BIG little LDN, the agency for independent businesses, has launched advisory board BIG Shot, to capitalise on the demand amongst brands to tap into the consideration and purchasing mindset of the most socially conscious and digitally aware demographic, Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

Made up of young people between the ages of 5-18, the board will advise on proposed strategy and creative as well as providing insights into how brands can best target the next generation of consumers.  

Led by 17-year-old, Maya Behzadi under the guidance of Emma Critchley-Lloyd (Founder), Sophie Collins (Marketing Manager) and Holly Eddleston (Head of Influencer Marketing), BIG Shot will work with clients who value long term brand building, and are willing to have their products or services enter the consideration phase months, or sometimes years, before a purchase is made.  

Emma Critchley-Lloyd says, “As a social media agency for independent businesses, we must be absolutely laser focussed in what we say and where we say it in order to drive the biggest bang for our client’s buck. There is no room for wastage in the budgets we manage, so we have to be smart about where and how it is spent.  

No one knows how brands should be speaking to teenagers, better than teenagers themselves. We could desk research the sub-culture nuances within TikTok and observe the various Twitch communities, but we’re not personally connected in the same way a teenager is. We’re combining decades of experience with the fresh, authentic perspective of the Gen Z community to drive unique, memorable and ownable brand experiences for our clients.”

Research has shown that Gen Z favour TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat over platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter which rose to fame from the Millennial generation. In 2021, the number of TikTok users in the UK exceeded 13 million and as of Q3 2020, 24% of those were aged between 15 and 25 years old. Yet, if you take the banking industry as an example, where the average UK consumer remains loyal for 17-years and why so much budget goes into acquiring students, only one of the CMA9 (the nine largest banks in the UK), has a populated TikTok account. Some haven’t even secured their handle and those that have, either haven’t got any content, or have completely missed the mark in terms of the type of content that should be published.  

Maya Behzadi comments, “It’s not enough for a brand to simply take their 16:9, emotive TV ad and post it on a platform designed for short, snappy 9:16 viewing. Student loans are such a lucrative opportunity for banks, it makes no sense that they are not talking to this audience in the places they’re hanging out.”

Ofcom recently reported that nine in ten 13 to 24 year olds head straight to streaming, on-demand or video-based social platforms and spend less time per day watching traditional TV (53 minutes) than TikTok (57 minutes). With ITV seeing a 48% decline in viewers since 2012, brands who do not allocate portions of their TV spend to TikTok will miss out on long term brand advocacy and recall with this next generation of consumer.

Emma Critchley-Lloyd adds, “We saw the same thing when Instagram was first introduced. At the time, I was working as a Marketing Executive at a digital publishing house and still remember the meeting where I had to put a business case forward for our own Instagram channel. At the time, my bosses just didn’t get it. A little over a year later, they published their first post. I had left by that time, but just as many are doing now with TikTok, back then, few brands understood that you can’t just shove it on Instagram. It needs a strategy and more importantly design. If you treat it like a tick box, it’ll drive as much value as a tick box.”

BIG Shot aims to make marketing to Gen-Z through TikTok much more accessible to those brands interested in long term advocacy and recall, but perhaps have little resource or knowledge to dedicate to it.

Holly Eddleston comments, “If your audience are on TikTok, it’s time to act now. Social platforms are forever evolving, new ones are being introduced and as frustrating that might be as a brand owner, you have to keep up with where your audience are. Instagram used to be a lot easier for brand traction than it is today. Updates to its algorithm are forever making it more difficult for organic branded content to be seen. At the moment, brands have less of those restrictions on TikTok, but that could change, in the same way it did for Instagram. That’s why the time is now. Not when everyone else is already on there, because that’s when it will change.”

BIG little LDN are welcoming enquiries from brands who would like use BIG Shot as a sounding board for their next Gen Z campaign and those who would like a review of their current TikTok, how it is performing and how it could be improved.

Get in touch with Maya, Emma, Holly and Sophie, talk@biglittlelondon.com