How To Rain on Gen Z's Parade

In the months before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us were blissfully unaware of what was to come. We enjoyed the holidays with family, went to the office (or school) five days a week, and didn’t think twice when someone coughed next to us on the Subway.

It was at this time that Cami Téllez decided to drop out of her undergraduate program at Colombia University to focus on her underwear brand, Parade, full-time.

During the recent Forbes Under 30 Summit, Téllez reminisced on the brand’s success since its founding in 2018. Throughout the lively discussion, Téllez identified three key things that allowed the 24-year-old to find success in the face of much adversity. CEI has lined up her findings here so, with time, you can do the same with what is debatably the most influential generation.

The Keys to Succeeding with Gen Z

1. Make Your Brand a Part of Your Identity

Underwear is a topic long associated with privacy (I remember my grandfather calling the clothing items “unmentionables”) and sexuality. Victoria’s Secret, arguably the largest brand in the space, was founded in 1977 as a single store in San Francisco catering to men who wanted to buy undergarments for the women in their lives. Though the target audience has changed, Dan Finkelman, senior vice president for brand and business planning at Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, reflects that the marketing strategy has always centered around the belief that “if we gave women a chance to make themselves feel sexy in a wonderful, romantic environment, they’d prefer that to going to a mass merchant to buy a three pack.” By wonderful and romantic environment, they apparently meant dark stores with lots of skimpy models. But, to each their own.

Though this worked for some generations, Gen Z has different priorities. Téllez says, “They want brands to be a part of their personality.” Gen Z wants the brands they wear, use, and promote to be things that align with their identity and values. The CEO gives customers (and her many brand ambassadors) the opportunity to tell their multi-dimensional underwear stories with her products. In contrast to the origin story of Victoria’s Secret, Parade was created for women to shop for themselves in a way that makes them feel the most comfortable. Definitely something Gen Z can get behind.

2. Let Your Customers Vote with their Dollars

Part of identity is passion. That passion lies in hobbies, commitments, and causes an individual actively supports. Saying that her customers like to “vote with their dollars,” Cami Téllez partnered with Feeding America and Planned Parenthood throughout the pandemic. Though people under the age of 25 traditionally have low voter turnout rates, they are willing to put their money where their mouth is. By supporting businesses that donate to the causes they care about, they get to support the same causes all the while receiving a reward.

If Parade is truly about celebrating each individual’s body, that means they should advocate for the protection and liberation of these bodies. In her Forbes session, Téllez goes on to say, “The times when we are most authentic to our brand… those are the moments when our customers are the most loyal, the most engaged, and the most excited.” Staying true to your brand doesn’t mean ostracizing or isolating potential customers, it means empowering them to speak their mind and let their voice become a part of your company’s story. Gen Z may still have a ways to go before their voter turnout rate is something to write home about, but this doesn’t mean they lack passion when it comes to social issues. To make your brand successful with that audience, you have to harness that passion.

3. Use Micro-Influencers to have Major Influence

Téllez’s vision for her own underwear store was inspired by a dislike toward the lingerie stores she saw in the mall as a child and a desire to rechoreograph the underwear experience. All of these experiences were in person, though. Just weeks after dedicating herself to Parade full-time, the pandemic shifted everyone’s lives online. Téllez had to adapt her model to make her brick-and-mortar vision a reality using social media platforms.

Nine months later, the New York Times published a piece saying the start-up had virtually taken over Instagram.

What happened? How did an uphill battle turn into one of the brand’s greatest successes?

It’s simple: Téllez worked with what was around her. She had just dropped out of Columbia University, a school in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She may not have had the funding to get celebrities to promote her brand, but there were hundreds of micro-influencers in the area eager for work. The young CEO says in her Forbes discussion that she understood “there [was] no guarantee that anyone [would] care what [she had] to say.” Fortunately, they cared about what their friends had to say. By engaging micro-influencers as brand ambassadors, they not only had intense grit when getting Parade’s brand out there but were excited to share the idea with friends and family— the people who trusted their opinions the most and often their largest fan base.

Bit by bit, Parade took over Manhattan, then Instagram, and finally, the underwear industry.

Launching a brand is a complicated thing to do and there are many challenges that come with it. By founding her company on these three platforms, though, Cami Téllez is setting herself up for long-term success with Gen Z (and, hopefully, the generations that follow). In addition to being named one of Forbes 30 Under 30, Téllez has pop-up stores coming to Manhattan, brand partnerships, and recently relocated to Los Angeles where she has an even larger pool of resources.

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In-text Image 1: Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash  

In-text Image 2: Photo by Chenyu Guan on Unsplash  

Header Photo: Photo by Kae Ng on Unsplash