Brands urged to trade products for emotional connection

Emotional connection is key to win younger consumers.

As Millennials and Gen Z move toward making up 75% of ASEAN’s consumers by 2030, brands face a critical decision: adapt or risk irrelevance. For Eileen Goh, Chief Creative Officer at Singapore-based fashion brand DMK, the answer lies in pivoting from a purely product-first approach to one rooted in emotional connection.

“To stay relevant today, brands actually need to shift from being product first to selling first,” Goh said. Today’s consumers, she said, are asking: Does this brand reflect who I am or who I want to become?

That realisation prompted DMK to rebrand in 2020, moving from a product-driven identity to one that is “very emotionally led.” The shift involved reshaping the company’s mission to serve the community not just through fashion, but also through initiatives that support customers’ life journeys and milestones.

For legacy brands, Goh warns against abandoning their roots in the pursuit of trend relevance. “Legacy isn't really about staying the same, it's about staying true while learning to speak a new language,” she said. “The biggest mistake that legacy brands try to make is to erase their roots in the pursuit of relevance.”

Targeting Gen Z and Millennials also requires understanding that the two groups speak “quite different emotional dialects.” Goh points to studies showing that Gen Z values authenticity, rawness, and identity ownership, while Millennials lean toward aspiration and curated self-image.

“The message needs to be consistent…but the delivery, it needs to be quite different,” she said, noting Gen Z responds to unfiltered, behind-the-scenes content and vulnerable storytelling, whereas Millennials prefer polished visuals rooted in authenticity.

Finally, she cautions against treating brand values as marketing trends. “You can't really borrow values for a campaign, and you have to live them at every single touch point,” Goh said. For DMK, that means applying its mission as a filter for all decisions, from product design to marketing execution. “Execution, at the end of the day, is just noise if it's not anchored to purpose.”