How leaders at major consumer brands keep current with Gen Z

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

I recently celebrated my 56th birthday, and I’m feeling my age. Not because I’m slowing down (which I am), but because I feel increasingly removed from the passions, peeves, and predilections of Gen Z and Generation Alpha. This matters, as young people shape popular and workplace cultures, and their tastes drive big swaths of consumer and tech spending—all things Inc. and Fast Company cover.

To help me figure out how to stay tuned into their wants and needs, I asked six executives to share their strategies for staying ahead of the youth culture curve. They shared some interesting initiatives and resources in the edited insights that follow.

Craig Brommers, chief marketing officer, American Eagle

“At AE, we have a Gen Z panel, a group of our key consumers between the ages of 15 to 25 that help us test everything we do. They are excellent sounding boards for key marketing initiatives, product decisions, partnerships, and more. They help to drive insight into the consumer and also allow us to figure out what matters most to the people shopping our brand.

“We also have a very large network of creators we work with at any given time. They are not just making content for us; they are teaching us. From the biggest macro influencer down to the most micro, the more creators we are working with the more patterns and trends we have seen emerge, even before they hit the mainstream feed.”

Jackie Jantos, CEO, Hinge

“I try to be very intentional about surrounding myself with folks whose lived experiences are different from my own, so I’m always learning. Humility, curiosity, and listening go a long way. I love newsletters, Substacks, and fiction—Willa Bennett, Casey Lewis, Shit You Should Care About, The Audacity, and Sylvain’s Progress Report are a few people and places I regularly return to for inspiration.

“I’m [based] in New York City, so I get to walk the streets and ride the subway—you can learn a ton just from being out in the world and paying attention. But best of all, is this incredible Hinge team. The shortcut to staying current is to surround yourself with people different from you. The education and inspiration unfolds on its own.”

Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer, E.l.f. Beauty

“My intention word is ‘Shoshin’ [a Buddhist term] meaningfully chosen to remind me to wake up each day with a beginner’s mindset. Staying current is about showing up curious, staying grounded, and engaging with total presence. At E.l.f., 78% of our employee base is Gen Z or millennial, so culture is in the room with me every day. I am also an active member of our community. It’s me responding to every comment on LinkedIn, engaging in director dialog equally on TikTok lives, in social comment pools, and alongside the shoppers at shelf. Tuning E.l.f. into what gives people energy is my rocket fuel. Every conversation, every story, every connection is a new star in my constellation. It’s zero distance between me and the community we serve.”

Maureen Polo, CEO, Hello Sunshine

“Our Sunnie Gen Z Advisory Board functions as both a cultural council and a co-creation engine. They’re not a focus group; they’re collaborators who act as cultural translators between lived youth behavior and brand and creative strategy. We engage this group through regular working sessions, collaborative projects, and early-stage creative reviews. They help surface emerging trends, challenge assumptions, and shape concepts before they’re finalized.

“With our brand partners, we collaborate on insight, not just activation, using shared learnings to co-create platforms that feel culturally meaningful and deliver unforgettable consumer experiences. This is how we’ve approached building Sunnie and Sunnie Reads alongside partners like E.l.f. Beauty, If/Then, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, Purdue University, Victoria’s Secret Pink, Invisalign, and Coach: grounding creativity in real youth insight, inviting the audience into the process and building ecosystems rather than campaigns.”

Josh Rosenberg, CEO and cofounder, Day One Agency

“Nearly 40% of the Day One team is Gen Z, and I learn so much from each of them—what they read, watch, and listen to, where they hang out and travel, how they’re embracing adulthood (or not!). We also host a youth insights focus group called Group Chat. It’s a Slack community made up of 75 Gen Zers from across the country who share their perspective on trends, headlines, or specific client asks—their thoughtful answers are an invaluable part of how we know what young people are actually thinking about, focused on. And then my other youth culture go-to is our good friend Casey Lewis, who tirelessly reports upon both Gen Z and Alpha in her daily After School Substack. We recently published a report on Gen Alpha in collaboration with Lewis.”

Jane Wakely, chief consumer and marketing officer, chief growth officer, international foods, PepsiCo

“For me, scrolling TikTok or Insta remains the fastest way to understand what’s resonating, what’s becoming a trend, what’s already passé, and what people are quietly rolling their eyes at. Looking for the weak signals and using data and tech to help create real foresight is key. I also have college-aged kids, which is maybe the most authentic insight you can have. They have no tolerance for anything that feels ‘try-hard’ or inauthentic, and just listening to how they talk, what they buy, what they share, what they laugh at, and what they ignore is incredibly insightful. Seeing through their eyes is so powerful.

“At PepsiCo, we pair our instinctive read with constant cultural listening and rapid signal-sharing. Our teams are always tracking what’s bubbling up across social, sports, entertainment, and creator ecosystems, looking for momentum: what’s accelerating, what’s losing energy, and where sentiment is shifting. Those signals move quickly across our organization so our brands can make real-time decisions in how we show up in cultural moments, which creators we partner with, and how we adjust creative, media, and experiences.”

Keeping up with Gen Z and Gen Alpha culture

How do you keep current on youth culture? And what trends are you watching in 2026? I asked Brommers, Jantos, Marchisotto, Polo, Rosenberg, and Wakely to share their top trends, and I’ll publish them—along with reader insights—in an upcoming newsletter.

Read and watch more: understanding the next generation

• Managing Gen Z: Fast Company’s 143-point guide for leaders
• What Gen Z really wants at work
• Gen Alpha may find the workplace even tougher than Gen Z does