Burn Away Cakes, Gen Z Aging Insecurities, and How to Make Customers Loyal 

Keeping Current is your weekly dose of cultural trends, topics, and news. Brought to you by Kaileen Gaul & Robin Sacawa, powered by The Current team.

• Big Dumb Cups. From social, to earned, and back to social. This weekend, SNL made light of the infamous obsession that has been taking over every social feed – a look at the women they think are using them, the recent press around them containing lead, and even filling one with Josh Wine. Get in There, Josh
• Burn Away Cakes. People are creating cakes with one or multiple printed edible sheets that burn away to reveal another image. Anything cake-related is a sure bet on social – what better way to reveal an upcoming product launch or tease a mystery date to gauge interest? This Cake Is on Fireeee
• When it Catches up With Me. People are still thinking about habits they want to nip in the bud for the rest of the year. In this trend, creators are joking about a bad habit catching up with them down the line.  What will lead to your demise?  Bad Habits
• Dream Wedding.  X users are posting notes app screenshots about their dream weddings. It started on a serious tone, but these posts are now mostly joked to cater to broader “dream” topics - dream vacations, dream jobs, dream birthday parties, etc. Notes App as Content
• Ketchup Experiment. Possible Trigger Warning. Women in heterosexual relationships are squirting ketchup on the counter and seeing how their male partner attempts to clean it up. Have a condiment in your brand portfolio? This trend is waiting for you. This is your man?
• Why is Gen Z Aging Like That. A new insecurity for Gen Z drops every week, but this one has moved from the FYP and captured earned attention. Is it fillers? Vaping? Too much screen time? Simply not understanding how aging works because of unrealistic social filters?  Growing Older Faster

Kith Reinvents “Brand Loyalty” to “Community Loyalty” 

A brand can be more than just a portfolio of products, for many it’s a covetable lifestyle. Kith is one of those brands known for its loyalty, both from those who are repeat purchasers and those who look forward to the day when their aspiration turns into a purchase. 

Whereas most loyalty programs fall flat and, in some cases receive backlash, Kith’s latest way to thank their community for their loyalty shows brands what the modern-day system can look like (hint, it’s not like airline miles that expire). One of the most surprising ways the Kith Loyalty Program is doing this is their plan of retroactively rewarding customers for their prior purchases dating back to 2014.  

Rewards come to life in a few different ways, inside and outside of the store - through pop-up shops, events (i.e. their exclusive STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI viewing), and within the app. Reward tiers unlock access to unique community events so you can meet other of brand evangelists, and the points system is gamified and has “achievements” when different goals are reached.  

For us, we haven’t seen this kind of “shake up” since Sephora launched its Beauty Insider program which most brands have been chasing ever since. Sephora customers continue to chase Rouge tier status every year, and the newer additions like cash towards a purchase or the ability to turn points into a donation that launched during the pandemic show that the brand is keeping a pulse on what matters most to their loyalists. 

These custom community-focused programs aren't just getting headlines, they are driving results. “Research has found that almost 75% of what drives customer engagement and loyalty are emotional perks. Now more than ever customers, especially the younger generations, decide to engage with brands based on emotional loyalty drivers,” said Sephora’s head of Loyalty back in 2020. 

In an ecosystem where peers drive authority, personal experiences drive emotional connection over products, and emotional connection drives trust, a loyalty program needs to reflect the community it was built to serve. Brands like Kith and Sephora are showing how there needs to be a clear payoff for the consumer to drive brand loyalty – not just immediacy but benefiting them for the long haul.  

• Chipotle x Strava. According to a Chipotle survey, nearly 7 out of 10 of their consumers who are runners are likely or very likely to eat Chipotle after training for a race — so they partnered with running app Strava to gamify the experience. Literal Taco Run
• Stella Knows What You Did. Apparently Stella is on to your (well, our) history of stealing their glasses to fill our home cabinets. Rather than judging us, they have created a collection of apparel that makes theft of their iconic glasses easier to execute. Glass To-Go
• Spotify Daylist. Individuals and brands are sharing their unhinged names that are being generated by the AI algorithm to social, or by creating their own versions of what they believe their Daylist should be called. Spot-on AI

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