Gen Alpha Is Already Judging Your Brand. Are You Ready?

Let me tell you about a conversation I keep having.

A brand comes to us — established, smart people, real marketing budget — and somewhere in the first meeting someone asks: "should we be thinking about Gen Alpha?" And the answer is yes, obviously, but what I’m really thinking is: you should have started two years ago.

Gen Alpha. Born 2010 to 2024. Two billion people worldwide — the largest generation in history, and a term first coined by social researcher Mark McCrindle. They’ll control an estimated $5 trillion in spending power by 2029 — which sounds like a future problem until you realise the oldest of them are already 15, already forming brand loyalties, and already deeply unimpressed by most of what brands are putting in front of them.

They’re not a ‘next generation’ to prepare for. They’re here. And most brands are either ignoring them completely or trying to reach them with tactics built for their older siblings.

I’ve spent over a decade at Concept Studio helping brands figure out who they are and how to show up in the world. What I’m seeing with Gen Alpha is something different — a generational shift that moves faster than anything I’ve watched before, with less room for error. This piece is my honest take on what brands need to understand about Gen Alpha marketing, and why the window to get ahead of it is narrower than most people think.

These kids are not who you think they are

The ‘iPad Kids’ label that gets thrown around is kind of reductive. Yes, they grew up with screens. But they didn’t just consume what those screens showed them — they created on them, built inside them, and developed genuinely sophisticated instincts about what’s real and what’s manufactured.

Think about it this way: Gen Alpha grew up watching brands trend, get cancelled, go viral, and collapse — all before they turned 13. They’ve watched influencers get exposed. They’ve seen through sponsored content since they were old enough to read the small print. They can spot a brand trying too hard from a mile away, and they find it embarrassing in the way only a teenager can find something embarrassing.

They’re also growing up faster than any generation before them. Razorfish and GWI’s research on Gen Alpha found that 63% of this generation values having the latest technology, compared with just 31% of Gen Z. Internet access has accelerated their brand maturity, with this cohort opting for adult-focused brands over “kiddie brands” before they even enter their teens. Adult purchasing decisions are arriving earlier. Adult category interests are arriving earlier. The timeline brands used to have to build relationships with this audience is getting shorter.

That’s not a small detail. That’s the whole context.

Five things I think every brand needs to understand

1. They’re desperate for real life — and the internet is why

Here’s the stat that surprised me most when I first came across it: three quarters of Gen Alpha aged 8 to 10 are already thinking about mental health, and actively going outside or cutting their screen time to manage it. This is the most online generation in history, and they’re already burning out on it. At twelve.

But here’s the thing — they’re not choosing one or the other. When they do go online, 80% say they’d rather be there with someone else. Playing a game? Together. Watching content? In a group chat reacting to it. The line between their digital life and their physical life isn’t a line at all. It’s the same life happening across two surfaces at once.

For brands, this means the digital-vs-physical debate is the wrong frame entirely. The question isn’t ‘should we do IRL or digital?’ It’s ‘does our brand exist in a way that makes sense across both?’ If the answer is no — if your brand falls apart when you try to move it from a screen to a space, or vice versa — that’s not a campaign problem. That’s a brand positioning problem.

2. A kid in a bedroom with a ring light beats your agency’s best work

I say this with love for my industry, but it’s true.

Nearly half of Gen Alpha trust influencers as much as they trust their own friends and family for product recommendations — and Morning Consult’s research shows that trust in influencers among young consumers has grown from 51% to 61% in just four years. Not aspirational celebrities. Not carefully produced brand films. Kids making content for other kids, talking about things they actually use, in language that actually sounds like them.

Ryan’s World is the obvious example — a YouTube channel started by a kid, for kids, that eventually partnered with Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. on a line of toys and meal bags. 37.5 million subscribers. First-ever YouTuber/QSR partnership of its kind. None of that was manufactured. It was just trust, built over time, by someone who genuinely was who he said he was.

The implication for brands isn’t to abandon production quality. It’s to stop treating authenticity as an aesthetic to imitate. Gen Alpha grew up on the real thing. They know the difference between a creator who believes in what they’re saying and a brand deal with talking points. One of those works. The other one just costs more.

3. Roblox is not a game. Please stop treating it like one.

A GroupM study across Asia Pacific found that after seeing a brand in a gaming environment, 43% of Gen Alpha ask their parents to buy the product or buy it themselves. That’s not a niche finding. That’s a generation telling brands exactly where to show up.

Gucci understood this before most brands were even paying attention. They built Gucci Town and Gucci Garden inside Roblox — fully realised branded worlds where kids could try on digital outfits, play games, and just... spend time in Gucci’s universe. Did every kid who played it go buy a bag? Obviously not. But they formed an impression. They built a relationship with a brand at an age when those relationships tend to stick.

Gen Alpha may not have purchasing power yet. But brand recognition forms early, and the equity compounds. The brands that are present in the spaces Alpha actually inhabits right now are making investments that will pay out over decades. The ones that aren’t are going to find it very hard to show up later and expect to be welcomed.

4. The Sephora Kids thing is not going away. It’s accelerating.

If you’ve seen the discourse around tweens overrunning Sephora and filling their carts with actives and retinol serums, that’s not a weird cultural moment. That’s a symptom of a generation coming of age earlier and developing adult consumer interests to match. PwC’s Gen Alpha survey puts a number on it: 61% of Gen Alpha say social media makes them want to buy something, outpacing peer influence and traditional advertising.

Drunk Elephant is the brand that handled this most gracefully — they created content specifically to guide younger users toward the products that wouldn’t wreck their skin, without being preachy about it and without pretending the younger audience wasn’t there. They met the moment. They didn’t exploit it and they didn’t ignore it.

That balance is genuinely hard to find, and most brands won’t. But the brands that do — the ones that figure out how to introduce themselves to Alpha at the edge of their category, respectfully and honestly — will be the ones this generation grows up with. The ones that get it wrong will either feel predatory or irrelevant. Neither is a good place to be.

5. If your store is just shelves and a checkout, you’ve already lost them

Two-thirds of Gen Alpha parents say their child prefers shopping in-store, according to Numerator research. I find this genuinely heartening. But they’re not going to be sold at — they’re going for the experience. The feeling of independence. The space to explore without someone trying to close them.

Sol de Janeiro figured this out with their Gen Alpha pop-ups: product testing tables, guided meditations, immersive environments. Not a sales floor. A place people chose to go, chose to stay in, and chose to film and put on TikTok. The content creation was the point. The brand just made a space worth being in.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if your physical brand doesn’t match your digital brand — if someone walks into your store after following you on Instagram and thinks ‘this is it?’ — Gen Alpha will notice in about thirty seconds. They grew up consuming and creating visual content. Their eye is calibrated in a way that older generations simply isn’t. Brand inconsistency isn’t just aesthetically annoying to them. It reads as dishonest. (This is why we think brand experience design and brand strategy are the same conversation.)

The part I wish more brands would take seriously

I’m going to be honest here, because I think most of what gets written about Gen Alpha treats the urgency too gently.

Brands that are ignoring this generation right now are not ‘taking a wait and see approach.’ They’re ceding ground. Brand loyalty forms early and it sticks — research on Gen Alpha’s brand influence shows that nearly 1 in 2 already ask for specific brands by name, and their switching is driven by product innovation, social media trends, and parent recommendations. The brands that Alpha is forming relationships with right now, in Roblox, through creators they actually trust, in retail spaces worth showing up for, are the brands they’ll default to for the next thirty years of purchasing decisions.

That window isn’t unlimited. The brands paying attention are already moving. Every month that passes, the category leaders in this space get a little more established and a little harder to displace.

I’ve had both versions of this conversation more times than I can count. The one with the brand that saw it coming and wanted to move while they still had space to. And the one with the brand that came to us asking why their younger audience had quietly disappeared over the past two years. Those are very different conversations. One of them is a lot more expensive than the other, and a lot less fun for everyone involved.

The brands that define the next decade won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest budgets. They’ll be the ones that know exactly who they are, show up the same way across every surface this generation moves through, and give Alpha an actual reason to care. That’s a brand clarity problem. And it’s one that genuinely needs to be solved now — not in the next planning cycle, not after the next rebrand, now. (Our branding strategies guide breaks down how we approach that kind of clarity.)

So what does this actually mean

Winning with Gen Alpha isn’t about chasing them. They’ll smell that from a mile away and they will not respect it.

It’s about building a brand strong enough and clear enough to show up coherently everywhere they spend time — Roblox, TikTok, a pop-up, a product drop, a store, a creator’s video — without losing itself in the process. A brand identity that fractures when you move it across contexts isn’t really an identity. It’s a mood board.

Clear positioning. A visual system that actually travels. A voice that sounds like a person, not a committee. That’s what holds together across all the surfaces Gen Alpha inhabits. And that’s what we spend our days building at Concept Studio — for brands that are serious about getting this right. (Here’s how we think about brand architecture and identity systems.)

One more thing

This piece is about the behaviour — who Gen Alpha is, what they need, and why it matters more than most brands are treating it right now. But I know the natural follow-up question: okay, but who’s actually doing it well?

That’s part two. I pull apart Beano Brain’s 2025 Coolest Brands report — a year-long study of 12,000 kids aged 7 to 14 — and look at which brands are genuinely winning with this generation, which ones have already lost the room, and what the difference actually comes down to. A few of the findings surprised even me.

Frequently asked questions

What is Gen Alpha?

Gen Alpha is the generation born between 2010 and 2024 — about two billion people worldwide. The term was coined by social researcher Mark McCrindle. They’re projected to control $5 trillion in spending power by 2029, and the oldest are already 15.

How do you market to Gen Alpha?

Not by chasing them. The brands doing it well show up consistently in the places Gen Alpha already spends time — Roblox, YouTube, TikTok, physical retail that’s actually worth visiting. Authentic creator partnerships outperform polished ad campaigns. And your brand identity has to hold up whether someone encounters it on a screen or in a store.

What platforms does Gen Alpha use most?

YouTube is their default — it’s overtaken Google as their go-to for search and discovery. After that: Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and TikTok. The gaming platforms aren’t just games. They’re social spaces where brand impressions form early and stick.

Why does Gen Alpha brand loyalty matter right now?

Because brand preferences formed in childhood tend to persist into adulthood. The oldest Gen Alpha members are already 15. If your brand isn’t in their world yet, someone else’s is. Catching up later is harder and more expensive.

What is Gen Alpha’s spending power?

$5 trillion projected by 2029. But their influence already extends beyond their own wallets. PwC found that 72% regularly buy food and drinks, 57% buy toys, and 61% say social media makes them want to buy something. They’re shaping household spending well before they have their own income.

What is a phygital brand experience?

When the physical and digital sides of a brand feel like the same thing. Gen Alpha doesn’t draw a line between online and offline life, so a brand that feels one way on Instagram and another way in the store reads as inconsistent. The good ones feel like themselves everywhere.