Designing for Gen Z: Authenticity is over. Build something that works

Brands keep asking the same question: How do we speak (read: sell) to Gen Z? 

At the recent Youth Marketing Strategy event in London, I sat through panel after panel focused on cracking the code: What’s their language? How do we sound like them? How do we create authentic connections? 

As someone who’s both Gen Z and works in digital strategy, I couldn’t help thinking that these are entirely the wrong questions. And if you’re asking the wrong questions, you’re unlikely to build the right experiences and create those ‘authentic connections’.

There’s a particular tone that still creeps into how brands talk about Gen Z. A mix of fascination and faint panic. As if we’re a subcultural puzzle to decode, rather than an increasingly significant segment of the adult population. 

Session titles like “How to Use Gen ZAlpha Lingo Without Sounding Cringe” or “The Algorithm Made Me Do It” capture the mood: part curiosity, part crisis, and entirely patronising.  

But here’s the thing: the oldest of us are now approaching 30. We’re not a youth trend; we’re renters, business founders, parents, policymakers, professionals, navigating real-world systems every day. 

We’re not asking brands to mimic us. We’re asking them to understand us – not only in how they talk to us, but in how they design the experiences with which they try to engage us.
 

The problem with “authenticity” 

“Authenticity” has been rinsed of any actual meaning; a word that’s meant to signal honesty, connection, and humanity, now often feels hollow. When every brand claims to be authentic, the word becomes white noise. 

Michael Corcoran, former Head of Social at Ryanair, was a refreshing cut through, capturing the frustration perfectly during his YMS panel, stating pointedly:  

“Authenticity, relatability: WTF does that mean?” 

He’s not wrong. And ironically, Ryanair is one of the few brands that gets it right. Their social strategy doesn’t rely on Gen Z slang or chasing TikTok trends. It works because it’s built on a clear, consistent tone of voice, rooted in the unapologetic personality of its CEO, Michael O’Leary. The humour lands because it’s blunt, coherent, and self-aware, and critically, backed by an operational model that knows what it is. 

It feels honest because it reflects the customer experience, or as Corcoran put it: “There’s DNA in the tone of voice.”

When other brands subsequently tried to imitate Ryanair’s tone, without the same clarity of purpose, it felt exactly like what it was: forced.

The issue isn’t tone but alignment. It’s not about sounding like us, it’s about sounding like you, and making sure the experience delivers on it. 

Gen Z has grown up (through a Lot)

To design effectively for Gen Z, you have to understand what shaped us.  

This is a generation whose adolescence and early adulthood have been defined by disruption: pandemic lockdowns, economic precarity, climate crisis, algorithmic everything and a collapsing trust in institutions.  

While the surface culture of Gen Z can look chaotic, oversharing, irony, TikTok spirals - there’s a sharp emotional intelligence beneath it. The meme isn’t the message. The message is: please stop wasting our time. 

This isn't just a feeling, it’s reflected in the data: 

• 40% of Gen Z say they feel stressed all or most of the time. (Deloitte, 2025)
• 91% of Gen Z report workplace stress (Cigna, 2022)
• 25% global rise in anxiety and depression in 2020 alone (WHO, 2020) 

This isn’t just a stressed-out generation; it’s one trained to expect very little from institutions, and to find workarounds when systems fall short.   

So yes, we often speak in memes, many of us use TikTok like a search engine, and we process our lives through a mix of humour and hyperbole. But that doesn’t mean we’re unserious. It means we’re fluent in subtext. 

And this spills over into the digital experiences we have with brands. We’ve been online long enough to spot the dark patterns in your checkout flow, the chatbot conversation that goes nowhere and the nudges you hoped we wouldn’t notice.  

Build trust with reliability, not sentimentality

Engaging this generation isn’t just about good storytelling and sentimentality. Sometimes it’s about things just working. 

Remembering my preferences. Respecting my time. Not making me download an app in order to complete a single task.

According to Havas’ 2024 Meaningful Brands report, 77% of people expect brands to make their lives easier, yet only 31% believe they actually do. That gap isn’t only a missed opportunity. It’s a credibility issue.

For Gen Z, trust isn’t built through big promises; it’s built through small interactions, repeated over time. Does the app load when I need it? Do your brand values hold up even when it’s inconvenient? Are you helping me buy what I want or what you want me to want?

For a generation that’s grown up with systemic instability, smoothness feels like care. 

Stability signals intention and competence. The ability to deliver clearly, consistently, and without making us do extra work is what’s earning our loyalty. 

It’s a signal of respect and a way of saying: “You’re not just seen, you’re taken seriously.”

We remember when it works  

Take Stonegate Pubs’ MiXR app, highlighted at YMS. It didn’t win the engagement of over 1.6M users, including over 200,000 students, by trying to go viral. It won by working. 

Haydn Parkes, Head of Marketing, shared that it’s because it’s rooted in real data, both qualitative and quantitative, and it uses it to deliver hyper-relevant and personalised experiences and rewards that students actually want. 

We don’t remember the campaign, we don’t remember the app. We remember the outcome. The offer that landed at the right time. The night out with friends. The experience you helped us create. 

That’s design that works for us. Not with sentiment, but through function.

Stop performing. Start delivering.

Designing for Gen Z doesn’t mean copying our tone or chasing trends. It’s about building digital experiences that work and keep working. 

We’re not waiting to be impressed. We’re watching what happens when the chatbot breaks, when the order doesn’t arrive, when your stated values are tested by something real. 

It’s not about perfection. It’s about consistency, clarity and follow-through. 

At YMS, the conversation often circled around how to sound relatable, how to feel authentic. But what cut through was simpler: none of that matters if you aren’t getting the basics right. When digital experiences are stable, well-considered, and low on friction, they don’t need to prove anything. They simply work, and that’s what builds trust. 

This is what we focus on at Inviqa: building digital experiences that don’t just look good in a pitch deck, but hold up when people actually use them. 

Authenticity is over. Build something that works.