2021 has come and gone, and the holidays are upon us. Without rehashing the highs and lows, we think we can sum it up best with: what a year!

We’re predicting that this holiday season will look a bit different than in years past, even compared to the 2020 holiday season.

With global supply chain issues plaguing industries, including lumber, plastics, and electronics, your gift ideas might need to change. But don’t fret—YMC has your back, and we’re here to help you shop for the Gen-Z and Millennials in your life.

About Our Millennial + Generation-Z Community

The YMC community, including our @youthmarketing followers, consists of more than two hundred thousand highly-engaged students and young adults from across North America. Over 90% of our network is between the ages of 18-34. In other words, our community represents Millennials and Generation-Z.

What We Learned

We reached out to our community via Instagram Stories and a Google Survey to find out what gifts they plan on giving and would like to receive this year. Here’s what we learned:

Make An Impact

Young consumers are hyper-aware of the impact of their actions, including gift-giving consumerism’s effect on the environment and climate, workers’ welfare, and social equity. People want to give and receive gifts that make a positive impact—whether they’re from a POC-owned business, help them reduce their carbon footprint, or are from a company that’s doing right by their workers. There are plenty of gift guides out there that highlight products from Black-owned, Asian-owned, LGBTQ+-owned, and Indigenous-owned businesses. For those looking to be kinder to the planet, look at productsthat will replace one-use products in your giftee’s life.

Dolla Dolla Bill Y’all

Cash is king, and young people want it. Over two-thirds of our audience indicated that they would rather receive cash and gift cards over items. Trends are moving quickly, and individual style is constantly evolving, meaning that Gen-Z will likely want to choose specific “of-the-moment” items. Gen-Z is also entering adulthood amid a global pandemic and growing wealth inequality, meaning that cash can enable them to build their safety net and pay bills.

No Makeup Makeup, But Make It Luxury

After almost two years spent inside, beauty trends have shifted drastically. There’s a greater emphasis on skincare and minimal-makeup looks, and matte foundations and liquid lipsticks have given way to dewy and luminous BB creams—with a shiny gloss. Our audience has indicated that they’re looking to invest in their beauty routines, with a few select high-end products, such as YSL’s Black Opium, Dyson’s Hair Dryer, and high-end skincare products from brands like La Mer, Dr. Barbara Sturm, Tata Harper, and more.

WFH Figured Out

Living room couches and dining room tables have replaced offices, with digital nomad lifestyles becoming more common. After spending nearly two years working at home, Gen-Z has their home office set-ups figured out, or they’ve already returned to their old offices. Avoid getting the young person in your life work-from-home accessories and focus instead on more fun and less practical gifts.

Looking Good!

While the shift to working at home is looking more and more permanent for many workers, the desire to live in sweatpants is waning. Over 61% of our audience wants to focus more on wearing clothing that looks good and makes them feel confident. While sweats seem like a cozy gift, our audience prefers a gift card to their favorite store or some cute accessories. Scrunchies, fun and exciting prints, bucket hats, and tie-dye are all the rage with Gen-Z.

Gen-Z Just Wants to Have Fun

Holiday gifting is an excellent opportunity to get people things that they won’t buy themselves. While there’s an increased emphasis on getting practical gifts, don’t forget to have some fun. The vast majority of our audience indicated that they would prefer to give and receive gifts that don’t serve a practical purpose.

Squishmallows, the squishy plushies that have taken over the internet continue to be a hot item this year and provide a bit of comfort to those that might need it. As friend groups begin to reunite, games are topping wishlists, including card games, board games, and video games (especially for Gen-Z’s favorite consoles like the Nintendo Switch).

Gift Ideas

Looking for More Than Shopping Tips?

If you’re a brand manager interested in reaching more Millennial and Generation-Z consumers, we can help! We have built a strong community of young people to tap for unique, custom research and insights. At YMC, we’ve been connecting brands with 15- to 34-year-old consumers for two decades—we’d be happy to share our wealth of knowledge with you. Contact us today!

Since Pinterest launched in 2010, pinning has found its way into the pop culture lexicon, and the site now boasts over 454 million monthly users. The website has led to the rise of virtual mood and vision boards, recipes galore, and DIYs ranging from easy-to-execute to downright impossible. Despite Pinterest’s role as a powerful social media platform, it’s escaped the scrutiny placed on other giants, such as Facebook and Twitter. This can be attributed to the format, which makes it easy to avoid conversations, and to the fact that the content on Pinterest tends to be more innocuous than other platforms, at least on the surface. However, Pinterest has been making moves in the past several years to easily earn it the title as the most positive place on the internet. Let’s dive into how Pinterest is curating a positive and healthy community on the platform and why you need to be keeping an eye on it.

Who’s On Pinterest?

The user base of Pinterest is primarily described as moms who like DIY. However, their massive community is diverse and generally breaks away from other social media platform demographics. Over 77% of users are female, with age ranges evenly distributed. Additionally, over 28% of all social media users maintain an account on Pinterest, where they primarily use it for purchasing inspiration. Pinterest users are active on the platform, with over 260 billion pins saved and more than 5 billion boards created.

What’s It Like?

Pinterest’s communities are vast and often intermingled. While TikTok can boast more separate communities, like BookTok, FoodTok, and NoodleTok (is it a bones day?)—Pinterest’s users overlap. There are countless options to explore on the platform, including fashion, recipes, fitness, home decor, beauty, art, tattoos, and news. As of January 2021, the top topics on the platform include:

Home décor
DIY and crafts
Entertainment
Education
Art
Women’s fashion
Food and drinks
Beauty
Event planning
Gardening

All Social Media is Toxic, Right?

Pinterest isn’t immune to most common pitfalls impacting other social media channels. It’s been used as a tool to spread misinformation, including falsehoods about COVID-19, the 2020 election, medicine, and mental health. The platform has long been accused of fostering impossible and unattainable standards for young women and girls. There are communities within the platform promoting dangerous behaviors, such as disordered eating, medication abuse, or “cures” for conditions that cause long-term harm.

These are problems that plague many platforms. However, Pinterest has taken a hardline approach to these issues and has implemented several measures to reduce misinformation and discourage dangerous behavior.

In March of 2021, Pinterest announced new measures to combat vaccine and COVID-19 misinformation, prohibiting ads that offer COVID-19 cures and treatments, curating expert-lead search results related to the pandemic, and further enforcing their health misinformation policy on the platform.

To build upon the misinformation policy, Pinterest has taken great measures to combat misinformation on the platform across various topics. Through the use of AI, machine learning, and human moderators, Pinterest is removing content on the platform that “may harm Pinners’ or the public’s well-being, safety or trust.”

Mental Health on the Platform

It’s no secret that there are detrimental mental health impacts associated with social media use. Often, social media users curate profiles and personas that show an ideal and perfect life, leading to harmful comparisons, especially for young people.

Pinterest has launched several initiatives to improve mental health and provide a healthy reality check to its users. In October of 2021, Pinterest launched Pinterest Havens, a board that encourages users to “explore the relationship between mental health and rest.” This has also been paired with an IRL installation in Chicago to bring awareness to burnout—utilizing art and community programming—and donating to local Chicago community nonprofits. Pinterest also launched a self-care tool, which is presented when searching for key phrases related to emotional and mental health.

In July of 2021, Pinterest made a big move as the first social media platform to ban all weight-loss ads. Social media often exacerbates disordered eating, with communities dedicated to encouraging this behavior and ads promoting weight loss products compounding the issues.

Representation

White and wealthy women are often put on a pedestal as a standard to attain, a trend that is evident across all social media platforms, pop culture trends, and media. Pinterest has recognized this and is working to ensure that its platform is inclusive and representative of all its users.

Earlier in 2021, Pinterest launched a hair pattern search option with a focus on BIPOC users. This tool will enable BIPOC users to find hairstyles that fit their hair texture, shape, and needs more efficiently. By creating a dedicated tool for its users of color, Pinterest has shown that it is dedicated to fostering an inclusive environment where all users can find their needs met.

Pinterest also launched a creator fund designed to elevate creators from underrepresented communities. With this fund, creators must sign their “Creator Code,” which requires creators to fact-check, practice inclusivity, and be kind.

Is It Working?

There is no straightforward answer as to whether Pinterest’s strategy is working. It’s hard to quantify positivity and negativity on a digital platform, and many of these changes are in their infancy. However, all of this action has posited the platform as a leader in social media moderation. Making these bold and public moves signals to users that the platform does care about the health and well-being of its users and is taking action to protect them.

Should Your Brand be on Pinterest?

Brands have been slow to adopt Pinterest, finding the format not overly intuitive towards spreading their brand messaging. However, establishing your brand on the platform is an excellent opportunity to reach a broad and diverse audience looking for inspiration and ideas. 50% of Pinterest users have indicated that they have bought products after seeing a promoted pin. Pinterest users tend to skew towards those with a higher income, with 41% of users earning more than $75,000 per year, further cementing Pinterest as a part of the e-commerce ecosystem.

Pinterest has a very active community that often goes onto the platform with a goa—whether to get a recipe, find a solution to a household chore, buy gifts, treat themselves, or have some fun. That positions Pinterest as an excellent platform for businesses looking to connect and inspire their audiences. The photo-forward nature of the platform gives brands a perfect opportunity to showcase their products and services in a fun and creative way.

How Can YMC help?

If you’re interested in establishing your brand on Pinterest and other social media platforms, we’re here to help. At YMC, we specialize in connecting brands with Gen-Z and Millennial consumers, and we’d be happy to share our wealth of knowledge with you. Contact us today!

With every new generation comes an increased comfort with broaching taboo topics in public and with their peers. The marketing and advertising world has slowly caught up, with existing legacy brands becoming bolder and more direct about what they do and sell and a new crop of direct-to-consumer and retail start-ups reinventing how we communicate around formerly taboo subjects. Everything from tampons to birth control to women’s health products and services and erectile dysfunction medications are finally beginning to shed their coded language and inferred meanings.

For years, brands offering reproductive and sexual health-related products and services have used indirect messaging to avoid plainly saying what they do. However, these companies have begun to embrace directly communicating with their audiences. They have slowly started to shift the discussion about their products and services by using words and phrases previously considered taboo for advertisements.

Who is Driving this Shift?

Phexxi, a hormone-free birth control gel, has been one of the latest entrants to embrace a more direct approach in their marketing and advertising. For instance, they open their latest commercial with the phrase, “welcome to my vagina,” and the rest of their advertisements feature visual references to vaginas, discussions about sex, and have a strong and undeniable focus on women’s empowerment. These messages break a lot of the old rules of how to market and communicate birth control products by directly talking about the product and its uses.

Even a simple biological term like “vagina,” which has long been considered off-limits in media, is now a pivotal part of the strategy to how a brand like Phexxi communicates. Phexxi is flipping the script by directly talking about their product and how consumers will benefit. This removes any confusion and works to capture their audiences’ attention.

Hims (and Hers) are also great examples of brands that offer a wide range of health services and products (hair loss, mental health, erectile dysfunction, sexual wellness, etc.) for men and women and who have led the way in speaking about these previously taboo subjects with a more direct and conversational tone. A recent ad for their erectile dysfunction services ends with “Get hard or your money back.” While erectile dysfunction commercials are certainly not a new phenomenon, this is one of the first to be so direct with the audience about their product’s purpose.

Shock Value? Or Something Else?

As expected, a small portion of the public discourse accuses brands like Hims and Phexxi of using shock value to sell their products and services. Shock value has been used in advertising for ages, especially by associations and organizations trying to make a point and promote causes. Some recent examples of shock advertising include the following ad from Sandy Hook Promise:

Consumer brands use shock advertising in ways that don’t involve social causes as well. Burger King is one of the more well-known brands to push the boundaries of what’s expected, with a recent example including a stomach-turning timelapse of a rotting burger to demonstrate their product’s freshness. In March 2021, Burger King UK launched their much-criticized International Women’s Day campaign, where they boldly declared the “women belong in the kitchen,” following it by promoting a scholarship designed to increase the number of women in the cooking profession.

The purpose of advertisements like these is to grab your attention by appealing to strong emotions like anger, disgust, surprise, and sadness. The controversy generated by these advertisements is almost always a part of the marketing plan. Shock advertising tends to bring more eyes to the brand and feeds into the adage that “all PR is good PR.”

So are Phexxi and Hims employing shock advertising? It would depend on who you ask. Sexual health and sex, in general, are considered taboo by some and acceptable by an increasingly large portion of the population including the vast majority of Gen-Z and Millennials. Advertisers and marketers tend to err on the safe side and avoid anything that could inflame any audience, intended or otherwise. Cultural and societal norms tend to dictate what we consider acceptable, and in the United States, where these products are advertised, there is no one set norm. The U.S. is a melting pot of cultures, which means what one person finds unthinkable is considered permissible by their friends.

It’s also important to consider that the products and services these companies are promoting appeal to a broad audience. Approximately 65% of American women between 15 and 44 utilize at least one contraceptive measure. About 52% of American men experience some form of erectile dysfunction. In both cases, a majority of the population stands are impacted by issues that these products address. The shock value aspect of these commercials can be negated when you think about the sheer number of potential consumers.

Is This A Good or Bad Thing?

Brands are becoming bolder and more direct with their advertising to demystify what they aim to accomplish with their products and services. There are arguments for and against this approach, and neither side is right or wrong. It’s essential to appeal to your intended audience while trying not to alienate others. It’s equally important not to offend or miss the mark in what you are trying to communicate. Finding a balance between attention-grabbing, direct, inoffensive, and broadly appealing is a juggling act, and some of the balls might drop. It’s essential to figure out what to prioritize and what is important to your brand values and goals.

How Can YMC Help?

Are you looking to revamp your communications strategy? Want to make a bold statement? At YMC, we specialize in connecting brands with Gen-Z and Millennial consumers, and we’d be happy to share our wealth of knowledge with you. Contact us today!