroll. But tell them there are only 100 of something? They’ll wait.

Nike’s SNKRS app built its cult around friction. Every week, it throws fans into a digital bloodsport of randomized drops. Losers grumble. Winners gloat. Everyone returns. Why? Because virtual queues with wait timers increase conversions by 52%. Losing is part of the loyalty loop.

Notion, the productivity platform, launched its AI features by invitation only. Users begged for access. They weren’t annoyed. They were flattered.

The message: friction works—if it feels like you’re holding the key to something others can’t touch.

Scarcity Hits the Mainstream

Luxury doesn’t own scarcity anymore. It’s gone mass market, tech and fast food.

Products labeled “limited time” see a 118% lift in social shares (Sprout Social, 2024). The faster it disappears, the faster it spreads.

Chick-fil-A closes every Sunday. Though that this was originally a faith-driven decision by its founder, S. Truett Cathy, a devout Southern Baptist, that policy has become one of the brand’s most powerful scarcity levers. It drives anticipation, reinforces values and turns a day of zero revenue into seven days of buzz. Scarcity doesn’t have to be engineered to be effective. Sometimes it’s just a conviction that pays off.

Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses didn’t launch globally. Instead, they dropped them in stages, letting demand simmer. Predictably, they sold out.

Scarcity isn’t just a supply strategy. It’s a media strategy.

In Culture, Scarcity Becomes Story

Monocle, the global affairs magazine, with a wink of old-world retail flair—turns candles, city guides and even tote bags into limited drops. The scarcity becomes part of the story. “Oh, this one? It was from the Zürich shop. They only printed 50.” Nobody cares that it’s a tote. They care that they got it.

IKEA x Virgil Abloh? IKEA’s collaboration with the late designer, founder of Off-White and Artistic Director at Louis Vuitton, sold out globally in under 30 minutes. It was scarcity-meets-satire: rugs printed with the word “KEEP OFF,” bags that looked like receipts. Consumers lined up at dawn to buy particleboard with provenance. 

Lyst, the global fashion search engine, gamifies shopping with waitlists and alerts. When a product reappears, you’re already primed to buy—not because you need it, but because you almost didn’t get it.

Scarcity’s Dark Side

Of course, fake scarcity is just lying with sequins.

During Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Ticketmaster used “dynamic pricing”—a system that inflates ticket prices in real time based on demand. As fans flooded the site, prices surged into the thousands, even for standard seats. The backlash was instant and volcanic. Swifties cried foul, government officials got involved, and Ticketmaster was dragged into Senate hearings over monopolistic practices. Scarcity may drive up value, but when it smells like price gouging, it invites subpoenas—not loyalty.

Balenciaga released a line of deliberately distressed sneakers, priced at $1,850 and marketed as artful decay. The shoes looked post-apocalyptic—frayed, filthy and barely held together. The internet responded with mockery and outrage, calling it “poverty cosplay” and tone-deaf in an era of rising economic inequality. Balenciaga said it was a commentary on consumerism. Consumers said, “No thanks.” Scarcity doesn’t excuse absurdity—especially when it punches down.

And consumers are wise to it. 59% say they distrust scarcity cues when not transparently explained. Don’t fake the velvet rope. Make sure there’s an actual party behind it.

How to Use Scarcity—Wherever You Work

Scarcity works across industries. But it must be wielded like a scalpel, not a chainsaw. Here’s how to use it—whether you’re selling watches or widgets.

Hospitality

Open bookings in waves. Let returning guests access suites or seasonal packages before the public. Rotate seasonal menus or exclusive cocktail pairings. Scarcity makes even a room feel like a reward.

Media: Limited-run newsletters. Invite-only podcasts. Archived content that disappears after a week. Monocle does it with magazines. You can do it with ideas.

Retail: Bundle to gatekeep. Hermès does it with handbags and heels. You can do it with tiers. Buy three basics to access one rare drop. Use loyalty spend as currency for access.

CPG & Food: Retire products like Trader Joe’s. Kill off fan favorites, then bring them back with fanfare. Or offer regional exclusives—“only in Dubai,” “only this month.” Scarcity creates snack lore.

Tech: Roll out features in stages. Make beta access a badge of honor. Segment customers and reward those who’ve stuck with you. 

Services: Limit access to yourself. Close your calendar. Offer fewer consulting spots. Let people feel like you are the scarce resource.

Events: Never say “plenty of tickets available.” Cap capacity. Even if you don’t sell out, make it feel like a room you were lucky to get into.

Subscriptions: Close enrollment windows. Build a waitlist. Create demand by not always being available. When people can’t have it, they want it more.

Scarcity Is a Power Move

Real scarcity isn’t just about limits—it’s about meaning. When everyone else is screaming, the smartest brands whisper.

As the Chanel exec said (off the record), “It’s not manipulation. It’s curation.”

Scarcity builds allure. Friction fosters loyalty. And when done right, saying “not yet” becomes irresistible.

Sources: HubSpot Marketing Stats 2024, Pinterest Predicts 2025, Bain & Company Luxury Report 2024, McKinsey & Company Consumer Value Index 2023, Queue-it Conversion Trends 2024, GWI Gen Z Survey 2024, Shopify Plus Commerce Report 2024, Sprout Social Sharing Index 2024, Adobe Consumer Trust Report 2023, Lyst Shopping Behavior 2024

We once created a jingle for a sneaker brand play on local Boston radio so often that the client complained because they couldn’t get it out of their heads. Which, of course, was the whole flip’n point. We created a billboard for a vitamin brand that stopped traffic in Moscow. Literally. The police got involved. It was on the front page Kommersant. It was a whole thing. Mysterious crop circles in a remote cornfield had European media buzzing that aliens had somehow created shapes that look suspiciously like a new smart watch about to be launched. How they got there I’m not telling. But thank goodness we only use our super marketing powers for good, is all I’m saying. 

Today, in a world drowning in digital sameness, I’m seeing marketers rediscover what we never forgot: physicality sells.

Billboards Bigger Than Algorithms

For years, billboards were dismissed as relics—too analog, too blunt in an era obsessed with micro-targeting. Yet global out-of-home ad spending hit $46.2 billion in 2024, up 10% from the year before, proving that size still matters. In the U.S. alone, the market broke $9.1 billion, the highest on record. Netflix, the global streaming service, leaned into this power when it plastered a cryptic “Wednesday” teaser (the Addams Family spin-off series) across Times Square, a stunt that ricocheted back onto TikTok and Instagram. The lesson? You can scroll past a post but you can’t swipe away a 60-foot wall.

Direct Mail’s Retro Slide-In

The same logic applies to direct mail. The global market for it grew from $74.65 billion in 2022 to $76.95 billion in 2023 despite every prediction that print would wither. Why? Because in a world of disposable pixels, a piece of mail feels permanent. It also works: direct mail enjoys open rates of 80–90% compared to email’s 20–30%. Glossier, the U.S. beauty and skincare brand, proved the point when it sent 10,000 customers handwritten postcards; response rates spiked. That tactile envelope isn’t just a piece of paper—it’s proof someone thought of you.

Jingles and the Sonic Revival

Sound, too, is making a comeback. Ads containing sonic branding are 8.5 times more effective than those relying on visuals alone. Audio advertising drives 24% stronger recall and brand-matching music makes people 96% more likely to remember your name. Burger King, the global fast-food chain, launched its viral “Whopper Whopper” jingle—originally intended for broadcast—that took over TikTok then swung back into TV spots. In other words, earworms travel platforms like contraband. You don’t just hear them—you hum them into memory.

Print Magazines: The Flex of Permanence

Print hasn’t died; it’s flexing. Global print ad revenue is still $47.2 billion and luxury brands are leading the charge. Dior, Rolex and Gucci have rediscovered the permanence of Vogue and The Economist—magazines where their ads aren’t sandwiched between memes or sponsored posts. Engagement data backs it up: 46% of subscribers report being highly engaged with print ads in their favorite magazines, which translates into a 36% bump in brand favorability and nearly 50% increase in ad awareness. In other words, print is where luxury still looks like luxury.

Event Sponsorships and Physical Presence

If digital is disposable, events are unforgettable. Global media revenues are forecast to hit $853 billion in 2024 with live events a growing share. Hermès, the French luxury goods company, didn’t shy away from this even during a luxury slowdown, boosting communication spend by 30% to €260 million in just six months. Aperol, the Italian aperitif brand, went further, staging a massive takeover of Piazza San Marco during the Venice Biennale—an international art exhibition—creating a moment so photogenic that Instagram did the amplification for them. Being there means being remembered.

Merch as Media

What used to be called “swag” is now a business model. Branded merchandise carries an 85% retention rate compared to single-digit recall for most digital ads. It’s no surprise then that Liquid Death, the irreverent canned water brand, sells T-shirts that outsell indie streetwear labels. Every hoodie, tote or hat becomes a walking billboard with one crucial difference: your audience pays you to wear it.

Cinema Advertising’s Captive Power

The darkened cinema remains one of the few places where an audience is truly captive. Global cinema ad spend surged 15% in 2023, a rebound powered by the simple truth that you can’t skip an ad when you’ve paid $20 for a seat. Chanel, the French fashion and beauty house, leaned into this, premiering a No. 5 short film starring actress Marion Cotillard before Bond, the James Bond franchise. Luxury on luxury. When you pair an iconic brand with a big screen, the ad becomes entertainment, not intrusion.

Street Teams and Guerrilla Stunts

Then there’s the wild side. Experiential activations stick because they’re physical, unpredictable and personal. 92% of consumers say experiential stunts make them more likely to talk about a brand. Mattel, the U.S. toy company, proved it with Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse Airbnb pop-up in 2023, which drew global media coverage and an avalanche of social shares. You don’t scroll past a stunt if you’re standing in the middle of it.

Catalogs: The Unexpected Luxury Book

Catalogs may feel like the domain of Sears, the U.S. department store once famous for its thick mail-order catalogs, but they’re having a renaissance. Bain & Co. reports the global personal luxury goods market has ballooned from €85 billion in 1996 to €360 billion by 2023, and with it has come a renewed appetite for beautifully printed lookbooks. IKEA, the Swedish furniture giant, saw its farewell catalog become a collector’s item, while brands like Patagonia, the American outdoor apparel company, and Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness and lifestyle brand, are reviving the form. For Gen Z, who say catalogs give them “shopping inspiration,” it’s Pinterest in print. And, yes I heard the irony as I wrote that.

Handwritten Notes and Human Touch

Finally, the most analog move of all: handwriting. Notes generate response rates up to 112% higher than standard print pieces. Warby Parker, the American eyewear retailer, has made a habit of slipping handwritten thank-yous into orders, and the effect lingers—customers still post them years later. In a screen-first world, the human hand leaves a lasting mark. 

Tips for Marketers Rediscovering 1999

If all this sounds like nostalgia, it isn’t. These aren’t relics dusted off for retro effect—they’re tactics that cut through because they feel real, rare and human. The trick is knowing how to use them with today’s data, distribution and cultural speed. Here’s how to make old-school work like new again.

1. Billboards: Think intrigue, not URLs—make them conversation starters
2. Direct Mail: Personalize like email but let ink and paper deliver emotion
3. Jingles: Test audio hooks on TikTok or Reels before rolling them out broadly
4. Print: Use it as credibility theater—make ads collectible
5. Events: Focus on experiences, not logos; people Instagram the vibe, not the signage
6. Merch: Design merch people actually want—think collab, not giveaway
7. Cinema: Tell stories like short films, not sale flyers
8. Street Teams: Start small and local—one quirky activation can scale globally
9. Catalogs: Treat them as editorial showcases, not transactional dumps
10. Handwritten Notes: Scale authenticity—tech can replicate handwriting without losing charm

Final Hook

It turns out the sexy new frontier in marketing is…1999. Back then, I didn’t call it “multi-sensory engagement” or “experiential activations.” I called it “getting the damn jingle stuck in your head.” Today, in an age where sameness floods every feed, old-school tactics work not because they’re nostalgic, but because they remind us that physicality is sticky, analog is credible and what people can hold, hear or stumble into on the street is far harder to forget.

Sources: Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), revenue report, Signage Info, Global OOH Ad Spend, Cognitive Market Research, Direct Mail Advertising Market Report, CDS Global, Integrated Direct Mail, Postalytics, Direct Mail Statistics, Universal Production Music, Sonic Branding Statistics, Play Audio Agency, Audio Branding ROI, Forbes, Global Ad Revenue for Print, MediaMax Network, Luxury Magazines Engagement Data, Magna Global, Global Ad Revenues Forecast, Vogue Business, Luxury Sales and Communications Spend, Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI), Branded Merchandise Impact, Statista, Global Cinema Advertising Spend, EventTrack, Experiential Marketing Report, Bain & Company, Global Personal Luxury Goods Market Report, Handwrytten, Handwritten Notes ROI

For me, the realization came not in our conference room but in my bathroom in front of a mirror. I’ve been on a serious quest to find the right eye cream —a concession to the dark circles forming under one eye as the result of an injury. It’s personal, practical and I actually care if it works. Yet every time I searched, my feed filled with influencers raving about miracle gels and glow serums that had probably never touched their skin. The same vacant smiles, the same captions engineered for “engagement.” This isn’t influence anymore, it’s theater.

I’ve written about influencers before. Often. Frequently, I’ve praised the power of the small voice over the megaphone, the micro over the macro, the niche over the noisy. But lately I’ve noticed something different. The rules are shifting. Audiences are jaded, AI avatars are multiplying like fruit flies, and even the supposedly authentic voices risk being drowned in synthetic chatter. We may be hitting an inflection point — the start of the post-influencer era.

And audiences feel it too. According to Morning Consult’s 2024 report, trust in influencers has dropped five percentage points in a single year. In Germany, only 20 percent of men and 33 percent of women even follow influencers, compared to much higher levels in markets like India or Brazil. The fatigue is global, and it’s measurable.

The Cracks in the Model

The first crack is over‑commercialization. When every other post ends with “use my code for 20% off,” authenticity collapses. It’s no surprise global influencer marketing spend is projected to hit $32.5 billion in 2025 — but ROI is flattening. The bigger the spend, the weaker the connection. Even Coca‑Cola — the world’s largest soft‑drink brand and a pioneer of modern mass marketing — has been called out in Europe for influencer pushes that felt scripted rather than sincere. If an icon like that can tank trust, celebs are not safe.

Then there’s the rise of AI influencers. They look perfect, they don’t age, they don’t get tired, and of course they don’t need eye cream. But their very flawlessness undermines them. More than 200 AI influencers launched in 2024 alone, and they’re already blowing up in the wrong way. Take Iris Lane, the AI-generated fragrance influencer created by Slate Brands, an American beauty incubator behind brands like Florence by Mills. TikTok’s perfume‑obsessed community under #perfumetok revolted—not for lack of content but for lack of reality—and Slate pulled the account entirely. The efficiency of AI went up in smoke when authenticity crashed.

And finally there’s plain exhaustion. People can spot advice from advertising — and they’re fed up. Average Instagram engagement has plunged to 1.59 percent in 2025, downtick from the 4 percent of 2019. Even brands with good intentions can get torched. Poppi, the prebiotic soda company, learned this the hard way after its Super Bowl campaign sent vending machines to 32 influencers. The stunt was meant to feel playful. Instead social media accused them of tone‑deaf extravagance — “definitely not buying another one” was a common reaction. Critics asked why the brand wasn’t putting machines in community centers or schools instead. The backlash became fast and furious, turning a festive idea into a brand tone‑deaf moment in real time.

What’s Actually Working

But it’s not all bad news. Influence hasn’t vanished — it’s simply moved.

Look at communities and micro-networks. People don’t want to be broadcast at — they want to feel part of something. CMX reports that 70 percent of brands now say online communities create stronger customer relationships than social platforms. Reddit’s r/malefashionadvice is a case in point: a space where men trade sneaker tips and tailoring advice. It isn’t about campaigns or hashtags — it’s about credibility. Brands like New Balance and Adidas see real sales there without ever staging a sponsored post.

Or consider the rise of real-world hosts. Influence is shifting from feed celebrities to community leaders who convene people in person. Vogue Business reports that 92 percent of Americans spent money on hobbies last month, and more than a third spent over $250. Event hosts like Jasmine Douglas have built thriving wellness communities that attracted Apple and Nike not because of follower counts but because her gatherings generate trust and loyalty you can’t fake.

Then there’s purpose-first fandom. Edelman’s 2024 Trust Barometer shows 64 percent of global consumers will buy or boycott a brand based on its stance on social issues. Patagonia understood this when it ran its “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign. By telling customers not to shop, it created a wave of loyalty that no influencer partnership could match.

And don’t overlook culture-driven platforms. The gaming sector alone generated $17 billion in creator-led revenue in 2024. Fortnite’s in-game Travis Scott concert drew 27 million players — more people than live in Australia — proving that shared spectacle outperforms any influencer endorsement.

The New Rules of Influence

Influence hasn’t disappeared, it’s just stopped looking like what we were sold. Too many brands are still running plays from a decade ago when follower counts were the gold standard. The post-influencer era demands a new rulebook — one that values trust, depth, and co-creation over filters and follower inflation.

Scars beat sparkle

Authenticity isn’t the polished selfie. It’s the post where someone admits the product cracked, didn’t fit, or failed outright. Audiences are tired of being sold perfection. Vulnerability feels like truth.

Flip the spotlight

We’ve left the broadcast era. The most influential voices are those who invite the audience in — through polls, Q&As, behind-the-scenes access, even product design input. Participation beats performance.

Go hyper-local

The basketball coach with 800 parents on WhatsApp drives more decisions than a YouTuber with 800,000 strangers. Real authority lives in small, trusted circles.

Reward outcomes, not eyeballs

Stop paying for reach and start rewarding results: sales lift, repeat customers, community growth, or co-created ideas. Treat influence like performance marketing, not publicity.

Cross-pollinate your ecosystem

The best influencers aren’t mercenaries. They’re people already inside your ecosystem — the runner logging miles in Nike Run Club, the gamer live-streaming your headset, the loyal customer defending you on a forum. Influence is strongest when it circulates within your own community.

Insure your influence

An influencer deal is a reputational investment. Diversify. Spread the risk. Never tie your story to one personality who could implode with a single off-script post.

Exploit algorithm arbitrage

Don’t play by rented rules. Build owned channels where you control the signal: newsletters, Discord servers, Slack groups, private WhatsApp chats. Anchor your influence, don’t chase it.

Measure what matters

Engagement rate is vanity. A better KPI is the co-creation index — how often your community helps shape your product, your campaigns, your culture. When fans build with you, they buy into you.

Spot the invisible influencers

Staff on the front line. Superfans who buy every release. Niche reviewers trusted by tiny but rabid audiences. Their reach is small, but their credibility is enormous. Ignore them and you miss the most influential voices of all.

Past Praise, Present Pivot

I’ve sung the praises of micro-influencers for years and still believe in the strength of the small circle. But when I can’t even search for something as mundane as an eye cream without drowning in fake enthusiasm, it’s clear the game has changed. The post-influencer era isn’t about abandoning influence, it’s about redefining it. We don’t need more people selling us things. We need voices worth listening to — even when they’re not selling at all.

Sources: Morning Consult, Welt, Influencer Marketing Hub, HypeAuditor, CMX, Vogue Business, Edelman, Newzoo, Cosmetics Business / Slate Brands case, New York Post (Poppi soda).

Once upon a time, branding meant selling products. Now, brands are in the people business — elevating founders, leadership teams and even the intern with a breakout TikTok. Why? Because the combined social footprint of a company’s people can easily outstrip the following of a young brand.

Case in point: my friend with 1.6 million TikTok followers — mostly watching him eat — is now igniting his fashion brand almost entirely off that audience. It’s a reminder that if you already have reach, you can skip years of expensive customer acquisition. A single influencer with a loyal following can effectively kickstart a company and save a fortune in marketing spend.

Look at Grace Beverley, founder of TALA in the UK. She started with a modest personal following, parlayed it into a fitness ebook empire and then scaled TALA to 85 employees. Today, she’s as much a media property as her brand, proving that personal reach can be the most potent marketing channel. This isn’t unusual — in fact, with 5.2 billion people (64% of the global population) on social media, the brand account is often playing catch-up to the personalities behind it.

Why It Works (When It Works)

The psychology is simple: people trust people more than logos. Huda Kattan is living proof. Her beauty empire reaches 54 million global followers, each post a personal endorsement that moves product without the whiff of an ad buy.

This “parasocial ROI” is why Daryl-Ann Denner’s apparel brand Nuuds sold out its launch in seven minutes. Two million followers weren’t just shopping — they were buying from a friend they’d never met.

And in some cases, an influencer’s following can all but launch a company overnight. If the trust is already there, you’re not starting from zero — you’re starting from a built-in audience that can replace months of paid media spend.

The economics are equally compelling. Brands earn an average of $4.12 for every $1 spent on Instagram influencer campaigns and the global influencer marketing industry will hit $32.55 billion by the end of 2025. No wonder 80% of brands have held or increased influencer budgets this year with nearly half raising them by more than 11%.

The Hidden Job You Just Took On

Of course, it’s not just charisma — it’s labor. A “low-output” founder still needs to keep a steady drip of content across multiple platforms. TikTok rewards daily posting. Instagram wants 3–5 posts a week. LinkedIn punishes you for going dark for more than seven days.

And this isn’t just product talk. The audience wants behind-the-scenes moments, failures, personal milestones, customer shoutouts and yes — a little controversy now and then. With 5.07 billion social media users spending an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes a day online, you’re competing for attention in a marketplace that’s both massive and ruthless.

But founder beware. Once you train your audience to expect you, disappearing feels like ghosting a relationship.

Why It Fails 

The same forces that make a founder-influencer valuable can also turn them into a liability and in some cases a serious business risk. For clarity a brand here means the sum of the company’s reputation identity and customer relationship — not just a logo or a product line. The ego tax happens when a founder starts chasing engagement instead of building that reputation. Likes get mistaken for loyalty. A post that racks up 100,000 hearts feels like validation even if it’s about a pet’s Halloween costume and has nothing to do with the business. Over time the content shifts toward whatever gets clicks rather than what reinforces the brand promise which leads to audience drift confusion about what the company stands for and eventually falling sales.

Overexposure is another trap. A brand tied too tightly to a founder’s constant presence can feel fresh at first then stale fast. Engagement spikes then collapses as audiences tire of the repetition. Beauty companies saw this in Q1 2025 when Instagram earned media value for the category dropped 28% year over year. Even strong content suffers when saturation sets in and the cost of maintaining attention rises while returns fall.

Burnout is the slow bleed that can take a brand down without warning. Lee Tilghman built a large following by sharing healthy recipes lifestyle tips and personal reflections but years of constant creation and personal exposure took a toll. She walked away citing exhaustion and returned only cautiously. When the founder is the primary marketing channel burnout doesn’t just mean a personal break it can mean losing the engine driving awareness and sales.

Follower inflation is another credibility killer. Daniella Pierson’s Newsletter claimed more than a million subscribers but reporting showed closer to 500,000 were active. In industries where perceived reach fuels sponsorships partnerships and valuations revelations like that don’t just dent reputation they can undercut revenue and stall growth.

Then there’s the succession cliff. When a founder sells, steps back or simply stops being interesting a brand that depends too heavily on one personality can lose value almost instantly. Investors see this as a structural weakness and treat it as a red flag in due diligence. Without a plan to bring other credible faces and voices into the public eye the brand’s equity becomes tied to a single person’s willingness to keep performing.

The Archetypes

Not all founder-influencers operate the same way and each style shapes the brand’s positioning risk profile and growth potential.

The Relatable Expert works for brands that trade on trust credibility and expertise. Vivy Yusof co-founded FashionValet, a Malaysian e-commerce fashion platform, and dUCk, a premium scarf and accessories brand. She blends entrepreneurship and personal life with more than a million followers posting selectively but with value. Her slower growth rate is offset by deeper audience loyalty which helps her brands hold steady over time and weather market fluctuations.

The Entertaining Tyrant suits brands that thrive on attention and cultural relevance but can tolerate higher volatility. Lorna Luxe founded her own namesake Lorna Luxe fashion label after building 1.4 million followers on bold style choices and unapologetic commentary. For her brand this drives rapid spikes in engagement and awareness but also means the brand’s tone and reputation rise and fall with her public persona.

The Evangelist is ideal for brands built on mission-driven or lifestyle positioning where energy and emotional connection convert directly into sales. Emma Grede co-founded Good American, the size-inclusive fashion brand, and later became founding partner of Skims. Good American launched with $1 million in day-one sales by leaning into inclusive storytelling and high-energy personal presence. The payoff for the brand is immediate demand and strong advocacy but it requires sustained personal visibility to keep momentum.

The Anti-Influencer works for brands that want to project exclusivity and scarcity. This founder posts rarely and maintains high mystique which can strengthen brand desirability and pricing power. The trade-off is slower awareness growth and longer timelines to scale. A clear example is Phoebe Philo, whose eponymous luxury fashion label debuted in 2023 after years out of the public eye and relies on her selective, almost invisible presence to cultivate desirability.

The Proxy Builder model stands out for brand longevity because it anchors growth beyond one personality. A strong real-life example is Phlur under Chriselle Lim. While Lim helped revive the brand and remains its creative director after TSG Consumer Partners’ 2025 acquisition, she has built the public identity of Phlur around its perfumers, collaborators, and community stories rather than herself. This deliberate shift means the brand can scale without being solely dependent on her personal visibility, preserving its indie credibility while ensuring resilience if her role changes.

The Strategic Playbook

The most successful founder-influencers operate like pros, not like people winging it on their phones. They set boundaries early — deciding what’s public, what’s private and what’s never going online. They integrate founder content into the brand mix without making it the entire marketing strategy.

They stage-manage authenticity, batch-shooting “spontaneous” moments so they can focus on running the company the other six days of the week. They use their reach to elevate others — customers, employees, partners — so the brand becomes bigger than one personality.

They also understand that reach doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Jones, a UK drinks brand, generated 300 million views by filming simple street interviews and podcast-style conversations — proof that a smart low-cost concept can outperform big-budget campaigns if it connects with the right audience.

The Future

AI is already in the mix and it’s moving fast. In 2025, 92% of brands say they already use or plan to use AI to streamline influencer content — from drafting captions and editing videos to cloning founder voices for rapid content production. This isn’t just about saving time; it’s about scaling a founder’s presence across multiple channels without physically being there.

The scale of the opportunity is enormous. The creator economy is projected to grow from $191 billion in 2025 to $528.4 billion by 2030, meaning the competition for attention will intensify and the tools that can amplify a brand’s voice efficiently will become essential.

One of the more experimental developments is the rise of synthetic founders — fully fictional personalities created to humanize a brand. For companies without a public-facing founder, this offers a way to craft a consistent, controllable brand ambassador. The downside is the looming trust problem; audiences can feel duped if they discover the person they’ve been following doesn’t exist.

There are also outliers who illustrate the power of merging tech entrepreneurship with personal brand equity. One clear example is Lucy Guo—as of 2025 she became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, thanks to her nearly 5% ownership stake in Scale AI, the data-labeling AI company she co-founded in 2016  . Her rise demonstrates how innovation and personal credibility can fuel each other in ways even AI can’t replicate.

The next frontier could be a backlash — a founder detox. Audiences asking for the product without the constant personality show. Smart brands will anticipate this and have an exit strategy ready, shifting focus back to product strength and other credible voices before fatigue sets in.

Walking The Tightrope 

Being a founder-influencer is a constant act of balance — thrilling when it works and unforgiving when it doesn’t. You are both the tightrope walker and the rope itself carrying the weight of the brand’s image while navigating the scrutiny that comes with being its most visible ambassador. The ones who win see their role not as a distraction from the business but as a growth engine for it. They use their visibility to build trust faster than a faceless brand ever could, turn their personality into a competitive advantage and create momentum that paid media alone would struggle to match.

The difference is intention. Successful founder-influencers approach their presence with the same discipline they bring to product design or strategy. They build a strong supporting cast to keep the story fresh, develop a deep library of ready-to-post content so the brand never loses its voice and stay focused on amplifying the brand rather than themselves. Done right the founder-as-influencer isn’t just a marketing tactic — it’s a brand asset that can shorten the path to relevance, deepen customer loyalty and drive growth that outlasts any single post or personality.

Sources: Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 – Trust in People vs Brands, Digital Marketing Institute – Global Influencer Marketing Market Size 2025, PR Newswire – Influencer Marketing in 2025 Report, Vogue Business – Beauty Industry Instagram EMV Decline Q1 2025, Smart Insights – Global Social Media Usage Data 2025, Glamour – Nuuds Launch Case Study, Financial Times – Grace Beverley and TALA Growth Story, Washington Post – Lee Tilghman Influencer Burnout, Business Insider – Daniella Pierson Newsette Subscriber Numbers, Wikipedia – Profiles of Huda Kattan, Emma Grede, Vivy Yusof, Chriselle Lim.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever been cool or if I’ve always been cool — which probably means I’m neither. Being cool seems like a lot of work, except the first rule of being cool is that it can’t look like you’re trying. So there are rules, but also no rules at all. What I do know is that cool is slippery. What’s cool to you might be cringe to someone else. Brands that were once the definition of cool aren’t anymore… or suddenly are again… or will be next Tuesday. The only constant? Vigilance. Cool doesn’t coast. If you’re not actively staying relevant, you’re already aging out.

The Life Cycle of Cool

This is what happens when brands grow up. Glossier, once beauty’s indie savior, struggles to regain its spark. Supreme, the New York streetwear icon that taught a generation the thrill of scarcity, now feels routine. Allbirds, the sustainable shoe brand once synonymous with minimalist chic, saw revenues tumble as the hype cooled. Peloton, once the darling of at-home fitness, saw engagement drop as competitors flooded the market. A global survey shows Gen Z are quick to disengage from brands they find out of touch.

At the same time, formerly dead brands can come alive if they read the room. Abercrombie & Fitch, once a punchline, learned to laugh at itself. Its self-aware, inclusive TikTok strategy boosted engagement significantly. H&M saw declining relevance in Europe until pivoting to sustainability-focused campaigns, improving brand sentiment in measurable ways.

Reinvention Over Refresh

The reinvention stories are compelling. Burberry traded safe beige for Daniel Lee’s punchy new vision, reigniting cultural chatter. LEGO evolved from toy to entertainment heavyweight with collaborations spanning Netflix to Adidas, helping drive record-breaking revenue. Fenty Beauty keeps stretching what inclusivity means in beauty, fueling significant growth. Kia Motors rebranded with a future-focused aesthetic and influencer-driven EV campaigns, boosting social engagement noticeably. Brands taking creative risks see outsized engagement lifts.

Cool Isn’t Universal

Cool doesn’t translate the same way in every market. Shein, a Chinese fast-fashion powerhouse criticized in the West for its environmental and labor practices, has found massive success in the Middle East by doubling down on affordability, fast inventory cycles, and leveraging armies of regional micro-influencers who speak directly to local audiences. Starbucks China defends its market leadership not by pushing Western coffee culture, but by leaning into deep-rooted traditions, such as elaborate Lunar New Year campaigns and localized product offerings like red bean lattes, which resonate with Chinese consumers in a tightening coffee market. Lay’s stays relevant by creating hyper-local campaigns, like limited-edition flavors and influencer-driven activations in India and the Middle East, proving that snacks can be deeply cultural when they mirror local tastes and traditions. Netflix Korea mastered the art of exporting local culture globally — creating hits like Squid Game that blend Korean storytelling sensibilities with universal themes, turning regional content into global phenomena. In APAC, where 62% of consumers expect brands to tailor their approach to local culture, one-size-fits-all messaging simply doesn’t work.

How Not to Age Out

Staying relevant isn’t a matter of luck — it’s deliberate, ongoing work. The brands that manage to avoid becoming digital wallpaper are those that treat communications as a living conversation, not a static bulletin board. Here’s how to stay in the game:

• Audit honestly: If your engagement is flatlining, it’s not a blip — it’s an alarm bell. Use social listening, audience surveys, and performance data to figure out where you’re losing traction and why.
• Invest in cultural R&D: Don’t treat new platforms like TikTok or Discord as afterthoughts. Use them as laboratories for experimentation, testing unconventional content styles, formats, and voices without fear of failure.
• Co-create: Stop renting audiences through one-off influencer posts. Partner with creators who have earned trust in their communities and bring them into the brand-building process to develop authentic, culturally resonant campaigns.
• Balance your content: Your grid shouldn’t look like an ad catalog. Blend polished campaign visuals with in-the-moment storytelling — live streams, behind-the-scenes content, and unpolished posts that make audiences feel part of the process.
• Localize with intent: Avoid the trap of copy-pasting content globally. Tailor your tone, visuals, and product storytelling to local tastes and trends — because what earns likes in New York may fall flat in Shanghai.

Relevance Is Rented

Cool has an expiration date. You don’t own it — you rent it. Brands that thrive understand this lease needs constant renewal — watching culture closely, experimenting boldly and dropping what no longer works. Relevance isn’t a trophy. It’s a tab you keep paying.

Sources: Morning Consult, Sprinklr, SimilarWeb, Lyst Index, LVMH Earnings Report, WARC, Business of Apps, Edelman Trust Barometer, QSR Magazine, Kantar, Nielsen, HubSpot.

Many of us are still wrapping our heads around Gen Z—those oat milk-swilling, climate-anxious, TikTok-slinging disruptors of everything from politics to pasta sauce. And just as we’ve figured out how to market to them without sounding like their awkward uncle, we’re told to prepare for Gen Alpha.

Why are they called Gen Alpha? Well, because the alphabet ran out. And because when it came time to name the next cohort, social researcher Mark McCrindle—an Australian demographer—proposed starting fresh with the Greek alphabet, because: “If generations are to be defined by something more than sequential letters, then Gen Alpha should signify a new beginning. The first generation born entirely in the 21st century deserves a label that reflects the shift.”

I’ll admit, I was skeptical at first. Gen Z already gets more attention than they deserve based on their actual spending power. So why focus on a generation that, for the most part, can’t even cross the street without holding a grown-up’s hand?

Because time marches on. Because AI doesn’t wait. Because the habits being formed on iPads in backseats and classrooms are shaping the consumer instincts of the next two decades. And because brands that feel like friends in games will win a piece of the future.

This is not about the next customers. This is about customers-in-training—and they’re already making an outsized impact.

The Generation Born Online

Gen Alpha—those born from 2010 to 2024—will number close to 2 billion by next year, with roughly 2.5 million new members born globally each week (Exploding Topics). They’re the first to grow up with AI-generated tutors, personalized content feeds before they can spell, and household tech that responds to their voice.

Already, they shape $300 billion in annual household spending (SuperMomBusiness). In Brazil and the Philippines, over 70% of millennial parents say their children directly influence purchases ranging from food and clothes to mobile data plans.

In India, Gen Alpha has driven the rise of young YouTube creators like Anantya Anand (MyMissAnand), whose channel boasts over 14 million subscribers—more than many global legacy brands. These aren’t future tastemakers. They’re already shaping demand.

Where Gen Alpha Lives—And What They Expect

They’re not on social media. They are social media.

On Roblox—a global online platform where users (mostly kids) can create, play, and socialize in millions of user-generated 3D worlds—brands don’t buy banner ads. They build experiences. The platform sees over 85 million daily users, many under the age of 13 (DemandSage).

Nike, for example, created NIKELAND, a branded virtual world where kids could participate in sports-themed mini-games and earn digital Nike gear for their avatars—encouraging physical movement at home while building brand affinity. Gucci launched Gucci Garden, a surreal, explorable experience where users could try on and buy limited-edition virtual clothing for their avatars. Some virtual Gucci items later resold for more than their real-world counterparts. In China, Roblox developers have collaborated with local brands to create interactive Lunar New Year environments, complete with branded red envelopes, dragon parades, and culturally specific storytelling.

Fortnite, created by U.S. gaming company Epic Games, started as a multiplayer shooter but has evolved into a full-scale digital event platform with more than 650 million registered accounts worldwide (Exploding Topics). The platform now regularly hosts brand-sponsored events, including virtual concerts, movie trailers, and interactive exhibitions.

One of its most famous activations was a live performance by Travis Scott, an American rapper known for blending hip-hop with psychedelic visuals. His 2020 virtual concert inside Fortnite featured a 50-foot digital avatar of himself performing while players floated through kaleidoscopic worlds. The event drew 12.3 million live participants. It wasn’t just a concert—it was branded spectacle aimed squarely at Gen Z-ers.  But for many Gen Alpha players —who were already active on Fortnite—it was their first concert experience of any kind.

Fashion labels like Balenciaga and Moncler have also released custom outfits (called “skins”) for Fortnite avatars, turning high fashion into interactive, wearable gaming content. In this context, Fortnite is no longer a game—it’s a programmable cultural venue where entertainment, fashion, and advertising merge.

YouTube, the Google-owned video platform with over 2.4 billion monthly users (Backlinko), is where Gen Alpha spends much of their passive screen time. It’s both their teacher and entertainer. One of the biggest names in kid-focused content is Ryan’s World, a channel starring Ryan Kaji, a Texas-born child who began unboxing toys on camera at age 3. What began as cute videos for fellow preschoolers has grown into a global brand worth more than $250 million, with licensed products at Walmart, Target, and Amazon (Bloomberg).

But one of the most strategic ways brands are reaching Gen Alpha is in school.

LEGO Education, the learning division of the famous Danish toy company, distributes kits and software that teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts using LEGO bricks. It’s used in classrooms across more than 90 countries. Duolingo for Schools, a free version of the language-learning app adapted for classrooms, is active in over 36,000 institutions. In places like rural Kenya, it’s included on government-issued tablets to help bridge the education gap. Canva for Education, developed by Australian design software company Canva, provides free tools for teachers and students to create everything from slide decks to posters. It’s used by over 60 million students and educators worldwide (BusinessWire).

These companies aren’t sponsoring education. They are integrating with education. For Gen Alpha, brand exposure doesn’t start with a jingle or a cartoon. It starts with tools they use to learn, play, and express themselves—tools provided not by governments, but by brands.

The Household as Focus Group

In the UK, nearly half of families use shared shopping lists their children can contribute to (Numerator). In Egypt, Nestlé ran school-based design competitions where kids created snack packaging that later outperformed the brand’s professional redesign in A/B tests. In the U.S., 61% of parents say their kids regularly influence purchases ranging from household goods to travel plans (Marketing Dive).

This isn’t passive influence. It’s active co-creation. In a world of Spotify family accounts and Netflix profiles, the line between “parent” and “child” preferences is being blurred—by design.

What Marketers Need to Understand Now

Gen Alpha will comprise 11% of the global workforce by 2030 (IMD) and wield over $5.4 trillion in spending power by 2035 (UBS). But their influence starts now—not with their bank account, but with the data trails they leave behind.

Every tap on a school-issued tablet, every Roblox purchase, every Duolingo streak—they all teach personalization engines what this generation finds fun, valuable, and trustworthy. In other words, they’re not just future consumers. They’re shaping the AI models that will predict everyone’s consumer behavior.

If your brand isn’t part of that training set, it risks becoming invisible.

How Is This Different from Marketing to Gen Z?

Marketing to Gen Z meant adapting to a new mindset. Marketing to Gen Alpha means adapting to an entirely new infrastructure—one that’s interactive, predictive, ambient, and always on.

Gen Z switched between apps. Gen Alpha stays inside sprawling platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft—each a world where play, commerce, storytelling, and social interaction are blended into a seamless environment. There’s no “click-through.” There’s no off-ramp. If you’re not in the world, you’re invisible.

While Gen Z watched social media evolve, Gen Alpha was born into algorithmic life. Their viewing habits on YouTube Kids and Netflix Jr., their in-app movements, and their micro-interactions are actively shaping how recommendation engines behave. They aren’t just engaging with algorithms—they’re tuning them. Brands can’t just respond to data—they have to feed it.

Where Gen Z asked brands to be honest and inclusive, Gen Alpha expects them to be useful—immediately. If a brand doesn’t help them create, learn, or play from the first interaction, it gets ignored. They don’t need an origin story. They need functionality. One standout example is Toca Boca, the Swedish app studio that gives kids a digital playground with no goals, no ads, and no adult instructions. Usefulness is the message.

Gen Z grew up in a fragmented internet. Gen Alpha is growing up inside walled gardens—Apple’s child-safe ecosystem, Amazon Kids, Meta’s Messenger Kids. Every action is monitored, optimized, and controlled. They don’t expect freedom. They expect frictionless flow. And any brand that interrupts that flow feels broken.

Where Gen Z shaped culture through memes, activism, and social currency, Gen Alpha is being shaped by the branded environments around them—often before they can read. They’re learning math on tablets preloaded with corporate content. They’re watching bedtime stories sponsored by consumer brands. They don’t differentiate between public and private, platform and product. The brand isn’t the outsider. It’s the scaffolding.

How Smart Brands Are Moving First

The brands winning with Gen Alpha aren’t louder. They’re earlier, deeper, and more embedded. They understand that this isn’t about making noise—it’s about becoming part of the cultural operating system Gen Alpha is building from the inside out.

1. They build spaces, not ads.
   If your brand isn’t explorable, it’s forgettable. Gen Alpha expects immersion—not interruption. Whether it’s a world they can wander inside Roblox, an avatar they can dress in Fortnite, or a branded kids’ section on a streaming platform, the best marketing is spatial. It rewards curiosity, not attention.
2. They offer utility before selling.
   Brand equity is earned by solving a problem, sparking creativity, or making something easier. That could be a drawing tool, a learning shortcut, or a safe space for self-expression. Brands like Epic’s “Creative Mode,” Notion’s student templates, and Osmo’s learning tech don’t scream for attention—they quietly become indispensable.
3. They allow for participation.
   This generation doesn’t just watch—they remix. Brands that open the door to participation—by letting kids co-create product features, vote on content, or express identity through branded tools—become part of Gen Alpha’s self-concept. The brand isn’t a story they follow. It’s something they help shape.
4. They pass the parent sniff test.
   Gen Alpha may drive the desire, but it’s still parents who control the wallet. Winning brands earn intergenerational trust. That means safety without patronizing, learning without boredom, and values without virtue signaling. It also means tools that make parents’ lives easier—think curated modes, privacy settings, or collaborative features.
5. They go global by design.
   This is the first generation that will come of age entirely on a borderless internet. But borderless doesn’t mean bland. It means building with regional culture, languages, and humor embedded from the start. Whether it’s voice actors, local YouTube stars, or in-game events aligned with national holidays, brands that go global through local feel like they belong—everywhere.
6. They stand for something, always.
   Gen Alpha has been soaking in branded values since infancy. They know when it’s baked into a company’s DNA and when it’s pasted on for the press release. The brands they grow up trusting will be the ones whose actions, partnerships, and design decisions reflect what they claim to care about—without exception and without applause.

Don’t Market to the Child. Market to the Future.

Marketing to Gen Alpha isn’t about crafting ads for 10-year-olds. It’s about understanding the world they’re shaping, one Roblox badge and YouTube unboxing at a time. Brands that treat this as “kid stuff” are missing the real story: this is foundational infrastructure for future loyalty in a world where attention is embedded, not bought.

Ignore them, and your brand becomes white noise. Understand them, and you won’t just win the next generation—you’ll shape the one after that.