For those who know me, I tend to treat marketing like a cocktail party—equal parts clever, playful and unexpected. I reserve solemnity for things that actually warrant it: hospitals, courtrooms, hostage negotiations…maybe funerals. But even then, why let death spoil a perfectly good eulogy? So, no surprise—I have little patience for brands that think the height of luxury is whispering in a marble showroom.

It’s not that elegance is dead. It’s that playfulness, once taboo in luxury, is now a differentiator. And the brands that understand this are walking the line between exclusivity and delight—and cashing in on it.

Luxury has always had a bit of a God complex. Legacy brands were built on mystique, tight-lipped heritage and unapproachably smooth surfaces. But what once signaled value now risks signaling detachment.

A 2023 Bain & Company study found that 72% of Gen Z luxury consumers say a brand’s personality matters more than its exclusivity. Yet many brands still behave like we’re in 1992—launching products as if the internet doesn’t exist and smiling is beneath them.

Joy Is a Competitive Advantage

Take Loewe, the Spanish fashion house revitalized by designer Jonathan Anderson. Their balloon heels and pixelated clothes are as surreal as they are covetable—and their sales rose 20% last year, according to LVMH. The products feel like high-concept art school jokes with couture-level execution. That’s the formula: wit with weight.

It’s not just fashion. In hospitality, Baccarat Hotel in NYC blends crystal-dripping opulence with Instagram-bait maximalism. Their room revenue is up 18% from 2019, (Statista). Guests want elegance, yes—but also a little sparkle, a moment, a flex.

Even in design, India Mahdavi—the Iranian-French architect known for her candy-colored interiors—has earned cult status. Her redesign of Ladurée’s flagship salon in Paris swapped sugary pastels for bold jewel tones, mirrored walls and sculptural velvet seating, turning the iconic patisserie into a surrealist jewel box. It wasn’t just a facelift—it was a repositioning. According to WGSN, brands partnering with Mahdavi saw social engagement rise 43% between 2022 and 2023. She makes luxury that feels like dessert—rich, layered and impossible not to share.

Not All Mischief Lands

Let’s be clear: not every attempt at fun is a masterstroke.

Remember the Chanel $825 Advent Calendar? Released in 2021 to celebrate 100 years of No. 5, it promised luxury behind 24 glossy black-and-white drawers. What it delivered: stickers, keychains, an empty dust bag and a plastic snow globe that looked like a cheap department store giveaway. TikTok had a field day, led by influencer Elise Harmon, whose unboxing racked up millions of views and a collective gasp from Gen Z. According to Morning Consult, Chanel’s brand favorability among that demographic dropped 14% in the US after the backlash.

The problem wasn’t the concept—it was the execution: joyless, stingy and wildly out of touch with what $825 is supposed to feel like.

Then there’s the Rolls-Royce NFT drop—an attempt to dip a toe into the Web3 hype without offering anything tangible, useful or even particularly beautiful. It didn’t damage the brand outright but disappeared without a trace, like a press release nobody read. A 2023 YouGov study showed 44% of consumers now view brand collaborations and gimmicks as “increasingly desperate.”

Fun without intent isn’t fun. It’s just noise.

Consumers Want to Play—With Meaning

Jacquemus gets it. The French designer sells micro-bags that can’t hold a Tic Tac—and somehow that’s a strength. He turned a Paris fashion show into a lavender field fantasy and created a collection around inflatable pool toys. Yet his brand has one of the highest engagement rates on Instagram across all luxury fashion houses (Launchmetrics, 2023). Why? Because people aren’t buying function. They’re buying a vibe. And increasingly, that vibe is about being in on the joke.

Luxury homebuyers are changing too. A 2023 Houzz Global Trends report found that 47% of luxury homeowners under 45 described their design style as “bold” or “playful,” versus just 19% of Boomers. That generational shift is seismic.

Even Furniture’s Getting Funky

Interior design has caught the memo. Kelly Wearstler, the American designer behind Proper Hotels, fuses brutalism with whimsy—hotels designed for guests who Instagram their bathtubs.

Or look at Toogood, the London-based design studio founded by Faye and Erica Toogood, whose sculptural “Roly-Poly” chairs look like they belong in a Pixar film—but are priced and positioned as functional art. They sell out with waiting lists.

When Herman Miller, the American office furniture legend, collaborated with streetwear giant Supreme on a red logo-branded Aeron chair, it sold out in hours. That wasn’t about lumbar support. That was about cultural cachet.

The Future of Luxury Is Expressive, Not Impressive

Gen Z and Millennials will account for 80% of all luxury spending by 2030, according to McKinsey. This is not the era of quiet power. It’s the era of conspicuous delight.

A recent McKinsey survey found that 81% of Gen Z luxury buyers globally prefer brands with a sense of play. Not play as in childishness—but personality, story, contradiction. Something to connect to. Something to talk about.

Even The Macallan’s collaboration with Bentley wasn’t just about whiskey or cars—it was about shared craftsmanship and indulgent storytelling. The packaging, the narrative and the product all reinforced each other. It gave consumers something to drink, post and brag about.

Let the Others Keep Whispering

Let the solemn brands stay in their grayscale temples, worshipping at the altar of Seriousness with capital-S serif fonts. But don’t be surprised when the playful ones outsell, outbuzz and outlast them.

Because…fun isn’t the opposite of luxury. It’s the evolution of it. A brand that can make you laugh, spark delight or surprise you—and still charge $1,000 for it—isn’t diluting its value. It’s upgrading it.

And if they do it while wearing pixelated pants and drinking out of a crystal goblet shaped like a duck?

Even better.

Now that anyone can churn out halfway decent content using the same generative AI tools—and, yes, that still a pebble in my shoe—your brand’s tone of voice may be the last defensible edge. Not the tagline. Not the logo. Not the claims on the packaging. The voice. Because that’s what makes people feel something—and more importantly, what makes them trust you.

According to Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer, 81% of consumers say they must trust a brand to buy from it. And while we’re still obsessed with what brands say, more and more, it’s how they say it that’s doing the heavy lifting. So maybe stop trying to sound like you think a brand like yours should sound (you know who you are).  And start crafting a defining tone for your brand that truly fits its personality.

Confessions of a CopywriterI’ve written for brands as different from one another as Coca-Cola, Sony, Volvo, Lavazza and TABASCO, and hundreds more. Each one spoke in a completely different voice—and needed to. Coca-Cola had to sound effortless, global and warm. It was always smiling, even when it wasn’t saying much. Sony was polished and deliberate—sharp without being cold. Volvo needed to be calm, thoughtful and reassuring, with the kind of language that made every sentence feel like it was wearing seatbelts. Lavazza was expressive—every word punctuated with an Italian hand gesture. TABASCO didn’t waste words. It was as bold as its sauce.

Writing for these brands (in English, Russian or Spanish) wasn’t about finding the right words—it was about finding the right voice, every time. Sentence length, vocabulary, rhythm, punctuation—everything changes when the tone is doing the heavy lifting. It’s not unlike writing dialog for a film. The products may be similar, but the characters are wildly different—and each one deserves a script that actually sounds like them.

It’s Not a Style Guide. It’s a Strategy.

Here’s the truth: if your tone is just a line in the brand book between “Pantone Red” and “don’t stretch the logo,” you’ve just ticked a box.  You haven’t defined your tone.

According to a Nielsen study, brand consistency across touchpoints—including tone—can increase revenue by up to 23%. This isn’t about your witty tweets or poetic product blurbs. This is about consistent tone building credibility over time, whether someone is reading your chatbot, your invoice or your CEO’s keynote.

Take Monzo, the UK-based finance upstart. While most high-street banks still write like lawyers, Monzo speaks like a human being. That tone—clear, friendly and smart—helped it amass over 7 million customers, largely through word of mouth and user love. No jingles. No billboards. Just tone.

When You Can’t Outspend, Out-Tone

Brands with big voices often start small. Liquid Death, for example, sells water. Just water. But it wraps that water in a tallboy can and a tone that screams death metal and dark comedy. Its slogan? “Murder Your Thirst.” Its copy reads like it’s been possessed by the ghost of a punk band’s marketing intern. And somehow, it works—brilliantly. The company hit a $263 million valuation in 2023. 

Then there’s Duolingo, whose irreverent, unhinged TikTok presence is a masterclass in strategic insanity. It doesn’t sound like a tech platform. It sounds like your emotionally unstable roommate who’s also somehow great at languages. The result? A 44% year-over-year increase in monthly active users as of 2023.

Or consider Oatly, which turned oat milk into a lifestyle by speaking with anti-corporate sarcasm and the confidence of a college radio DJ with a marketing degree. They IPO’d at a $10 billion valuation in 2021—on the strength of tone, not just taste. When the product is a commodity, tone is what adds the premium.

How to Create—and Codify—Your Tone of Voice

So how do you create a voice that actually earns attention?

1. Define what you’re not.

Every brand thinks it’s “authentic.” That’s not tone. Tell me if you’re not formal. Not cutesy. Not sarcastic. Boundaries are where tone gets teeth.

2. Translate values into language.

If your brand stands for empowerment, how does it sound in a product update? If you’re about innovation, what does your FAQ page read like?

3. Build a playbook, not a paragraph.

Tone guidelines should be long enough to prevent disasters and short enough to be read. Include real examples: a tweet, a support reply, a hero banner. Avoid tone that’s defined by adjectives alone—“bold yet warm” means nothing until you see it in action.

4. Localize like a native, not a tourist.

Tone doesn’t travel without translation. It transforms. A joke that kills in English might offend in Spanish. A humble brag that lands in Russian might sound like weakness. Global tone means emotional equivalence, not linguistic one.

5. Train everyone, not just your writers.

If your social media intern writes like a comedian and your CFO posts like a Bond villain, your tone’s dead. Product managers, recruiters and chatbots all need to speak with one “voice”.

6. Audit and adapt.

Even great tone drifts. Especially when AI gets involved. Use online tools to keep the language in line. And if you do use AI? Train it on your tone—not someone else’s.

The AI Effect: Why Voice Matters More Than Ever

AI can write a paragraph in three seconds. But unless you’ve trained it properly, it’ll sound like everyone else.

Klarna, the Swedish fintech company, uses an AI assistant to handle two-thirds of its customer service chats. But that’s only because it was trained on the brand’s own language and customer history. Otherwise, your chatbot sounds like a polite alien who once read The Elements of Style.

As more brands pump out AI-generated content, the world is drowning in functional blandness. Tone is your only shot at standing out—and being remembered.

Final Word: If You Don’t Define It, You Can’t Defend It

Your brand will have a voice—whether you choose it or not. And if you don’t choose it, you won’t recognize it when it starts slipping out of your control.

In a world of infinite content, attention is expensive and trust is fragile. Tone of voice is your soft power. It’s how you earn attention without shouting. So speak easy. But sound unmistakably like you.

I began my career in Boston at the tail end of the Mad Men era—when creative reviews were still fueled by martinis, ashtrays still overflowed onto conference tables and the power of an idea was measured mostly by instinct and a gut feeling. But over the decades, I built agencies that were on the forefront of digital transformation, from launching some of the first websites in the 1990s, adopting programmatic advertising, embracing social media campaigns, and today, integrating AI-driven personalization engines that predict what customers want before they do. 

Along the way, I watched the industry split into two camps, each convinced they held the keys to growth.

For years, marketers have treated brand and performance as separate species. One was about telling big, emotional stories nobody could quite measure—the kind that inspired John Wanamaker’s famous lament: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” The other was about clicking, converting, and optimizing the soul out of every message. 

But today, when cookie banners block half your tracking pixels and consumers are tired of being stalked by discount codes, it’s time to consider what happens when these disciplines stop glaring at each other across the budget table—and start working together.

The Two-Track Mind of Modern Marketing

Performance marketing rose on the promise of clear attribution—how credit for sales gets assigned to specific campaigns. Early Google Ads relied almost exclusively on last-click attribution, where the final click before a purchase received 100% of the credit.

That model worked for companies like Wayfair, the U.S. e-commerce giant, which poured budgets into SKU-level search ads and dynamic retargeting. But it also led to over-investment in bottom-funnel tactics while neglecting the brand awareness that inspired people to search in the first place.

Allbirds, the sustainable footwear company, quickly adapted. Instead of just shrinking retargeting audiences, they invested in top-funnel video storytelling and then retargeted video viewers. Conversion lift studies—controlled experiments comparing exposed groups to holdouts—proved these ads were driving incremental conversions, not just cannibalizing existing demand.

Etsy faced the same need to validate brand campaigns. The marketplace ran geo-experiments, launching ads in specific regions and comparing them to untreated markets. The results showed emotional gifting videos boosted conversion rates by over 20% in retargeting audiences.

And Airbnb offered perhaps the most telling example. Even after halving their search budget, they used econometric models to show storytelling campaigns preserved 95% of pre-pandemic traffic. In other words, brand awareness picked up the slack when performance data dried up.

What Brandformance Actually Means

At its core, Brandformance means accepting that attribution will always be complex. Rather than hoping every sale comes from a neat click path, it combines four principles:

Consistency ensures your brand looks and feels the same wherever people find you. Glossier, for instance, shows up with a unified pink aesthetic and approachable voice across Instagram Stories, Google Shopping and checkout flows. They track view-through conversions—sales influenced by ad impressions—and ask buyers, “How did you first hear about us?”

Emotion plays a central role. Etsy’s 15-second gifting videos, measured with lift studies and pixel-based tracking, showed viewers were significantly more likely to convert later—even if they never clicked.

Utility makes performance creative work harder. Chewy, the pet supplies retailer, uses Google’s data-driven attribution to assign partial credit to every touch, recognizing that helpful messages about free shipping and 24/7 service drive sales alongside caring brand stories.

Optimization brings it all together. Brands like Allbirds and Gymshark use Facebook Conversion Lift and Google Brand Lift to measure incremental conversions and sentiment shifts, layering in media mix modeling (MMM) to understand long-term revenue impact.

How to Build a Brandformance Strategy

A smart Brandformance plan starts with mapping your funnel and clarifying how you’ll measure credit across touchpoints.

Sephora excels at this. They run YouTube TrueView campaigns to drive awareness, then survey exposed audiences with Google Brand Lift to measure recall. When a shopper later converts on Google Shopping ads, Sephora’s data-driven attribution splits credit between the upper- and lower-funnel interactions.

Warby Parker shows how creative can-do double duty. The eyewear company produces testimonial videos with real customers, builds credibility on YouTube, then retargets shoppers on Facebook with a “Try 5 for Free” offer. They track YouTube view-through conversions, Facebook Conversion Lift and journey paths in Google Campaign Manager.

Allbirds drives traffic to product pages that blend commerce with purpose-led stories. These content-rich landing pages convert 86% higher, according to Unbounce benchmarks. Allbirds validates success through assisted conversions, scroll depth and surveys about what influenced a purchase.

Gymshark re-edits influencer content into Instagram Stories ads with UTM codes (unique tracking parameters added to URLs to capture campaign source data) to capture clicks, while also tracking view-through conversions and branded search increases.

ASOS goes further, running multi-cell split tests comparing brand-focused and discount-focused creative. They reconcile results with Conversion Lift, data-driven attribution and path analysis to see which sequences work best.

If you want to create this rigor in your organization, consider using a framework that includes:

• Data-driven attribution models (Google and Meta)
• Lift studies to measure incremental impact
• Brand Lift surveys for sentiment and recall
• Media mix modeling to estimate long-term contributions
• Post-purchase surveys to validate attribution
• Visual journey mapping to see how touchpoints interact

Metrics Without Mayhem

Short-term KPIs—like click-through rate, CPA, and ROAS—are still necessary. But they only tell part of the story. Meta’s own research shows that branded creative can lift conversions by as much as 3X over direct-response ads.

Mid-term measurement adds nuance. Etsy’s Brand Lift surveys revealed a 12-point increase in favorability during integrated campaigns. Chewy relies on Google’s path analysis to track how upper-funnel ads help close sales.

Over the long term, attribution models reveal brand’s real power. Kantar BrandZ has shown brands that combine emotional storytelling with performance marketing grow twice as fast over a decade. Airbnb’s econometric models confirmed that storytelling videos, not search alone, drove consistent booking volume.

Brandformance Done Well

Some companies have already proven how effective this integration can be.

Monzo, the UK digital bank, blended education and conversion in Facebook Carousel Ads that explained its mission to make banking fairer while inviting customers to “Open an Account in Minutes.” They measured impact with Conversion Lift, multi-touch attribution in Google Analytics and brand surveys showing a 20% increase in trust.

Airbnb reallocated search budgets into storytelling about host-guest connections and saw traffic hold steady thanks to econometric validation and holdout testing.

Sephora combined branded content and time-limited offers inside loyalty campaigns, using CRM-linked purchase data and Brand Lift to prove customers spent 15 times more.

Allbirds invested in sustainability messaging across social and retargeting, tracking view-through conversions, blended CPA, and brand sentiment surveys to prove results.

Common Pitfalls

Even the best strategies can stumble. One of the most common missteps is over-relying on last-click attribution. Gartner reports that 58% of CMOs still default to this model, ignoring all the unseen impressions and assisted conversions that drive sales. Another mistake is dumping long-form video into banners without accounting for frequency or deduplicating impressions—leading to wasted spend and shallow engagement. And when teams work in silos, fighting over credit rather than sharing dashboards, the benefits of Brandformance disappear.

The Future of Brandformance

Fortunately, technology is making attribution smarter and less manual. Platforms like Smartly.io automate creative production and tagging so campaigns are trackable across channels. VidMob uses AI to analyze which visuals drive results. Shopify’s predictive attribution now helps e-commerce brands forecast how today’s campaigns will convert weeks from now. And cultural relevance is no longer optional. Edelman’s Trust Barometer found that 63% of consumers buy or boycott based on a brand’s values, making sentiment as important to track as revenue.

Conclusion

Brandformance isn’t a compromise—it’s a competitive edge. In a world where attention is fragmented and attribution is fuzzy, the brands that master this art will outlast the ones still shouting “Buy Now” into the void.

Sources: Kantar BrandZ, Meta Marketing Science, Google Marketing Platform, Gartner, AdExchanger, Think with Google, Meta Business, Edelman Trust Barometer

I’ve never understood the low bar set by most B2B marketing. Isn’t it obvious that the same person buying enterprise cloud software on Tuesday is also buying oat milk, a luxury watch or Taylor Swift tickets over the weekend? Why should their expectations plummet the moment they walk into the office?

And yet, business‑to‑business (B2B) marketers have long behaved as if they’re targeting a different species. One that devours white papers for breakfast, watches webinars for fun and eagerly submits contact forms labelled “Request a Demo.” It’s a world ruled by left-brain logic—features, specs, ROI models—with all the warmth and emotional appeal of a tax audit. Meanwhile, over in B2C (business‑to‑consumer) land, marketers are building brands, sparking loyalty, and, crucially, making people feel something.

But the walls are coming down. Savvy B2B marketers have figured out what should’ve been obvious all along: all buyers are people. And increasingly, they want to be spoken to that way.

B2B Logic vs Human Emotion: Who Wins?

For decades, B2B marketing has operated on the myth that businesses make decisions based solely on logic. It’s tidy. It’s comforting. It’s also completely untrue.

According to Gartner, 77% of B2B buyers say their last major purchase was “very complex or difficult.” Translation: they were overwhelmed, second-guessing themselves and craving confidence. That doesn’t sound like someone who wants a spec sheet—it sounds like someone who wants reassurance.

LinkedIn’s B2B Institute and research firm System1 put some hard numbers behind this. In a study of over 1,600 B2B ads, they found emotional campaigns were nearly twice as effective as rational ones. Another LinkedIn study found emotionally resonant B2B ads can be up to seven times more effective than those that cling to features and facts like a drowning man to a life raft.

So no, your audience doesn’t want to read about your proprietary data harmonization framework. They want to know how it makes them look smart, sleep better or avoid disaster. Emotion drives action. Logic just provides the justification.

If Your Marketing Feels Like Homework, You’re Doing It Wrong

Let’s talk content. For years, B2B marketers treated it like a compliance requirement—something to check off with the enthusiasm of a quarterly audit. But your buyers are no longer sifting through gated PDFs for kicks. They’re watching short-form video, listening to founder podcasts and, yes, binging docuseries.

Take Slack, the workplace messaging app owned by Salesforce. Its animated explainers feel more like Pixar than PowerPoint. Or HubSpot, the CRM (customer relationship management) platform, which created Scaling Up, a documentary series tracking the messy rise of real startups.

There’s a reason 70% of B2B buyers now rely on video during the buying process. And why 80% of B2B marketers say video delivers the highest ROI. It’s not just that video is snackable. It’s that it can carry tone, personality and actual emotional nuance—three things your average product page could never dream of.

Right Message. Right Tone. Right Time. 

One thing consumer brands get right? Context. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing masters the art of speaking to the right person, in the right moment, with the right tone. B2B, on the other hand, often defaults to one-size-fits-all—with all the intimacy of a robocall.

But buyers notice. Salesforce’s research shows that 63% of B2B buyers say vendor experiences fall short of what they’ve come to expect from consumer brands.

Adobe—maker of Photoshop, Illustrator targets its Creative Cloud campaigns based on user personas. A freelance designer in Lagos sees something different than a creative director in Berlin. Canva, the browser-based design platform, adapts its walkthroughs and language based on region. The tone, examples and value prop all change based on who’s watching.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s just respect for your audience.

Influence: Not Just for Lip Gloss and Life Coaches

People trust people, not brands.

That’s why influencer marketing—once the domain of unboxings and skincare tutorials—is fast becoming a B2B power move. Not with celebrities, but with insiders. Engineers, analysts, technologists, and yes, even employees.

SAP, the German ERP (enterprise resource planning) giant, partners with LinkedIn Top Voices to break down complex solutions in plain English. Salesforce has cultivated internal brand ambassadors who share product tips and company culture in ways that feel more authentic than any glossy ad.

This isn’t vanity. It’s strategy. IDC reports that 91% of B2B purchases are influenced by peer recommendations and expert content. And according to Onalytica, influencer-led B2B campaigns generate up to 5x the ROI of traditional digital advertising.

Visibility is easy. Credibility is earned.

Loyalty Can’t Be Automated

Consumer brands have long understood that loyalty is emotional. B2B brands still treat it like an onboarding checklist.

Bain & Company—the firm that invented the Net Promoter Score—found that a 5% increase in customer retention can drive up to 95% more profit. Yet according to Salesforce, 60% of B2B customers say their vendor basically disappears once the contract is signed.

This is where brands like Notion and Adobe shine. Notion—the minimalist workspace app beloved by productivity nerds—turns customer templates into spotlight features. Adobe regularly showcases creator work across channels. They don’t just market to customers—they market with them.

If you want loyal users, treat them like co-conspirators, not line items.

Brand comes first

Everyone wants leads. But brand is what gets you shortlisted in the first place.

According to LinkedIn, 96% of your audience isn’t actively buying at this moment. That means you’re talking to future buyers—who will remember you based on what you stand for, not what you pitched last quarter.

Marketing legends Les Binet and Peter Field found that brand-building drives 80% of long-term growth in B2B. Cisco’s “Bridge to Possible” platform doesn’t sell routers—it sells purpose. Mailchimp, the all-in-one email and marketing platform, is remembered as much for its quirky tone and visual identity as its automation features.

If your brand has no memory, it will never have momentum.

The Bottom Line

There’s no such thing as B2B or B2C anymore. There’s only business to humans. And humans—whether they’re buying software, servers or SEO tools—still want to feel something.

They want stories, not specs. Confidence, not complexity. And they want brands that respect their intelligence and their time.

If your next campaign wouldn’t work on a billboard or get shared in a WhatsApp group, maybe it’s time to write something else.

Sources: Gartner: 77% of B2B buyers say their last purchase was complex or difficult, LinkedIn B2B Institute & System1: Emotional campaigns are nearly 2x more effective, LinkedIn: Emotionally resonant B2B ads are 7x more effective, Demand Gen Report: 70% of B2B buyers rely on video, Wyzowl: 80% of marketers say video delivers best ROI, Salesforce: 63% of B2B buyers expect better experiences from vendors, IDC: 91% of B2B decisions are influenced by peers and experts, Onalytica: B2B influencer campaigns generate 5x ROI, Bain & Co: 5% retention increase = 95% profit increase, Salesforce: 60% of customers say vendors disengage post-sale, LinkedIn: 96% of B2B buyers aren’t in-market, Binet & Field: 80% of growth comes from brand-building.

TikTok continues to amaze me—not because it’s new, but because it’s still growing, still reshaping behavior and still being dismissed by people who should know better.

A few years ago, most marketers outside of fashion, beauty, or fast food wrote TikTok off as fluff. A place for dances, memes, maybe a chip brand or a sneaker drop. Certainly not where you’d expect to find serious financial advice or watch someone unbox a credit card like it’s a Rolex.

And yet, here we are.

The most sobering, regulated, and jargon-laden industries—banking, credit, investing—are not only showing up on TikTok, they’re being decoded, demystified, and in some cases, made aspirational. Not by the brands themselves, but by creators with a ring light, a point of view and a better grasp of the algorithm than most CMOs.

Meanwhile, financial brands are still wringing their hands in meeting rooms asking whether it’s “on-brand” to be on TikTok. The problem isn’t the platform. I can tell you, as someone who has been in those rooms: It’s the fear of appearing lame.

TikTok Is the New Financial Advisor

Nearly 80% of Gen Z—roughly anyone born between 1997 and 2012—gets financial advice from social media. TikTok has officially overtaken Google as the go-to for “how to” searches. Not because it’s more accurate, but because it feels more accessible.

Creators like @humphreytalks and @themoneycoach—both personal finance educators who simplify topics like credit scores and compound interest—have built trust with millions of followers. They speak plainly, consistently, and don’t sound like someone reading terms and conditions out loud.

Meanwhile, many banks are still hiding behind PDFs and phrases like “click to learn more.”

Why Big Finance Stays Silent

Yes, compliance matters. Financial services are tightly regulated and legally accountable for what they say publicly. But that’s not the real issue.

The real issue is tone. Most institutions are terrified of looking stupid. They’d rather say nothing than risk saying something wrong. It’s a defensive posture dressed up as brand protection.

Only 8% of global banks have any active TikTok presence at all (Capgemini, 2024). HSBC, the British multinational bank, tested the waters briefly and yanked its TikTok content after it was met with the level of mockery and awkward silence usually reserved for old white men dancing. At least they tried.

Trust Has Moved from Institutions to Individuals

Trust used to live in buildings with marble floors and logos carved in stone. Now it lives with people. Individuals who show up regularly, explain clearly and don’t speak in bullet points.

According to Edelman’s 2024 Trust Barometer, 64% of Gen Z say they’re more likely to buy from brands that explain things rather than just market to them. Public.com, a US-based investing platform, leaned into this insight early. Instead of pitching stocks, they funded creator content that unpacks financial concepts in plain language—earning trust where traditional ads never reached.

Global FinTok Is Outpacing Western Institutions

In many parts of the world, TikTok isn’t an option—it’s the primary channel for learning about money.

GeoPoll’s 2023 research showed that in Nigeria, 80% of Gen Z learned about saving and investing through TikTok or WhatsApp, not through schools or banks. In Southeast Asia, platforms like Robo.cash, a micro-investing app, are working with regional creators to produce short explainers on savings goals, budgeting and responsible borrowing. They don’t use big words. They use subtitles.

Credit Card Unboxings and the Performance of Wealth

On TikTok, finance has become performance. Credit cards, which used to arrive with little fanfare, are now being unboxed in slow motion, filmed from three angles, and set to music.

According to TikTok’s internal analytics, #creditcardunboxing content racked up over 350 million views in 2024. The American Express Platinum card—heavy, shiny, wrapped like a Bond villain’s party invitation—is a FinTok star. Amex didn’t orchestrate the campaign. The culture did.

BNPL Is Luxury’s Favorite New Game

Buy now pay later (BNPL) platforms like Klarna, Afterpay, and Tabby (used in the Middle East) aren’t just being used for budget-conscious buys. They’re being used for luxury travel, fashion, and experiences—by design.

A 2024 Klarna report showed that more than 60% of Gen Z users used BNPL to pay for travel, and one in three used it for designer purchases. TikTok creators now post “Paris trip paid in four installments” or “my Dubai birthday haul with Afterpay”—normalizing installment-based spending not for necessity, but for indulgence.

Creators are driving this behavior. The brands are just lucky enough to be tagged.

The Smart Brands Know It’s About Tone, Not Trends

Brands that win on TikTok aren’t chasing dances. They’re figuring out tone.

Klarna—headquartered in Sweden and best known for its BNPL offering—partnered with Filipino-American beauty creator Bretman Rock to embed product usage into lifestyle content. No hard sell. Just real usage, real talk, and a platform-native format.

Monzo, a UK-based challenger bank, has made it a policy to engage TikTok users in comment threads with human replies—no bots, no scripts. It sounds like a person, not a brand, and that alone makes it stand out.

This Isn’t a Youth Channel. It’s a Market Channel.

Some CMOs still say, “Gen Z isn’t our target customer yet.” That’s a nice way to ignore reality.

Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Banking Survey found that 70% of Gen Z opened a financial product—checking accounts, investing apps or payment tools—on their phones in the past year. They’re not waiting for your next campaign. They’re choosing based on who shows up in their feed.

Step, a US-based teen banking app, built its user base of 3 million almost entirely on TikTok using creator partnerships and platform-native content.

Even the Wealthy Are Watching

TikTok isn’t just shaping the financially curious. It’s quietly influencing the financially powerful.

According to UBS’s 2023 report, 32% of high-net-worth Gen Z individuals—those with over $1 million in assets—follow at least one personal finance creator. They already have wealth managers, but they’re using TikTok to stay informed, explore new products or hear how people their age think about money.

Goldman Sachs’ consumer division, Marcus, didn’t make a big splash. They just supported creators talking about saving goals and let the message blend in. Less corporate, more credible.

The Cost of Staying Off-Camera

Kantar’s 2024 research found that 69% of Gen Z judge brand relevance by whether the brand shows up on their platforms—and does so without shouting. In that world, silence isn’t safety. It’s irrelevance.

TikTok is rapidly becoming where the next generation learns, chooses, and builds habits. The brands that aren’t there? Well, if they’re not part of the conversation, they probably won’t be part of the decision.

If your brand still sees TikTok as unserious, then it’s not the platform that’s out of touch. It’s your positioning. You’re a horizontal brand in a vertically-filmed world.

The currency of trust has changed. And if that means standing on your head to reach the next generation—then maybe it’s time to loosen your collar and start practicing your handstands.

Sources:
Adobe (2024) – TikTok overtaking Google for Gen Z searches, Deloitte Digital Banking Consumer Survey (2024) – Gen Z financial product behavior, UBS Investor Sentiment Report (2023) – Gen Z HNW and influencers, Kantar Media Relevance Study (2024) – Platform presence and brand trust, Forbes (2023) – Gen Z gets financial advice from social media, Edelman Trust Barometer (2024) – Brand trust among Gen Z, Capgemini World Retail Banking Report (2024) – Bank presence on TikTok, GeoPoll (2023) – Youth financial education in Africa, TikTok Creator Marketplace (2024) – #CreditCardUnboxing view counts, Klarna Report (2024) – BNPL and luxury/travel spending.

I’ve done my time in the shopping aisles.

Our agency has worked on the packaging design and rebranding of everything from toothpaste to juice to brandy—and just about every form of point-of-sale and point-of-purchase device known to brandkind. At ROSE, we’ve designed bottles, boxes, blister packs, shelf-talkers, counter cards, danglers, wobblers, floor stickers, window clings, fridge decals, ceiling mobiles, bag stuffers, gifts-with-purchase, holographic cartons, QR-coded hangtags, scented labels, pop-ups, pull-outs, pull-tabs, pop-tops, pop-up shops, and let loose more than a few brand mascots.

The goal was always to own the aisle, own the eye. But these days, the eye isn’t in aisle six. It’s in your palm. On a screen. And it’s moving fast. Which means that brilliant design that once seduced from a shelf now needs to stop thumbs mid-scroll. Now? If your packaging doesn’t hold up in portrait mode, your product might never be discovered—let alone bought. So yes, we’re still designing for desire… but now it’s vertical, animated and algorithmically-optimized.

The Screenification of Branding

78% of Gen Z judge a product by how it looks on-screen (Morning Consult 2024). Heinz simplified its ketchup label so it could animate cleanly on TikTok. Probiotic soda, Poppi, redesigned its cans with bold color blocking and crisp typography to “pop” in selfie videos and fridge restocks. Liquid Death makes its water look like a rebellious beer—not for shelf appeal but for meme-worthiness on social. Packaging now has to work in 9:16 format before it works in 3D. In short, it’s content before container.

Designed for the Algorithm

Forget shelf facings. Products now need to be thumbnail-sized billboards. Prime, the hydration drink brand launched by YouTubers, designed its bottles to reflect light dramatically and look sculptural—because co-founder Logan Paul knew they’d live on thumbnail images. Plant-based milk brand Oatly’s chaotic label copy was made to be screenshotted and shared not studied in a grocery aisle. And it matters: 62% of product discovery now happens through social and digital content not in-store browsing (McKinsey 2024). Your product is more likely to be discovered in a FYP (For You Page) than a fridge.

Animation, Movement and Screen Seduction

Packaging isn’t static anymore. It dances. Coca-Cola’s new “liquid motion” branding was designed to shimmer and swirl in motion graphics across digital touchpoints. Beauty brand Glossier’s unboxings are choreographed events—each element staged for video aesthetics. And it’s no coincidence: 91% of marketers say they now consider “motion potential” in brand design (Canva Brand Survey 2024). If your product can’t dance, it can’t trend.

Retail is Still Alive—But It’s Now Part Theater

Yes, shelf presence still matters—but now it has to match the screen. Sephora’s in-store displays mirror their app interface to create visual continuity. LEGO’s store installations are made for selfie zones. 72% of Gen Z say they’re more likely to buy something in-store if they’ve seen it on social first (Snapchat Global Retail Study 2024). Your offline presence is no longer about aisle lighting or tactile packaging—it’s your IRL content studio.

The New Creative Brief

Somewhere there’s a beautifully printed carton sitting untouched on a lower shelf—not because it’s not good but because no one saw it on TikTok first. Winning today doesn’t just mean standing out in aisle lighting—or looking sleek in someone’s hand or polished on a bathroom shelf. Now its less about stopping the stroll and more about slowing the scroll. Owning the frame. Getting screenshotted, shared, stitched and saved. Your packaging isn’t just a container—it’s content. And if it doesn’t perform on-screen, it may never perform at all. So when we help brands design packaging now, we don’t just ask how it feels to touch. We ask:

• How does this look in Reels?

• What’s the unboxing shot?

• Can this go viral without explanation?

And if the answer is no? You may be flawlessly shelf-ready—and completely scroll-forgettable.

Sources:

• Morning Consult, 2024 Gen Z Brand Perception Report
• McKinsey & Co., Future of Consumer Discovery 2024
• Canva, Brand Motion Survey 2024
• Snapchat, Global Retail Study 2024
• TechCrunch, Liquid Death Funding Report 2024
• Financial Times, Prime Drinks Revenue Analysis 2024
• LVMH, Sephora Annual Retail Report 2024
• Statista, Duolingo TikTok & Brand Recall 2024

I’ve written thousands of articles over the years—some for clients, some for my agency, some for myself, some because no one stopped me. Most were written long before anyone had heard of generative AI, let alone asked it to write them a listicle. They were old school. Painstakingly-researched. Over-scrutinized. Carefully optimized. 

So the idea of deleting any of them—especially the keyword-stuffed masterpieces I once convinced myself were genius—feels like murder.

But here we are.

Brands are quietly gutting their websites. Content teams are slashing thousands of pages. Not because of broken links or brand refreshes—but because the algorithms told them to. Turns out, that 2016 thought piece on “The Future of Social Listening” may be doing more harm than good.

If content was king, then legacy content might be the over-the-hill court jester—still hanging around, no longer funny, and stinking up the place.

So why is this happening now? And should you be doing the same?

The New Content Economy: Why Age Is a Liability

We used to treat websites like libraries—more content meant more chances to be found. But now, AI and search systems are less interested in quantity, more in quality, cohesion, and clarity.

According to a 2023 study by Ahrefs—a widely used SEO analysis tool—nearly 96.55% of indexed pages receive no organic traffic at all. Google’s Helpful Content update doubled down: sites with large volumes of outdated or unhelpful content may be downgraded overall—not just on a page-by-page basis. That blog post from 2020 about face masks during the pandemic? It could be undermining your 2024 product launch page.

The impact is playing out globally. CNET, for example, deleted thousands of older articles and immediately saw search rankings rise. IBM overhauled developer documentation, stripping out half its old pages to improve clarity for AI-based retrieval. And Shopify removed more than 2,000 aging blog posts to improve page performance and boost conversions.

Old Content Confuses AI—And That’s the Ballgame Now

Search engines are one thing. But AI is now the first point of contact for millions.

Gartner reported that 30% of users in developed markets now begin product research using an AI tool instead of Google—and the number is rising. These tools aren’t just giving users ten blue links. They’re synthesizing answers.

And that means they’re actually judging your content. If your site includes outdated facts, broken links, or pre-pandemic predictions, it’s marked as untrustworthy by tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity (an AI search engine that cites sources), and Gemini (Google’s own AI assistant). They’re not just indexing. They’re evaluating.

If they don’t trust your content, you don’t get quoted. You don’t get summarized. You don’t even show up.

It’s why IBM rebuilt their developer search around AI-ready summaries—and why brands from finance to fashion are quietly culling the archives to keep their trust signals high.

Yes, Redating Can Work. But Only If You Earn It.

Changing the publish date on an article is a step in the right direction. But Google’s Search Liaison John Mueller made it plain: “Blindly updating dates without significant changes to the content won’t do anything useful for SEO.”

So changing the date without updating the content is not strategy—it’s window dressing. Google knows it. And so will the AI. 

Meanwhile, companies like HubSpot and Moz—major players in the SEO and marketing automation space—routinely redate blog posts, but only after fully updating them: swapping in fresh stats, reworking intros, tightening structure. It’s a remix, not a reprint.

You can and should do the same. But only after asking: does this deserve to live?

To reinforce transparency and trust, it may even be advisable to tag refreshed posts as “Updated” or “Refreshed,” either in the header or intro, so both readers and search engines understand the post has been meaningfully revised. This helps preserve SEO authority while signaling that you’re keeping content fresh for the right reasons.

Moz’s own data showed that a small portion of refreshed posts drove the majority of their year’s SEO growth. That’s not magic. That’s maintenance.

When Deletion is Strategy

Brands are finally waking up to the strategic value of content pruning. According to the 2023 Content, Seriously strategy report, 75% of high-growth marketing teams audited or deleted more than 25% of their web content last year.

Semrush, a leading SEO platform, ran a pruning initiative that delivered a 79% increase in organic traffic in just six months. Shopify, after deleting thousands of old posts and consolidating the rest, saw stronger conversion rates. Zendesk cut 40% of old help content and watched bounce rates drop by 20%, while customer satisfaction scores ticked upward.

This isn’t spring cleaning. This is triage.

What to Cut, What to Keep, What to Update

Here’s a brutally efficient framework for culling content:

1. Keep anything that’s evergreen, high-traffic, or currently ranking.
2. Update anything with potential, using new facts, quotes, images or SEO elements; consider labeling them “Updated” or “Refreshed.”
3. Mercilessly delete or de-index anything with zero traffic, low relevance, or confusing overlaps.

Use tools like Ahrefs, Google Search Console (Google’s free traffic and index diagnostics tool), and Screaming Frog (a site crawler used by SEO pros) to pinpoint low performers.

And remember: clarity trumps quantity in the age of AI synthesis.

Curate, Don’t Hoard

This is a mindset shift. We’re not writing to fill a vault. We’re writing to train the machine. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini—they’re hunting for clean, consistent, current answers. Your website is either helping them…or holding them back.

Yes, it stings to delete content I spent days writing during a caffeine-fueled sprint in 2014. But if that article can’t help a reader—or an AI—today, it’s not content. It’s clutter.

So time for a bit of spring content cleaning.

Sources: Gartner AI Usage Forecast, 2023, Ahrefs: 96.55% of Pages Get No Traffic (ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study), Semrush Content Audit Case Study, 2023, Content, Seriously: Content Strategy Report 2023, Shopify Blog Cleanup, 2022, IBM Developer Documentation Revamp, 2023, John Mueller, Google Search Liaison, on Content Freshness, HubSpot & Moz SEO Update Strategies, Zendesk Content Performance Stats, 2024, CNET SEO Performance Case, 2023.