Bleeding Content Into Content
How brands are disguising themselves as memes to go viral.
In today’s world, catering to Gen-Z requires a delicate dance between advertising and authenticity, especially when attempting to ‘go viral.’ This digitally-native generation has reshaped the marketing funnel, gravitating towards content over traditional advertising. As brands adapt to this shift, they are blending sponsored content seamlessly into regular content, leveraging social media platforms where Gen-Z’s seek inspiration, entertainment, and connection.
Gen-Z's advertising fatigue is evident, with 80% of Gen-Z agreeing that they are exposed to more brands and advertising than any other generation. Their primary channel is also their social hub, their source of entertainment, their learning centre, and so much more than just your average content channel. For brands to work online, they need to speak the language, to ingrain themselves so deeply into the content that it feels distinguished from a traditional ad. You hear of people making fun of ‘influencer brain rot,’ or the monotone voice influencers use to promote sponsored content and thus overconsumption. People want to be entertained, and Gen-Z understands that marketing and campaigns online will always be inevitable, so why not make it clever?
For brands to work online, they need ingrain themselves so deeply into the content that it feels distinguished from a traditional ad.
Take, for instance, Michael Cera’s partnership with Cerave, which began as a meme and evolved into branded content embraced by audiences. Cera's nonchalant endorsement of the product, captured in candid photographs, resonated with consumers, highlighting the power of authenticity in sponsored content. Or, that stupidly hilarious video of a guy doing a dance with the caption reading “the party ended hours ago and he’s still here.” Quickly, the sentiment became a meme across platforms, becoming a joke for anyone expressing interest in something for too long/doing something for too long. And then a few weeks later, the OG creator recreated the video with exact detail, except this time he was wearing sponsored clothing from Marc Jacobs (famous for their lo-fi style of marketing aesthetics). The clothes aren’t heavily branded, and one would simply think nothing of it, besides, maybe “oooh nice shirt diva.” Cynically, I ask myself as I mindlessly scroll for hours: is all of this just marketing now, is it all just staged?
We wrote a few months ago about manufacturing virality online. Culture nowadays feels boiled down to a trend, a meme, or a moment in time that spreads like wildfire across the internet. So much of what’s online now, intended to go viral, is staged. It’s like this Influencers in the Wild video, or husbands ‘pranking’ their wives for the 150th time this month, even the JoJo Siwa rebrand feels calculated and intended as rage-bait for engagement.
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Gen-Z don’t blindly follow influencers, really. While we grew up being advertised to via our social platforms, most are savvy about who they follow and who they chose to engage with. It’s a generation that HATES being advertised to, yet loves influencers (to some degree…). As the world is set on fire around us, with income inequality skyrocketing to unfathomable heights, influencers are losing their allure. We’ve written about this before, the great crumblings of the old guards of influencers, whose out-of-touchness is beginning to infuriate a generation marked by a pandemic, war, housing crisis, and more. It’s easy to bristle at influencers complaining about how tough their life is while a ‘side-hustle-generation’ lives paycheck to paycheck.
It doesn’t look like an ad or quack like an ad, but it is an ad. And instead of feeling ‘duped’ by a brand, if the content is genuinely quite funny and falls under the umbrella of consumable ‘content,’ it tends to be rewarded. Instead of disrupting feeds with stark advertising that feels too in your face, too on the nose, and thus ruining the ‘scrolling experience,’ the blending of content into content can make it feel more palatable, and thus more enjoyable for everyone.