The fastest way to understand a young audience is to hand them your brief. Here are the patterns that come up again and again when students critique brand campaigns.
Ask a room full of college students to critique a brand campaign and you learn more in an hour than in a month of reports. The observations below are the ones that come up most consistently — and they are easy to fix once you hear them.
1. Trying too hard to sound young
Forced slang and trend-chasing are the first things students notice, and the first things they screenshot to make fun of. Brands earn credibility by being clear, useful and self-aware — not by imitating the audience's language.
2. Talking about the product instead of the person
Young audiences respond to campaigns that reflect their situation — exams, first salaries, hostel life, side hustles, friendships — with the product playing a supporting role. Feature-first advertising gets scrolled past.
3. Treating every platform the same
A campaign that is repurposed identically across Instagram, YouTube and a college notice board feels lazy. Students expect content that is native to where it appears: short and visual in one place, longer and more useful in another.
4. No way to participate
Gen Z audiences are used to creating, remixing and responding. Campaigns that invite participation — challenges, contests, ambassador roles, user-generated content — consistently outperform campaigns that only broadcast.
5. Ignoring the campus entirely
Colleges are dense, social, high-trust environments. Brands that show up there with something valuable — skills, opportunities, real challenges — get remembered long after the campaign ends.
The shortcut
You don't have to guess any of this. Give students your actual brief and let them solve it. A marketing challenge run through SGS gives a brand dozens of ideas from its exact target audience, plus honest feedback about how the brand is really perceived. That's insight you can't buy from a report.