How do you market to a generation motivated by vibe?

Arjun Singh, EVP global creative growth, Team Lewis: “Vibe marketing. It’s the kind of phrase you’d expect to overhear at a Shoreditch coffee shop, squeezed between talk of oat milk and the latest app. But let’s cut through the buzz – vibe marketing isn’t new. It’s always been about shaping how a brand feels in real life, not just what it says. The strongest brand vibes aren’t accidental. They’re built on discipline, cultural curiosity and genuine insight. With our Get Carried Away campaign for Chery UK, we didn’t chase trends or create a fleeting mood. We started by asking what everyday life actually feels like for British families. We focused on the real stuff: school runs, last-minute errands and the beautiful chaos of daily routines. The result is a campaign that feels warm, relatable and distinctly British. It’s not selling a fantasy; it’s celebrating reality. This is vibe marketing at its best: disciplined, insight-led and rooted in truth. It’s not fluffy. The most powerful marketers and brands are those that make people feel something real. In a world where AI can generate endless content but can’t fake genuine connection, authentic brand vibes matter more than ever.”

Franziska Gregor, managing director, Serviceplan Culture: “In a world where attention is short, the emotional aftertaste matters more than the message. A vibe doesn’t explain. It invites. A vibe emerges in the space between brand, people, community and context. A strong example is Gentle Monster: it built an entire brand universe on an instantly recognizable futuristic vibe. The long-term commitment pays off in cultural relevance and loyalty. AI-generated content has amplified the shift. A vibe is faster to create than a storyline. Visuals, sound, text: all loosely connected, all reinforcing a shared emotional temperature. Platforms that thrive in this space include Pinterest, Reddit, Substack and, quietly, Tumblr, making a comeback. Vibe de/coding is cultural resonance and context sensitivity as a skill. This opens up space for people who truly understand their craft and their communities: writers, poets, designers, photographers. And it opens the door back to IRL to shared moments. Think of the recent rise of nostalgic French journaling aesthetics from Louise Carmen on TikTok. As products become harder to differentiate on features alone, emotion and vibe become the true differentiators.”

Matt Molino, chief strategy officer, NVE Experience Agency: “Great vibe marketing isn’t accidental. It’s built on cultural instinct. Cultural instinct comes from getting real reps in culture. It’s an exhaustive amount of time spent inside the worlds that shape great experiences. In music, design, food, fashion and with the people actually leading those cultural spaces forward. It’s how you develop your taste as a brand steward. It also requires clarity on your brand’s role in the culture you’re stepping into. Are we credible here? What are we adding? What’s our give-back? With that clarity, you can say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ quickly to the right experiential aesthetics, partnerships, and collaborations. Done well, vibe becomes a competitive advantage. Done poorly, you waste people’s time and burn brand dollars.”

Doğa Erdağ, designer, Ba’ndo: “We are witnessing a shift where ‘uncool’ is the new ‘cool.’ Authenticity is now measured by the messiness leaking through the pixels. For me, Y2K is not just nostalgia; it’s a rebellion against digital uniformity. As a Gen Z, I crave flawed moments over polished dreams; in my world, messiness is honesty, not a mistake. Stories swinging from melancholy to humor with unexpected plot twists are what make a vibe feel real. However, the true impact lies in the auditory frequency. The old, sterile image of ‘I could never reach that’ is collapsing, replaced by a sense of belonging that whispers: ‘This is just like me; I can be that too.’ In addition, the right beat or a nostalgic sound effect transforms a product into a living lifestyle. Ultimately, the ‘vibe’ of modern marketing is simply what the beat makes me feel.”

Jack Moriarty, associate creative director, The Romans: “Reacting to cultural conversation and consumers’ feelings in real time is a core part of what has made PR and social channels so effective. It’s an essential part of what we do, and the need to work quickly and effectively is often where brilliant work is born. ‘Vibe marketing’ is just an AI-powered wrapper for work streams that already exist. And while it might make work faster, cheaper and easier, I’m not convinced it will make it better, at least not in its current form. Consumer awareness for both how brands perceive them and communicate with them has never been higher. As is their ability to separate ‘AI slop’ from something that a human being with 10 fingers, not those weird Grok-made mashups, has built from the ground up. Brands can generate as many images, captions and strategies as they’d like, but it won’t foster the kind of community that is born from long-term brand building and proper human craft. It takes more than one person and a few prompts to make great work.”

Richard Midgley, founder & group strategy director, Ponderosa: “Vibe’s just the word of the moment. Everyone’s talking about it, but does anyone honestly know what it means? It’s become shorthand for a feeling or a bit of borrowed cool and, for a while, that can make things seem modern and relevant. The trouble is it doesn’t last. Trends move on, and yesterday’s vibe quickly starts to feel dated. The brands that go the distance are built on something sturdier: solid product truths, clear strategic insight and a proper understanding of what they do and why it matters. Those things don’t change every few months, even if how they’re expressed does. A bit of vibe’s fine: it can add color or flavor. But if that’s all you’ve got, the whole thing starts to wobble. And before long, it falls apart. So, get a core strategic proposition that you can hang on to for years – ‘Have a break,’ ‘Does exactly what it says on the tin,’ ‘Every little helps’ – stick to it and you can ‘vibe’ tactically around it all you like. Vibe is just a modern word for zeitgeist. It’s important, but not more important than your core proposition.”

Henry McIntosh, founder, 2112 Marketing: “Vibe marketing isn’t new, it’s just been given a looser hoodie and a TikTok account. Brands have always traded in feeling as much as facts. It’s often contrarian, not consensus thinking, that creates a vibe. ‘Think Different’ had vibe. What’s changed is that vibe is now often treated as the work, rather than the outcome of doing the work well. You can’t bolt a vibe on to a business that doesn’t know who it’s for or why it exists. Real vibes come from behavior, not mood boards. They show up in product decisions, customer experience, tone of voice and how consistently a brand acts when no one’s watching. Marketers don’t invent them. They unearth them and make them presentable. In practice, good vibe marketing still needs structure. Audience insight, cultural literacy and repeatable frameworks stop ‘feel over facts’ from becoming ‘vibes over value.’ And in an AI-heavy world where content is cheap and plentiful, authentic human energy becomes the differentiator. Vibe matters, but only when it’s earned, not applied like a filter.”

Michael Loper Rodriguez, VP, head of strategy, Green House: “Vibes matter. Always have. They’ve long shaped gut instincts – pushing us forward when the vibe is right and prompting pause when it’s not. But in the automation race we’re all running, the human edge is now a competitive advantage. Vibes aren’t ambient any more; they’re active drivers of innovation and intent. At Green House, our value on the frontline is our vibe. Our people, known as cultivators, are hired for cultural fluency, not just availability. As our experiential lead, Tessa Corcoran, puts it: “We give brands the city flair they deserve, not a standardized toolkit.” Tessa’s team positioned both Mr Pibb to vibe in rebel culture at Art Basel and Topo Chico to vibe-flex with nuances unique to bartenders and artists in diverse markets. Vibe marketing is frontline marketing. It’s not a concept; it’s a commercial practice. And in 2026, anyone trying to force a vibe into a toolkit risks killing it in the process.”

Jess Francis, research director, McCann Truth Central: “Attempting a rulebook for ‘vibe marketing’ feels like its own antithesis… as it’s an exercise more in feeling, not formula. While AI excels at execution and scale, the essence of a vibe – reading subtext and distilling intangible cultural signals – remains a uniquely human craft. A vibe is not invented out of thin air but curated from existing cultural currents. This matters more as shared meaning fragments: 42% of Gen Z see truth as flexible over fixed (an increase from 33% in 2019). So, while every brand choice contributes to its vibe, its interpretation now splinters across audiences. Therefore, vibe marketing is brand building in its purest form. It’s deep cultural listening, empathetic interpretation and the decisive action that follows – a magical mixture of data and human intuition. Take, for example, the 2016 nostalgia trend: it speaks to a vibe that wasn’t AI-generated or overtly polished and instead to an era that perhaps felt more human. To set a vibe, to truly feel culture, remains ours alone.”