The Death of the Millennial Brand

In a never-ending chase for curated aesthetics, the brands that once set the tone have faded into the background, struggling to adapt to a louder, more chaotic digital landscape.

I was rewatching The Intern, the one where Anne Hathaway’s whole office loses their minds because their startup just hit a million likes on Instagram? They treat it like the company just rang the bell at the stock exchange. That scene was a period stamp I couldn’t move past. It got me thinking about peak millennial brand energy, when hitting an engagement milestone was seen as proof you’d “made it.” Fast forward to today, and that type of achievement would easily go unnoticed by most marketing departments.

I was reminded of this not long ago, standing in my kitchen flipping through one of my roommate’s Molly Baz cookbooks. You know the type: sleek branding, bright covers, bold typography, a book that’s almost more home decor than recipe collection. For a while, that hyper-polished aesthetic was the goal. We wanted everything in our lives to look that put together.

But then I was scrolling Twitter (no, I’m not calling it X) and I saw this photo of a storefront, one of those hyper-clean boutiques you can find in every gentrified part of the city. It could’ve been a Le Labo, a matcha bar, any type of business indicating the newly affluent demographic of the neighborhood. Underneath it, the replies were brutal. Absolutely bashing it for being boring, corporate, sterile. Especially Gen Z users who were simply not having it. Mentions of Glossier, Casper, Warby Parker as examples of this lifeless millennial taste that somehow feels out of place now.

And that’s when it hit me: this “look” used to be everything, the signal that you were current, modern, elevated. But now? It just feels flat. Like we’re all still performing a cultural moment that’s already over, and nobody wants to admit it.

Resistance to Adaptation

So what actually killed the millennial brand? It’s not just that people got bored of pastels and sans-serif fonts. There were a few cultural resets, and millennial brands didn’t survive the aftershocks.

First, the internet itself simply mutated. Instagram killed the chronological feed and replaced it with the algorithm, making it almost impossible for brands to reach their audience organically. From that moment onwards, a perfectly curated grid meant nothing if your posts weren’t getting served up to anyone. What used to be daily posting for growth turned into a pay-to-play model. The brands built for organic discovery, the ones that lived and died by aesthetic cohesion, were the first ones to feel this massive shift.

And then TikTok entered the game, which rewired how people consume content. Video-first and personality-driven, basically everything that millennial brands avoided. TikTok turned random creators and “unedited-but-edited” content into the new default. Suddenly, what worked was messy and human, the opposite of polished and aspirational. The brands that tried to look perfect just felt fake.

Also, 2020 was another big hit for how the content was received by the masses. Nobody wanted to see your serene flat lay or a $300 water bottle on a white countertop. People wanted realness, rawness, and proof of actual value, not just another product pretending to make their lives “better.”

And here’s the real killer in my opinion: the rise of the creator economy. Founders became influencers, brands started acting like people, and the boundary between “company” and “community” blurred. The brands that survived were the ones who figured out how to let go of control, get raw, and hand the mic over to the audience.

The millennial brand didn’t just die of old age. It was killed off by a mix of tech disruption, a global crisis, and a consumer base that just stopped buying the performance.

Defining the Millennial Brand

Before diving further into this discourse, I want to clarify what the millennial brand is. I’m talking about that whole wave of companies that blew up during social media heydays, the era when venture capital was basically giving away money for anything with a cool logo and a snappy one-word name. I have to give it to my generation, if we know one thing, it’s how to play this capitalist game and take something boring, slap on some minimalist branding, and you get a vibey lifestyle brand. Look at Graza: it’s just olive oil in a squeeze bottle, but the branding is so trendy that every young homeowner wants it on their countertop. Glossier sold pink pouches and the idea that skincare was a members-only club. Away made sleek $300 suitcases, an accessory that would perfectly blend in a selfie, and people bought into it even though the quality was questionable.

At their core, these brands all looked and felt eerily similar. Every touchpoint, every digital post, every unboxing moment was so tightly controlled and curated it barely felt human. But for a while, that was the point: visual polish in order to build trust. And it worked. For a minute. But when every brand starts playing the same game, nobody stands out, and that’s exactly how the millennial brands lost their edge.

An Internet that no Longer Exists

Those brands thrived in the era of the chronological feed. When all you had to do was post more, and more people would see you. The peak of organic reach online really. Consistency was rewarded and curated content looked like authenticity, simply because it was the standard.

The whole game changed when social platforms rewired the algorithm. Suddenly, visibility was no longer enough, you had to be engaging also. That was followed by the pay-to-play model, and organic reach almost vanished overnight. Estimates vary but a large consensus agrees that as much as 52% engagement dropped after that new model introduction (SocialFlow, 2017). Brands that had been built entirely around visual polish had to start buying their audience back through ads.

At the same time, the creator economy was exploding. TikTok made video-first content the default. Founders became creators. Teams became communities. And the brands that came on top were the ones that were relatable and humanized.

And that was the pivotal moment in my opinion, that really caused the downfall of that specific era of social media. Audiences started to connect with brands that were able to make them laugh, kept up with trends and that were messy for lack of better words.

And I think this is where a lot of millennial community managers had a problem adapting. That type of content felt too “raw,” especially after spending a decade trying to make everything look perfectly on brand. And it’s this type of resistance that prevented some of those brands from adapting to this new digital landscape.

Targeting Gen Z

Now, we have Gen Z who grew up online. Aspirational content no longer works; it has to be genuine, real, and honest. They can spot inauthenticity in seconds, and if it looks too meticulously curated, you won’t catch their attention.

They want brands that show up like creators with founder videos, behind-the-scenes content with minimal editing. Almost like 90s MTV energy with DIY vibes and a deep sense of community.

And that brings me to my next point: millennial brands were never built for that. They were built for static images, not dynamic storytelling. They were built for consistency, not chaos. That’s a total 180 from the old playbook. If the millennial look was a meticulously curated coffee table, Gen Z branding is more like a living room after a large gathering with stuff everywhere.

That’s what is working nowadays. Just look at the rise of meme brands like Duolingo, Liquid Death, or even Ryanair’s Twitter. They’re selling the mess, the joke.

Resisting Tensions

The problem is, most of them were built with a brand-first ideology, which can’t hardly translate into this more human/organic voice. They hired creative directors before community managers. They spent more time art directing their packaging than building relationships with their audience. And now, as the landscape demands more vulnerability, more access, and more messiness, they don’t know how to pivot.

That being said, some millennial brands have tried to adapt. You’ll see them post more video content, lean into memes, or partner with influencers in less curated ways. But others are still clinging to the old playbook, hoping their once-iconic aesthetic will be enough to carry them through.

Nothing Stays Cool Forever

What used to feel premium now feels generic and it’s lost in a sea of sameness. Culture’s already moved on; we’re seeing brands like Vacation sunscreen or Liquid Death break through because they’re unapologetically different and visually expressive. They’re not trying to be for everyone, and that’s exactly why people notice them.

But here’s the thing about trends: nothing stays cool forever, and nostalgia takes time. Just look at Y2K. It took twenty years before chrome logos and low-rise jeans started to feel fresh again.

Adaptation as a Mean of Survival

This piece isn’t on hating millennial brands. They had an incredible cultural impact. They taught us the power of design, the importance of consistency, and how to build a brand that felt aspirational. But the rules have changed, and like anything else, adaptation is key to survival. Some of them will have a steeper learning curve as their whole raison d’être lies in a concept that no longer exists.

If I’m being honest, I don’t think anyone can say with confidence what comes next. The messy, meme-driven Gen Z aesthetic works right now, but that doesn’t mean we won’t swing back to something curated and polished again. It’s cyclical. To survive it means to adapt.