Can Luxury Brands Meme Their Way Into Gen Z’s Heart?

During the golden era of social media, receiving a comment on your post from a ubiquitous national brand was a pure, unadulterated dopamine hit. Nowadays, however, people have grown weary of overly familiar behavior and brands are struggling to adjust their tone.

When it comes to brand identity on social media, the luxury market, in particular, has its work cut out for it. Balancing a majority Gen Z audience on TikTok while maintaining authority (and oftentimes, self-seriousness) as a storied label can create some murky territory for dealing with Zoomers. “The luxury-fashion game has always included tapping into new markets—primarily in the international sense—and, in the current markets, forming a relationship with the consumer of tomorrow before they fully age into having that buying power,” says Daisy Alioto, CEO of Dirt Media, a newsletter turned media company that dissects all things pop culture.

Some brands have massively succeeded in their attempts. On Mother’s Day, Marc Jacobs collaborated with Sylvanian Drama, a TikTok account that uses Calico Critters to enact soap-level drama that makes the Real Housewives pale in comparison. The Marc Jacobs team commissioned a video in which one Critter shoplifts the Marc Jacobs Tote Bag but is released because it’s Mother’s Day. When she gets home, she is greeted by an intervention and only agrees to stay in rehab in exchange for the Tote Bag.

The Sylvanian Drama video isn’t the first time Marc Jacobs has turned to experimental creators that are beloved by Gen Z, nor was it the last. After a video of a couple dancing to the Tinashe song “Nasty” went viral (and launched the phrase “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” into public consciousness), the team pounced and got the couple to re-create the video for them. “Marc Jacobs already has [the youth-oriented clothing line] Heaven, so the idea of doing something young doesn’t strike me as anachronistic,” Alioto says, comparing it to Coach’s circular-economy venture, Coachtopia.

Loewe has taken a similar approach to capturing virality. While the label may lack the audacity of Marc Jacobs’s social strategy, it has harnessed the niche corners of the internet for its own gain. Poking fun at the “Is it cake?” videos that plague For You pages, Loewe showed its signature bags alongside amateur cake re-creations, inviting users to guess which was real. Ahead of the 2024 Met Gala, the Spanish house invited its guests to participate in the “passing the phone” challenge. “Loewe and memes is not something I would have seen for them five years ago, but they do have the younger collaborations,” like the Spirited Away capsule with filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, “that show an understanding of the power of fandom,” Alioto says. Asking celebrities to participate in a trend that everyone can do shows an innate social media fluency and creates a feeling of access to celebrities.

Sometimes, however, attempts to connect with a younger audience fall flat. In an effort to market its Ricco bag, Alexander Wang recently hired celebrity impersonators to unbox the purse. But the supercut of faux Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Kylie Jenner, and Beyoncé created inherent associations with fakeness. On social media, reactions were largely negative. “Yikes,” one user commented. “Tried a marc jacobs move but executed it very fittingly for alexander wang. Hang up the towel.”

As brands try—with varying levels of success—to adapt to the ever-changing social media landscape, this is just the beginning of luxury marketing in the era of rapid social media proliferation, according to Alioto. “We haven’t fully seen this playbook enacted in the total-attention-and-context-collapse environment we have now, where nothing stays on TikTok or a billboard without being photographed and brought to a feed of people around the world,” she adds. “And that’s always going to be a risk.”