As a marketer, inspiration can come from a lot of places. And if you are a marketer looking to speak to Gen Z, having teens in your own home can be the spark or insight for a new campaign—especially as marketers attempt to figure out how to reach youngsters who are watching a lot less traditional media and gravitating to rising platforms such as TikTok.

In short, the playbook is constantly changing. And as any parent knows, kids do not lack honesty.

Ad Age caught up with several chief marketing officers to see how their kids have played a role as informal focus groups— informing their parents’ views on social media, reacting to rough cuts of commercials and sharing the brands they are currently loving.

“If you have teenage kids at home, you know they are constantly curious,” said Craig Brommers, CMO at American Eagle. “They are learning about themselves and their world, what makes them happy. And I think a hallmark of a modern CMO is someone who is constantly curious.”

Several CMOs noted that while kids can be a good gut check or provide starting insight, they are not substitutes for larger marketing teams and data.

“It’s important to listen to your kids and find inspiration in them,” said Kristin Patrick, CMO of Claire’s. “But I do sometimes feel like when someone says, ‘My kid says XYZ is a good idea,’ they aren’t taking data from other sources. That home focus group is great, but there needs to be data from lots of other places.”

Read on to hear more from Patrick, Brommers, Chili’s CMO George Felix, Nissan U.S CMO Marisstella Marinkovic, Chipotle CMO Chris Brandt, KFC U.S. CMO Nick Chavez and Julius Robinson, chief sales and marketing officer for the U.S. and Canada at Marriott International. Their children range in age from 10 to 24.

When and how do you bounce ideas off your kids?

For many CMOs, car rides are a prime moment to ask kids questions. In some instances, just listening to their kids as they watch TV or at the dinner table can be informative. All of the CMOs who spoke for this story said they have shared rough cuts of commercials or social posts to gauge reactions.

Brandt: “Just listening to what they talk to each other about is informative, that’s how you pick up on the latest abbreviations and learn what ‘no cap’ means.”

Patrick: “It’s often through casual observations or conversations between my daughter and her friends, or just observing how she watches content. I think a lot of parents have kids who play club sports. So every weekend we would be up early and in the car to a soccer game, so that was two hours to ask what’s interesting.”

Robinson: “I try to find time to show them ideas when they are least distracted, so car rides are good, or when we’re traveling. They have no problem telling me if they like something or not, and they are old enough that they can say, ‘The work is good, but just doesn’t speak to me.’ Most importantly, I look to them to tell me if something is offensive, or inclusive enough.”

How have your kids made you a better marketer?

Brandt: “I think I’m a better manager because of my sons. They respond differently to the same directions, and are motivated differently. What works for one, doesn’t work for the other, and I think navigating that has made me a better manager in terms of messaging and adapting my approach. Every person is different, and I don’t know if I would have been as attuned to that if I wasn’t wrangling kids to communicate and educate them.”

Marinkovic: “When NFTs were starting to become popular, I once had a conversation with my kids who were saying that we should spend thousands of dollars to get one. I had no idea what these were. They explained that it was like a valuable baseball card, which made more sense to me. That was something I may not have been exposed to until much later.”

Patrick: “I feel like as the mom of a Gen Zer, there is a realness and humanity that has to go into what we’re doing. At the end of the day, these are real young people with problems and opportunities. They are the most complex generation, but have an overwhelming optimism.”

What’s the best marketing advice you’ve gotten from your kid?

Brommers: “When BeReal was all the rage, my daughters told me to check it out. But I told them that BeReal didn’t really want to work with brands. And my oldest just looked at me like I was an idiot and said, ‘So just hack it’ which was the same sentiment that our social team had, so we jumped in.”  

Brandt: “It wasn’t direct advice, but the other day we were watching football and one of those ads came on where the ad is sort of a border around the game, like a smaller ad off to the side while a huddle is happening. And my youngest asked if we ever do those kinds of ads. Well, a few days ago a network had pitched us those ads saying they garner more attention. Clearly it got his.”

Marinkovic: “My daughter wants me to use Harry Styles in everything. My son’s ideas are around Alabama football.”

Get more Gen Z perspective from Ad Age's Gen Z voices series

Has your kid influenced a campaign you've done for your current brand or past brands you have worked for?

Marinkovic: “We were working on some multicultural creative and had narrowed it down to two music tracks. My daughter helped pick the track that made sense with the work. And my son, he’s a sports nut. So for the Heisman house, I had a dossier on all of the players, but he helped fill in the contextual gaps.”

Felix: “They have influenced decisions on commercials. Kids are a great judge of if you’ve made clear advertising. Did they understand what the ad was trying to get across? If not, we might need to adjust the messaging.”

Chavez: “My now 5-year-old daughter inspired one of the most memorable television ads we created for Nintendo Switch. I had been out on leave when she was a newborn at the time and rocked her to sleep in the carrier while I played Nintendo Switch. Dominick Maiolo and the creative team at Leo Burnett turned that into a story-driven ad targeting young millennial dads just getting back into gaming.”

Patrick: “So many! When I was at Pepsi she came up with a campaign slogan as part of our ‘Live for Now’ campaign. Watching her and her friends go through the pandemic and miss 2 1/2 years of high school life inspired our ‘Dear Claire’ series. We wanted to highlight those Gen Z voices and what they were experiencing. She also weighed in on our College Creator Program, and we were able to recruit some of the kids she went to high school with who are now all over the country.”

Robinson: “We spent some time working through a transformation of our Sheraton brands, and one brand tenant was community. I had the chance to get feedback from my kids on what community means to them. It was enlightening because they see technology as playing a role in community, but also going through experiences together as a unifier.”

Brommers: “My older daughter has been quick to tell me about a couple of cultural moments, which have inspired some of our campaigns. The first was the show ‘Outer Banks,’ and we did a limited collection with them, the other was Olivia Rodgrigo, and finally the show ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty.’ We had our most successful collaboration to date with the talent from that show.”

Brandt: “One of my sons was an intern in 2019. He did a whole project on [where] we should serve margaritas at Chipotle, and what markets they resonate in. We followed his recommendations, and it influenced where we would have those available (mostly in NYC).”

Has there been a marketing idea you liked, but your kids disapproved of/were lukewarm on it?

Felix: “When I was at KFC, we made a lot of Colonel Sanders campaigns, and there were celebrities we were talking to, to partner with, who I was excited about but they would be ‘meh’ to my kids. Or they would see the rough cut of an ad—and the laugh that I was expecting didn’t come at the end of the joke.”

Chavez: “I would not say they’ve disapproved of anything I’ve ever marketed to Gen Z or Gen Alpha; however, there have been times when they’ve been surprised that something didn’t become as popular as they expected. A good example of that was Nintendo LABO, a stunningly creative set of cardboard kits launched in 2018. You could build real-world objects and play interactive Nintendo games with them. They loved the hands-on creativity, customization and interactivity of those products, but unfortunately, popularity and sales did not follow. “

Brommers: “I’d be nervous to name names, but I will say that when you are looking to sign a musician, athlete, actor … those are meaningful financial commitments. So yes I might think it’s great, but when I road test with my oldest, she might not resonate with it. I read that what parents and what their Gen Z kids think are celebrities have never been further apart, so I have to constantly check my generational biases and be open to Gen Z celebrities who can come from anywhere.”

How have your kids informed your view on social media?

For many marketers, their kids were the first to pick up BeReal, and a few marketers reevaluated their brand’s Snapchat strategy after seeing their teens use it so much.

Robinson: “I would say the cemented purpose and value of the influencer community, but there is a twist on that. At least for my kids, influencers don’t change their perception of a product. It either reinforces their perception or makes them aware of a new product. But if they feel a way about a brand or product, and if an influencer has an opposite view, they ignore it.”

Brommers: “TikTok as a happy place for them to entertain and express themselves has informed our strategy. But Snapchat is their go-to for one-on-one communication or one to a few. I will say that the Snap team has said how hard it is to educate marketing teams on the platform, except for when the marketer has a teenager on the app at home.”

Chavez: “They have a deep understanding of what’s cool, funny, odd, what’s old and what’s new—and the fact that a lot of great social content can be all of those things. One of my favorite recent examples is Sunday Lunch on YouTube—Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp covering all sorts of classic punk and progressive rock music. I recently discovered it and shared it with my son, but his response was to laugh and compliment me for discovering ‘deep cut’ content that he’s followed for a while!”

Brandt: “Years ago, some of our social data told us that Snapchat wouldn’t work for us. But we could see how much our own kids were using it, so we asked if it was the wrong creative, or length. We ended up taking a few weeks off in 2019 to shut off our other social channels to see how Snapchat did on its own, and lo and behold [it] performed better than expected.”

Felix: “My kids are a little young for social media, but on our drives to school they get to be the Spotify DJ. They’ll put a bunch of songs in the queue and tell me to listen to them. My daughter, not surprisingly, is all about Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, and my son is more hip-hop—Lil Nas X, 24K Golden, and Post Malone.”

See how brands have scored in Ad Age’s quarterly Gen Z poll

What are three brands that your kids love?

We asked each CMO to name three brands that each of their kids loves. The most common responses were Chick-fil-A, Lululemon and Nike. Some other mentions: Brandy Melville, Adidas, Fender, Joe and the Juice, the NFL, Dunkin’, Gucci, Lego, Carhartt, Apple, M&M’s, Taylor Swift, Vans, Hotels.com, the NBA, The Container Store and e.l.f Cosmetics.