🚀 Gen Z is Moving On—Are Marketers Keeping Up? 🚀

March 9, 2025 cezanne Retail Listen to Podcast Watch on YouTube

As marketers, we have to be where our audience is. And if you're still running Facebook ads expecting to engage Gen Z in the U.S., you're already behind.

📉 Facebook’s Gen Z Exodus:
Gen Z is leaving traditional social media. In the U.S., Facebook's 12-34-year-old user base shrank from 58% in 2015 to just 29% in 2019 (Wikipedia). But there’s a twist…

📦 Facebook Marketplace is Thriving:
While young users are abandoning the Facebook news feed, they’re still shopping on Marketplace. 49% of social media shoppers turn to Facebook Marketplace when they’re ready to buy (CNBC).

Why? Because it offers something they actually want: local, sustainable, peer-to-peer commerce. This same expectation for community, connection, and commerce is already influencing Amazon and physical retail.

💡 Where Is Gen Z Shopping Now?

Gen Z isn’t rejecting digital experiences—they’re ditching social platforms that don’t serve them. Instead, they’re flocking to community-driven marketplaces like:

🛍️ Depop – Over 35M users, with Gen Z dominating the space. Now the 10th most visited shopping platform for Gen Z in the U.S.

🎨 Etsy – 70% of Gen Z prefers to buy from smaller, unique brands instead of big-box retailers (Statista).

📍 OfferUp – With 90M app downloads and 20M monthly active users, OfferUp is becoming a Gen Z resale go-to.

📦 Facebook Marketplace – Even as Gen Z ditches traditional Facebook, they still shop on Marketplace because it’s local, convenient, and sustainable.

🏬 The New Retail Playbook: Blending Digital + IRL

But here’s what most marketers are missing—this isn’t just about digital. Gen Z wants omnichannel experiences that blend digital with in-person engagement (PYMNTS):

🔄 Omnichannel Commerce – Gen Z expects seamless experiences between online & in-store. Brands integrating their digital and physical footprints will win.

📹 Live Shopping – In-store and online live demos, styling tips, and Q&A formats create real-time engagement and drive purchasing behavior.

🎭 Retail as Experience – The future of physical retail isn’t just about transactions—it’s about experiences, community events, and real-world brand engagement.

🔥 Are We in a Classifieds Renaissance?

Yes, but classifieds have evolved. They now deliver what Gen Z craves: connection, sustainability, and direct commerce.

💰 Digital classifieds hit $21B in revenue in 2022 (Wikipedia).
🏡 Platforms like Rightmove now rival traditional media in value (Financial Times).
📢 Investment in modern classifieds is rising as Gen Z shifts behaviors (The Australian).

💡 What This Means for Marketers

If Gen Z is leaving traditional social media but thriving in marketplaces and omnichannel retail, we need to adapt—or risk irrelevance.

✅ Leverage AI for Hyper-Personalization – TikTok’s algorithm-driven content keeps users hooked. Are you using AI to deliver intuitive, tailored shopping experiences?

✅ Meet Them in Marketplaces – Why force Facebook ads when Gen Z is already engaging on Etsy, Depop, OfferUp, and Facebook Marketplace? Look at partnerships, UGC, and influencer commerce.

✅ Champion Sustainability & Purpose – 75% of Gen Z prefers buying from brands that care about sustainability (First Insight). If your brand isn’t aligned with their values, they’re not buying from you.

✅ Community > Ads – Traditional digital ads don’t work the same way anymore. Gen Z wants interactive experiences, peer recommendations, and brand transparency.

🔥 The takeaway? This isn’t about “social” anymore—it’s about commerce, community, and connection. The brands that seamlessly integrate where Gen Z already shops and engages will win.

Are you rethinking how to reach Gen Z? Drop your thoughts below! ⬇️

#GenZMarketing #EcommerceTrends #SustainableShopping #RetailInnovation #AIinMarketing #CommunityEngagement #Marketplaces #ConsumerBehavior #MarketingStrategy #GrowthMarketing

Agile principles in digital marketing and acquisition

March 24, 2013 cezanne Digital Ma…, Digital Strategy, Digital Tr…, Past Experience Listen to Podcast Watch on YouTube

In the past decade or two, I've had the opportunity to truly explore and learn more about the "supply chain" of digital marketing through the lens of an agency and from the view of an in-house digital marketing executive. I've also had the opportunity to work within the top most important verticals such as Financial Services, Travel & Hospitality and Retail and learn about the opportunities and challenges each have faced to deliver high-fidelity digital strategy to drive business growth. What I've learned is that in every experience I couldn't help seeing a tale of two cities, on one hand organizations stumbling into adopting agile software development methodologies while on the other hand, marketing organizations working to adopt waterfall methods. Ironically, real-time digital marketing is the very essence of what agile is all about, how else could you possibly deliver on its promise, operationally and to scale up? We just don't think to apply the very ingredients that have made agile a success in software and product development the past decade to marketing and in particular to digital transformation. That got me to thinking, why not share my view and craft principles that have helped me and cross-functional teams where ever I've been to balance and deliver the productivity, quality and delivery of great service, particularly, if you think about service as a software. The leap then to applying great software development principles is easier to digest. Would love your comments or thoughts and of course before I do that, I thought it'd be good for me to copy/paste Wikipedia's description of Agile Development: "Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle. The Agile Manifesto[1] introduced the term in 2001." Source: Wikipedia A few prerequisites to align on within your organization: a) Clearly define who your customers are. Invariably they will be the consumers of the work your team delivers b) Establish what your service, product and deliverable (example deliverable could be a report) are meant to provide c) Facilitate feedback and change Principles for Digital Marketing In An Agile World

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through rapid and continuous delivery of valuable services and deliverables
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
Deliver high quality working services and deliverable frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale and rhythm.
Business people, technology, analyst and developers must work together daily throughout a project.
Build projects around motivated team members. Provide them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the work done.
Make face-to-face conversations mandatory as its the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a team.
Functional services and regular deliverable is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team should reflect on how to become more effective, then tune and adjust its process and behavior accordingly.
Communicate what's work and what has not including how the team will adjust it's process and behavior

Update June 23, 2013: CMO.com published an interesting piece a couple of months after my post, unrelated of course, that I thought I'd share. The gist is similar, however, it's primarily agile in marketing versus Agile In Action: How Four Brands Are Using Agile Marketing

An old article on Cezanne in the NY Daily News

January 18, 2012 cezanne Past Experience Listen to Podcast Watch on YouTube

So, of course, I Google myself. Who doesn't? Well the other day, I went really deep into the results and found the NY Daily News article from 2000! I was clearly on some other planet, wow! It was fun reminiscing and so I thought I'd share this very embarrassing article. You could say this was my 15 minutes, Phase 0. I had this idea that somehow this article would help me take a step back and disconnect. It worked for a few years. Too much surfing leaves some New Yorkers trapped in the Net By Eamon Lynch | Daily News Staff Writers | January 2000 The one big takeaway for me was, traditional media definitely had a place in the consumer journey whether us digitalites like it or not and we're now finally seeing this through greater online and offline integration in marketing, sales and operations.

A Ramblin Man

July 16, 2011 cezanne Marketing, Past Experience, Random Thoughts Listen to Podcast Watch on YouTube

If you made it to my portfolio then I've done approximately 50% of my job. I haven't figured out what to do to make the remaining 50% of work hum quite yet. My guess is that it will be focused on trying to keep you here as long as possible! Maybe we'll discuss how to build a personal brand, how to accelerate a large organization to deliver on growth for the business, possibly some music and basics of digital, mobile, analytics and technology that's transforming our world of marketing. While you're here, I'd love comments, topic ideas, and or just plain feedback.

Tag: Past Experience