When launching their company Good Girl Snacks in February 2024, Leah Marcus, 26, and Yasaman Bakhtiar, 27, knew they’d need a distinct look for their debut product, Hot Girl Pickles.
Pickle aisles, to them, all looked the same. Bland. Sanitized. Chartreuse. The founders instead aimed for a marketing hook and brand look “that were completely the opposite” of what conventional food brands do, says Marcus. They went with neon pink and turquoise labels, and Instagram posts of dill pickles wrapped in condoms and blunts.
The message wasn’t supposed to look delicious. It was a statement: “Everything we do is to create a reaction,” Marcus says.
Young customers, online and in stores like Erewhon, are here for it.
Gen Z consumers — those ages 14 to 29, specifically — tend to appreciate an unvarnished approach from brands, says Americus Reed, a marketing professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. They engage with marketing that clearly shows what individual brands value — whether it’s style, the environment or a tastier, sexier pickle — so they can use the same branding to tell their friends and followers what matters to them, Reed says.
Brands that appeal to Gen Z act “less like a billboard and more like a box of identity Legos,” Reed says. The products they buy attempt to “help these Gen Zers communicate something, whether it be, ‘Hey, I am creative, I’m iconic, I’m environmentally aware, health conscious, rebellious, inclusive, culturally informed.’ Or, you know, just simply, ‘Hey, I’m in on this joke.’”
More companies are catching on. Some like Bakhtiar and Marcus opt for dynamic color palettes and spicy missives, while others create self-deprecating mascots and smart brand collaborations. Everyone seems to be participating in internet trends.
But making inroads with a customer who responds positively to condom-wearing pickles is easier said than done, and there certainly isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. The trick is acting fast when memes strike and doing it in a way that feels authentic to the brand, because Gen Zers “can tell when there’s an ingenuine-ness to it,” says 25-year-old Rand Rivera, who works for New York-based marketing agency, Athletics, and runs his own eponymous branding agency.
A meme-ready mascot
Few brands have mastered the approach better than Duolingo. The Pittsburgh-based language learning platform and its cartoon owl mascot, Duo, has amassed over 18 million followers on TikTok. The interest has been driven largely by the brand’s casual, sarcastic tone and active participation in online trends.
Duo has danced to viral music, dressed up like celebrities, and had tea with other characters from the Duolingo universe in an empty, yellow-wallpapered room, a reference to the internet trend that inspired the 2026 horror movie “Backrooms.” In one of Duolingo’s most viral online campaigns, Duo temporarily died after being hit by a vehicle resembling a Tesla Cybertruck.
The owl’s antics tell young users that Duolingo understands their sense of humor, says Rivera. The consistency of Duo’s voice over time matters too, he says, because many Gen Zers can catch inauthenticity and overt marketing from a mile away.
That consistent effort has been deliberate, says Katherine Chan, Duolingo’s director of brand marketing. “Gen Z is more media savvy, I think, than any generation that has come before, and is very aware of how much they’re being marketed to. And so you have to sort of jump into conversations that are already happening versus trying to make your own moment happen,” says Chan.
“Winking at that is sort of like a self-awareness that I think Gen Z really appreciates,” she adds.
Building in public
Some Gen Z entrepreneurs have an advantage when trying to connect with their own demographic. Marcus and Bakhtiar, for example, say they intuitively know how to use tone to connect with an online audience.
“We’re a generation that really hates being advertised to in a very overt way,” says Bakhtiar, adding that brands today don’t even need to show their products in online posts anymore to get people’s attention. The co-founders might instead post pickle martini recipes, or keep the camera on themselves as they tell stories about the mishaps that come with starting and running a business together as friends in their 20s.
Their tone, reminiscent of FaceTime calls or “get ready with me” videos, helps Gen Z viewers feel like they’re getting cool recommendations from a friend, rather than witnessing a brand begging for their attention, Marcus and Bakhtiar say.
The strategy makes viewers feel like they actually know the co-founders, keeping them coming back for more — and building trust and brand loyalty over time, Marcus adds.
The tried-and-true approach
Colors, fonts and mascots may change with evolving trends, but the core of some traditional marketing strategies can still work on Gen Z: Shoppers, no matter their age, want to know how products can add value to their lives, says Kelly Pedersen, partner and global leader of retail at PwC. They want to know as directly and visually as possible, a lesson that peanut butter company One Trick Pony learned somewhat by accident, says co-founder and CEO Lucy Dana, 35.
When the Washington D.C.-based brand launched in 2022, it packaged its natural peanut butter in a standard glass jar. After customers complained about the oil that floats to the top of natural peanut butter, the company created a plastic container that could sit upside-down on grocery store shelves, Dana says. The uniquely shaped pastel-colored jar offered more design real estate, so the company enlarged its explanatory language to the lids: “One more trick! Our specially-designed peanut butter jar helps reduce natural oil separation.”
“I’d say we took off because of these jars,” says Dana. Since the July 2025 redesign, which One Trick Pony announced on Instagram, the brand has tripled its social followers and landed placement on retail shelves in Target and other grocery stores across the U.S. Dana declined to share specific revenue figures but says the startup’s sales have quintupled so far in 2026 compared to 2025.
Still, some of Gen Z’s spending patterns are different than past generations, Pedersen notes: Instead of just caring about price or convenience, they want to use products to brand and market themselves to their own followers. They may prioritize buying from or posting about brands that are environmentally friendly, politically active or part of a larger cultural trend, like 2025’s Labubu craze. Their posts tell the people around them who they are, which means the products they prefer can play a key role in defining their identity among their friends, adds Reed, the Wharton marketing professor.
“Gen Z, I think they want the whole experience,” Pedersen says. “If they’re going to pay maybe $30 for a squishy toy or something, they want to [buy into] a whole squishy toy world,” ranging from raptly following the brand’s social media storytelling to hosting real-life events that bring other fans together.
A Gen Z-steered economy
For brands, finding fans among Gen Z may have an added benefit of shifting algorithms in their favor. Because Gen Zers are so online, they contribute to and partially dictate social media algorithms for consumers of every age, Pedersen says. In other words, the more they view, like and share a certain kind of content, the more likely it is to be distributed on other people’s social media feeds.
Gen Z’s spending power is increasingly influential, too. When compared with millennials at the same age, and adjusted for inflation, Gen Zers’ household income is 25% higher and their overall spending is 16% more, according to a PwC analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
“I think it’s an existential threat to be ignoring this demographic right now,” Pedersen says. “It’s not just about offering products that are geared toward younger people … It’s bigger messaging. It’s a bigger campaign. It’s about engaging with that customer in a different way to bring them in and discover your brand.”
At Good Girl Snacks, early returns show signs of success. The co-founders declined to share revenue or profitability figures, but the company’s valuation reached $8.5 million after a $3 million seed fundraising round in March, as CNBC Make It reported on Aug. 29.
“The whole strategy has been to start niche, to know who our audience is,” Marcus says.
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