How can social justice movements connect with Asian-American Gen Z? — Marketing Strategy @ Intertrend

A look into my in-house project @ Intertrend

In the summer of 2021, I worked as a Marketing Strategy Intern at Intertrend, an advertising agency that aims to place Asian-American stories at the forefront of brands’ strategies.

This article focuses on the work I did for my in-house project with Make Noise Today. (This constituted about 25% of my work; the majority went to my client project with Funimation Global Group. Because of an NDA, I can’t talk extensively about the Funimation project — but feel free to ask me about it!)

The best part of the role is that we interns had complete ownership of our projects, beginning to end. As a strategist, my role was to direct qualitative interviews, develop a consumer profile through research, identify key opportunities, and craft an impactful story through my work.

In-House Project: Make Noise Today

Make Noise Today is an Intertrend initiative that aims to create empathy and equity by sharing stories from the Asian-American diaspora on social media.

Table of Contents

• Project Overview
• Methodology
• Target Audience
• Do’s & Don’ts
• Key Content Recommendations
• Abridged Final Presentation
• Key Takeaways

Project Overview

Make Noise Today has historically underperformed with Gen Z. Thus, through our project, we aimed to help Make Noise Today authentically connect with the Asian-American Gen Z demographic. To achieve this, we set three primary objectives:

1. Understand Asian-American Gen Z sentiments, attitudes, & behaviors towards current social justice issues
2. Discover which social movements, organizations, & brands are doing it right and learn what resonates with AA Gen Z
3. Identify key opportunities & best practices for Intertrend’s Make Noise Today project to communicate with Asian-American Gen Z

Methodology

To learn more about Asian-American social justice advocates, we:

• Recruited 5 Asian-American & Gen Z micro-influencers who spoke about social justice on their platforms
• Conducted one-hour interviews with the micro-influencers to learn their views on social justice, Asian-American identity, social media activism, and brand actions

To better understand the broader market, we:

• Analyzed 12+ case studies of successful and non-successful brand strategies
• Performed social listening to find current trends around social justice

Target Audience

Through research, we synthesized a few key characteristics of the Asian-American Gen Z demographic:

We then further deconstructed social justice value, including proof points from primary and secondary research for each. For example:

Finally, we utilized data points from secondary research and quotes from qualitative interviews to outline key consumer behaviors:

Do’s & Don’ts

We synthesized our findings into a list of brand guidelines for Make Noise Today to better connect to their Asian-American Gen Z audience.

To showcase these points in the real world, we included examples where brands successfully and unsuccessfully spoke about social justice issues. To see this in action, go to our Abridged Final Presentation.

Key Content Recommendations

Finally, we included 3 key recommendations centered around Make Noise Today’s content and structure. For each, we compared Make Noise Today to similar social justice accounts on Instagram to give examples of successful implementation. You can see each of these in the Abridged Final Presentation!

Abridged Final Presentation

All in all, our project culminated in a 30-minute presentation with the Make Noise Today team. I’ve included it below, shortened below for clarity:

Key Takeaways

1. Gen Z care a lot about brands’ authenticity. They want to know — do companies really care, or are they just reposting about Black Lives Matter on Instagram to look good?
2. Try to dig just a little deeper. Ask the “why” and “how” questions — these often yield the most important insights!
3. No grand reveals. Don’t wait until late-stage presentations to reveal your work — welcome feedback as early as possible and keep everyone updated throughout the whole process.
4. Be curious about anything & everything!

Special thanks to Intertrend Communications & Make Noise Today team for this opportunity! I couldn’t have asked for a better and more educational internship, especially as a freshman. More specifically, thank you to:

1. Phil & Yu, the internship program leads, for directing such an amazing internship experience and supporting us every step of the way.
2. Esther, for being the most inspiring mentor who always had all the answers to my endless questions.
3. Dax, Kelsey, & Ben for being the best, funniest, and smartest team I could’ve asked for.