What if a legacy brand could decode what “cool” means for Gen Z?
In short
A legacy consumer brand wanted to understand what makes a brand cool for Gen Z, and which version of cool it could credibly own. Qlue activated 300+ archived transcripts, 5,000+ trend pages and social listening data, turning them into 300+ digital twins with deep cultural context. The work helped identify the “physics of cool”: 10 drivers, 37 pathways and 3 levels of cool, before translating them into activation playbooks, a cool scoring system and portfolio strategy. Cool!
Challenge
The brand knew it needed to build relevance with Gen Z, but “cool” is a slippery brief. It can mean status, humour, niche credibility, cultural access, self-expression, rebellion, aesthetic fluency or simply not trying too hard. Not to mention, Gen Z is famously averse to brands trying to sneak in on their definition of cool.
We couldn’t just ask whether Gen Z found the brand cool. We needed to understand what cool actually meant in the first place, which cultural routes were alive right now, and which of those routes the brand could credibly act on.
Available assets
The project began with a large archive of existing youth and culture research. This included 300+ Gen Z interview transcripts from multiple past projects, along with 5,000+ pages of trend and culture reports covering youth culture, lifestyle shifts, brand perception and emerging cultural signals.
These assets were valuable, but they were all archived. They had captured real language, attitudes, anxieties, motivations and cultural references — but they were not yet connected into a live system that could answer new questions.
Qlue also brought in social listening to understand what was gaining traction in culture right now. This mattered because cool moves fast. A signal that was meaningful six months ago may already feel passé, a niche behaviour may be gathering momentum before it becomes visible to a wider audience.
Our approach
Built Gen Z digital twins from archived research
Qlue un-archived the 300+ transcripts and used them to create data-rich digital twins. Each twin carried the language, motivations, attitudes and cultural references of a real Gen Z respondent, grounded in source material rather than generic assumptions. This gave the team an interactive audience that could be questioned, surveyed and simulated with, at scale.
Mapped the cultural landscape
Qlue analysed the transcripts and trend material to surface recurring signals around what Gen Z considers cool. This created an initial map of cultural territories: the places where cool seemed to live for this generation. From this, Qlue helped build the first version of a cool framework: the drivers that create coolness, and the levels at which those drivers operate.
Sharpened the map with social listening
The initial territories were then checked against social listening data. This helped separate signals with real momentum from signals that were either too niche, too stale or too noisy. The goal was not simply to list trends. It was to identify the cultural territories with enough live energy to be worth simulating.
Ran simulations in the “multiverse”
Qlue then turned the cultural territories into concrete “what if” pathways:
- What if the brand entered esports?
- What if it launched a limited-edition sneaker collaboration?
- What if it sponsored a comedy festival?
- What if it showed up in indie music?
- What if it partnered with hip-hop culture?
This was not an exercise in repositioning, but potential brand actions. Qlue simulated how different Gen Z twins might respond to each pathway, measuring which routes shifted the brand’s coolness and which felt right, and which felt forced (or irrelevant).
Built a cool scoring system
The simulations were evaluated against a consistent scoring framework. This helped the team move from subjective debate — “this feels cool” — to a more structured view of what kind of coolness each route created, how strongly it moved perception, and where the risks sat.
The work identified 10 drivers of cool, 37 pathways and 3 levels of cool, giving the team a vocabulary and measurement system for future decisions.
Validated and turned the work into playbooks
The strongest pathways were explored further through qualitative depth and validated with real Gen Z respondents. Twin outputs were cross-checked against real consumer response, giving the team more confidence in which routes held up outside the simulation environment.
Finally, strategists made sense of the simulation output. Qlue made the scale of exploration possible, but human judgment shaped the final recommendations, prioritised the right routes and translated them into brand-ready strategy.
Outcomes
A usable framework for Gen Z cool
The work decoded cool into a structured system: 10 drivers, 37 pathways and 3 levels of cool. This gave the team a more precise way to discuss, evaluate and act on cultural relevance.
300+ digital twins with deep cultural context
Archived transcripts and trend material were transformed into an interactive Gen Z audience that could be used to test scenarios, reactions and brand moves at scale - well after this project was done.
A cool scoring system
Qlue helped create a scoring system to evaluate which pathways could shift perception, where brand fit was strongest, and where an idea risked feeling performative. This has benefits for the brand beyond the current engagement.
Activation playbooks and portfolio strategy
The final output included brand-specific activation playbooks, scenario recommendations and a portfolio-level view of how different brands could pursue different versions of cool.
The result was a decision system for cultural relevance: what to explore, what to avoid, where the brand could credibly speak, and which pathways were most likely to move Gen Z perception.