With shorter attention spans, heightened expectations around brand transparency, and a propensity to tune out inauthentic corporate messaging, crafting marketing that genuinely connects with Gen-Z is no easy feat.
Brands can use influencer marketing, emerging platforms like TikTok, and interactive experiences to foster real connections with this powerful, brand-skeptical consumer segment. Those who fail to speak to Gen Z in a way that feels current, relatable, and authentic risk getting tuned out entirely.
Almost 50% of Gen Z shoppers feel neutral or dissatisfied with the brands they support. Around 90% of Millennials almost never trust any information they find about businesses in the press.
So, how do brands deliver a buyer-centric brand experience for Gen Z shoppers?
And how do you position your business to build credibility and trust among Millennials?
The answer is simple – work with a Gen-Z and Millennial marketing agency.
These agencies have the experience, services, and data to help you make strategic choices in favor of what youth audiences want.
We’ve grouped the best youth marketing agencies in 2024, their services, brands they’ve worked with, and why you should pick them.
As brands increasingly vie for the attention and dollars of Gen Z and Millennials, having an agency partner that speaks their language is paramount. Standing out from the crowd are these 11 top marketing firms.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2020
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Number of Employees: 1–10
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NinetyEight is one of the best Gen-Z marketing agencies. They have enough experience to understand what these consumers want to hear and the best strategies to engage and convert them. Whether you’re a small or large business, NinetyEight will use in-depth customer insights to design a 360-degree marketing strategy aligned with Gen Z buyers. A few of this agency’s top services for Gen Z marketing include influencer marketing, branding, and social media marketing.
This agency has been featured in publications like ThinkLa and TheDrum for its outstanding expertise and tailored marketing strategies. NinetyEight also won the 2022 Web Excellence Award.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 1999
Location: Washington DC, USA
Number of Employees: 201-500
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Youth Marketing Connection (YMC) is a top Gen-Z and Millennial marketing agency because of its impressive portfolio and robust services. YMC has worked with brands like Waze and Sephora, both well-renowned in their respective sectors. What’s unique about this agency is the long list of services perfect for Gen Z and Millennial audiences.
Businesses can deploy campus marketing campaigns to engage students, secure brand ambassadors to drive awareness and interest, and optimize credibility with influencer marketing.
Choose YMC if you need a Gen Z and Millennial marketing agency that exceeds the average. YMC offers specialized Gen Z and Millennial marketing services, from campus marketing and branding to ambassador and influencer marketing.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2018
Location: Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
Number of Employees: 11-50
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Millennial Marketing Agency is a Canadian Gen-Z and Millennial marketing agency. Although they take a more focused approach to Millennial marketing, Gen Z brands find more than a few valuable services.
Millennial Marketing Agency can market and manage your social media while using customer-centric content aligned with what these audiences want to see. They will also handle your digital advertising campaigns to maximize your results and reach and enhance your website tailored to convert young buyers.
Millennial Marketing Agency will use online platforms to take your digital presence to the next level and tailor your approach for Gen Z and Millennial audiences. This agency has mostly worked with brands in the Health and Finance sectors and provides expert services fit for mid-level companies and startups.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2012
Location: New York City with offices in Miami, Florida, USA
Number of Employees: 11-50
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SocialFly provides high-level solutions for Gen Z and Millennial marketing beyond social media. This agency can develop detailed influencer campaigns while managing all aspects, including influencer events, screening, and management.
SocialFly is the best agency for you if you want a 360-degree solution for Gen Z and Millennial marketing. From creative aspects to digital marketing campaigns, SocialFly can do it all. They’ve worked with small and mid-level brands in various industries.
SocialFly provides graphic design services, too, and they can design your logo, create infographics, or create visuals to entice your target buyers. To optimize your social sentiment and online reputation, SocialFly has social listening services too. Plus, this agency doesn’t forget paid advertising and digital marketing, making it a well-rounded choice.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2020
Location: New York City, New York, USA
Number of Employees: 201-500
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WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Looking at JUV Consulting’s homepage will give you an excellent idea of how well this agency connects to Gen-Z and Millennial audiences. Based on extensive data on these target audiences, JUV Consulting will create custom marketing strategies that speak to the values, fashions, and trends of your buyers and engage them through content that matters.
Boosting customer engagement and awareness, this agency offers experiential marketing campaigns, brand positioning and storytelling, and social media marketing strategies for a generation who has been raised by internet culture.
Pick JUV Consulting if you’re a mid-level or large business requiring high-level Gen Z and Millennial marketing services. JUV Consulting can design presentations and workshops to engage your audience and experiential marketing campaigns, and they use in-depth data like field research to make impactful marketing decisions.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2017
Location: Denver, Colorado, USA with offices in England, UK.
Number of Employees: 1-10
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WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Carson+Doyle is one of the best Gen-Z and Millennial marketing agencies because they specialize in customer engagement campaigns on social channels that convert. This agency will create buyer-centric videos to promote your brand, encompassing your brand identity and voice.
Carson+Doyle is an award-winning choice because they’ve worked with brands like Red Bull and Spotify to create buyer-centric campaigns on trending social channels. This agency understands where youth audiences hang out, what content they want to see, and how to find unique marketing strategies.
If you need expert branding for logo design, storytelling, and your value proposition, Carson+Doyle can do this for you. Unlike many Gen Z and Millennial marketing agencies, Carson + Doyle provides copywriting expertise because they know how vital content marketing is to engage these audiences.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: N/A
Location: New York, USA
Number of Employees: 11-50
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PRZM understands what Gen Z and Millennial audiences look for in trustworthy brands, and they can help you achieve this. Working with this expert agency, you can leverage influencer and content marketing strategies and develop viral campaigns.
PRZM specializes in various niches and sectors, including Gen-Z and Millennial marketing! This agency provides influencer marketing services to help your brand stay relevant. It will find and manage your brand’s top-tier influencers from TikTok, YouTube, and other social sites. They also offer analytics, content marketing, and social media marketing solutions. As experts in this marketing space, PRZM has worked with many brands targeting millennials and Gen Z audiences, like Starbucks and SOHO House.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2012
Location: San Diego, California, USA
Number of Employees: 501-1000
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Scalable marketing is Power’s motto. This Gen Z and Millennial marketing agency takes a strategic approach to optimize every stage of your buyer’s journey. With expert services from this holistic approach, brands can leverage buyer-centric content marketing and affiliate marketing to boost brand awareness.
Power is the agency you want to choose if you want to optimize every stage of your sales funnel. The services from this agency will help you accomplish this through in-depth marketing strategies and campaigns built around your goals. Another benefit of Power is the affiliate marketing services!
Power can design and develop your website to ramp up web traffic, develop an influencer marketing campaign, and find and manage your influencers. All Power’s services relate to a typical sales funnel’s top, middle, and bottom to ensure they get your buyers to convert.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: N/A
Location: London, UK, with offices in Los Angeles, California, USAs and Chippendale, New South Wales, Australia
Number of Employees: 50-200
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Seed is a multi-award-winning Gen Z marketing agency with a taste for innovative, culturally relevant campaigns. Brands working with Seed can stay ahead of trends through relevant content and digital marketing strategies. Seed professionals take a specialized approach to student marketing and know what buyers in this segment value in brands.
Many top-tier brands like Spotify and Asos work with Seed because this agency promotes culturally relevant brands. Seed will help you make an impact on youth consumers through tailored content, social media like Instagram marketing, and influencer marketing strategies.
You can rely on detailed buyer research and profiling to build marketing strategies to convert ideal customers. What makes Seed different is that they strive to work with brands that want to make a genuine impact through marketing.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2013
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Number of Employees: 11-50
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WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Neato Agency is a real-deal Gen Z and Millennial marketing agency. Not only have they worked with adored brands in this niche, like Vans and Boston University, but they offer the ultimate list of marketing services. Neato used student insights and field research to build custom marketing strategies for media buying and planning, events management, social media, and influencer campaigns.
This agency offers all the services you need, like campus, influencer and social media marketing, media buying and planning, and events management.
Neato can create experiential marketing campaigns that engage audiences unparalleled, develop customer workshops, and optimize your brand experience.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2012
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Number of Employees: 51-200
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WHY CHOOSE THEM?
Adolescent is a Gen Z creative consultancy and content studio agency. This agency will optimize all the creative aspects of your Gen Z marketing strategy and create customer-centric content.
Adolescent works for small and mid-level businesses with Gen Z audiences. This agency specializes in creative and content marketing to engage and convert Gen Z buyers. Adolescent also provides rare think tanks and ideation services.
You can expect services to include brand storytelling and identity, research and insights for data-driven campaigns, and creative strategies. Adolescent also provides think tank and ideation services to generate out-of-the-box campaigns for your brand, and these experts will manage and promote your social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Brands must use tailored marketing approaches for Gen Z and Millennial audiences because these buyers are pickier than Gen Xs and Boomers. Gen Z and Millennial buyers prioritize eco-friendly brands, are more conscious of mental health, are financially mindful, and focus on brand trust and authenticity.
Let’s take a closer look at these characteristics for Gen Z and Millennial buyers:
Gen Z and Millennials are aware of environmentally-harmful brands, marketing campaigns, and products. Environmental marketing has become much more vital to these audiences.
Almost 80% of Gen Z’ers are concerned about humanity’s environmental impact. And 58% are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products.
Around 61% of Millennials would pay for more green products!
With all so much popularity around environmental marketing, brands must hop on board. But this doesn’t mean saying you’re eco-friendly when you’re not.
Nothing will offend Gen Z and Millennial audiences more than greenwashing!
Whatever eco-friendly claims you make must be genuine. It’s not possible to go green overnight. Create milestones for your brand and share your progress with your audience to show them you care!
It’s no secret that mental health has become less of a taboo topic over the years. Gen Z’ers and Millennials have become increasingly conscious of their mental well-being and report the poorest performing mental health cases.
While these audiences are more likely to speak about their mental health, brands must understand how this impacts their buyers and how they can relate to them.
Because mental health matters to your target audience, encompass this in your marketing campaigns. Whether you raise funds for mental health awareness movements or start a movement, find a way to connect with your buyers through mental health.
Source: Cure Media
Compared to Millennials, more Gen Z’ers are college students, so money management is a skill they must learn. Gen Z’ers feel the most confident in consuming and saving vs. other generations. And about 54% of Gen Z’ers also have some kind of investment, proving how financially mindful these buyers are.
Financially mindfulness in Millennials isn’t too far off either. 61% of Millennials are confident in their overall financial knowledge. Most of these buyers are concerned about saving money and managing debt for their retirement.
Gen Z and Millennial audiences take money matters seriously. Dealing with these buyers who are more aware of the financial decisions they make forces brands to perfect value for money. Your business and products must prove worthwhile for Gen Z and Millennial audiences to make a confident purchase.
Gen Z and Millennial buyers need much more convincing to purchase.
Gen Z’ers are not impulsive buyers. Almost 50% only purchase an item when they need it. This buying behavior relates to how Gen Z’ers are financially mindful and may not have excess funds to splurge.
About 80% of Gen Z shoppers immediately lose trust in companies that photoshop their ads. And around 84% of buyers are more likely to trust brands that use real customers in their ads.
Millennials require the same, if not more, amount of persuasion and credibility to purchase a product. 84% of Millennials don’t trust advertising, celebrity endorsements, or influencers.
Instead, these buyers need online reviews and user-generated content (UGC) or personal recommendations to secure buying confidence.
With such skeptical buyers, brands must build online credibility and employ social proof strategies to win over Gen Z and Millennial audiences.
Summary: Gen Z & Millennials Key Characteristics
Gen Z and Millennials aren’t the easiest audiences to engage. These buyers favor eco-friendly brands, value-for-money products, and brands that raise awareness and support mental health.
The best way to connect with these shoppers is to use tailored marketing developed with the assistance of a specialized Millennial marketing agency.
These agencies have the expertise and services to help you boost your marketing and sales in 2024.
Gen Z and Millennial shoppers want to work with eco-friendly brands and mental health awareness matters to them. These buyers are also financially-mindful and are focused on trust and authenticity in brands. Read our full article for more on Gen Z and Millennial buyers and the best Gen Z and Millennial marketing agencies!
Marketing to Generation Z requires a radically different, digitally-immersive and socially-conscious approach compared to previous generations. With shorter attention spans, brands must leverage snackable, visually engaging content on platforms like social media and video apps.
Authenticity, transparency, and taking visible stands on causes like sustainability and social justice are essential to gain credibility with this marketing-savvy, values-driven cohort. User-generated content, influencer marketing, gamification, AR/VR experiences, and prioritizing peer trust over corporate advertising are key strategies to connect with Gen Z, who demand brands adapt to their digital-first realities with relentless authenticity.
Having well-defined values that are authentically embraced is extremely important for brands trying to effectively market to Generation Z. This generation is known for being highly values-driven and socially conscious consumers.
BusinessWire: GreenPrint Survey Finds Consumers Want to Buy Eco-Friendly Products, but Don’t Know How to Identify Them
Chocline: Generation Z Reported the Most Mental Health Problems
Investopedia: Generation Z: Stepping Into Financial Independence
NRF: Gen Z Brand Relationships
WordStream: New Data! 18 Gen Z Characteristics & Stats (+How to Market to Them)
World Economic Forum: Here’s How Digital Transformation Will Create a More Sustainable World
The Washington Post: Millennials Don’t Trust Anyone. That’s a Big Deal.