YouTube Culture & Trends Report 2022: Personally-Relevant Pop Culture Gains Greater Prominence

YouTube released its Culture & Trends Report last week on the occasion of the Cannes Lions 2022 international festival. The report explores the emerging creative trends and tries to highlight their significance concerning the future of video. The report also brings forth the expectations of Gen Z video consumers and content creators to analyze the impact of their preferences on the current video trends.

Some of the major highlights of the report included the following.

1. Gen Z’s Shift from Generic Content

There’s been a massive shift in content consumption among the Gen Z audience with the explosion of new video formats and new technologies. 65% of the Gen Z audience believes that relevant content for them on an individual level is far more important than the popular content that everyone else is talking about.

Therefore, they are increasingly looking for content that is making more sense to them. This means that pop culture is no longer monolithic and is more personalized and varied than ever before.

2. Increase in Online Activity

An overwhelming 85% of the Gen Z users said that they have posted video content online. This indicates that as more users are exposed to emerging technologies, they also tend to use them more frequently.

3. The Emergence of New Creativity Genres

The report highlights that three new genres are emerging as far as creativity is concerned. These include the following.

• Community Creativity: Community creativity refers to organized online activity among groups with common interests that produce their own culture. This is driving creativity and cultural conversation everywhere from niche aviation channels to massive communities of K-Pop fans. This results in creators and viewers becoming our eyes for understanding pop culture.

This has led to the emergence of Fandom, which is one of the most powerful forms of community. 61% OF Gen Z identify themselves as a huge fan of someone or something. Interestingly, these fan groups, which were considered a side-effect of entertainment, are today considered central to the entertainment experience.

• Multi-Format Creativity: Multi-format creativity involves the dissemination of new concepts on different online media in a fluid way. Today, users are as comfortable creating video content as they are watching it.

The rise of short-form video has also resulted in more creators posting online to capitalize upon the key trends and maximize the community and monetization benefits of longer-from clips.

• Responsive Creativity: This refers to the trend that comes from using video platforms for viewing content according to one’s emotional needs. Generation Z uses video to shape a pop culture based on their expectations from it.

This means that users allow themselves to be carried away by highly aesthetic content and find moments of liberation not only with soothing content but also with content that scares them.

Wrapping Up

For brands and creators, it’s all about figuring out their users’ expectations and consumption patterns. This can help them come up with more relevant content. Creativity should then be expressed in connection with the conversations within the communities.

To delve deeper into the findings of the report, read the full report here.