This one feels wrong.
For someone who grew up on Byron Sharp and the gospel of mass reach, being told brand building is increasingly niche is hard to hear.
But that’s what Meta and BAMM uncovered when they went deep with Gen Z — through in-depth interviews, mobile ethnography, and large-scale surveys.
The findings reveal the growing importance of niche.
Brands are being built through ‘lots of littles’ as Dr Grace Kite and Tom Roach have framed it.
Micro-creators, communities, and cultural pockets, building brands from the edges in.
That might sound like marketing fluff.
But yesterday I spoke with one of the fastest growing brands in the UK — they told me their business is made up of ~120 people, and 90 of them work directly with creators 🤯
It’s not just start-ups.
One of the biggest advertisers in the world now spends over 40% of their entire Meta budget on partnership ads with creators 🫨
These niches compound to build brands.
The research shows this is especially true for Gen Z.
6 key findings:
1. In-market is meaningless
If something hits their niche, they buy, even if they had no plan to. We’re told 5% of people are in-market. For the Gen Z we spoke to it didn’t work like that, most purchases were discovery not intent driven.
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2. The niche is fluid
The same two friends can be messaging on Instagram and it’s totally different to their conversation on WhatsApp, which is totally different to their conversation on iMessage, same people but completely different identities. Context is more important than ever.
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3. Passions beat trends
Mass trends out, personal passions in. Everything is about going super niche – so niche that they create zero-friend accounts just to train the algorithm around ultra-specific passions.
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4. Micro not mass-creators
Creators are their preferred brand comms, but specifically those with niche expertise and a strong POV. Micro-creators beat mass. When brands work with them they prefer a clear link between product and passion. Random sales pitches stink.
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5. Sharing is private, and deeply niche
They don’t post about their life on social (only 22%) instead social is about sharing videos privately with friends (67%).
This is about content that itches a specific niche — shared laughs, passions, and perspectives. What is your content itching?
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6. Algorithm manipulators
They search on social, not just for the results, but for the impact it has on their feeds. They consciously do things to teach the algorithm to show them certain types of content. Interacting, commenting and liking content not out of interest but as a signal for the AI.
Building for niches isn’t easy — but it’s where brand growth is happening, whether we like it or not.
Brilliant work by Gareth Price and the team at BAMM. Thank you!