For decades, luxury set the standard, with consumers buying into the visual grammar of aspiration.
Yet these old rules of premium branding have collapsed because Gen Z never bought into them, just as they never bought into heritage branding. Gen Z consumers evaluate brands in the same way they evaluate everything else: laterally, comparatively, and without the deference on which the old hierarchy depended. A drinks brand isn't competing with other drinks brands. Instead, it competes with the best experience that person had yesterday: the app that worked seamlessly, the café that named the grower, the moisturiser that itemised every ingredient.
