‘Brat, slay, amped’: gen Z-scripted marketing video sends zoo viral
Ralph the racoon is very demure, very mindful; the prairie dogs are poppin’; the bats are brat and Stilton the goat, in his mind at least, is the GOAT (which obviously translates as the “greatest of all time”).
We know all this because a new social media video for a zoo in Northumberland has, virally, gone supersonic.
More than 6 million people and counting have viewed on TikTok a video featuring a couple in their 60s guiding people through the zoo using the language of gen Z.
Part of its charm is that the delivery of Linda and Brian Bradley is so deadpan. It looks like there may well be someone, off screen, with a loaded pistol aimed at them.
“That’s me!” joked their daughter Maxine Bradley, the zoo’s manager, who directed her parents. “It took a long time. It was: ‘You two, please concentrate!’”
The concept of “getting your gen Z employee to write your marketing script” is the latest TikTok trend to take off. Popular videos of recent weeks include a tour of Fyfield Manor, a B&B in an 880-year-old building in Oxfordshire, by its owner, Christine Brown, who tells us in a cut-glass English accent that “the medieval dining room has so much rizz”, (a short-form of “charisma”). The footage was put together with the help of Christine’s daughter Frannie, who writes in the video: “I can confirm she understood nothing she said.”
There’s also Beamish Museum in County Durham – “Pockerley Old Hall is always serving”; and Kenyon Hall farm in Warrington – “the vibes in the farm shop, immaculate”.
Maxine Bradley was inspired to make her video after seeing one for Edinburgh zoo, narrated by its chief executive officer, David Field.
“I thought: ‘this is awesome … can we do this?’ Personally, I don’t like TikTok and social media does my head in but another member of staff who’s super into trends saw it too and we both said: ‘We have to do this.’”
The big problem soon became clear: that both Bradley and her colleague are millennials with little grasp of the language of gen Z (people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s).
“Lucy had gone on the internet and found all these definitions and I was like: ‘What is this? This is not real.’”
A script eventually came together and they enlisted another colleague, who is gen Z.
“She understood it. She was able to say: ‘You can’t use that, it’s too old … yes, this is on trend.’
“She was teaching my dad what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do it.
“I couldn’t believe my parents were so up for it but yes, it was a frustrating process filming it. The one-minute video took two hours … my dad just wasn’t paying attention. Neither of them know what they were saying. I still don’t, to be honest with you.”
Northumberland zoo, a family-run not-for-profit organisation near Morpeth, has steadily grown since getting its licence in 2015.
Its inhabitants include snow leopards, Asian short-clawed otters, capybaras, owls, lemurs, meerkats and wallabies and it is a mix of the deadly serious and the out-andout bizarre. The zoo is playing an important role in the conservation of critically endangered Livingstone’s fruit bats, which come from two tiny islands between Madagascar and the African mainland. It is the only place in the UK with a population.
It is also probably the only place in the world where the guinea pigs live in a wild west-themed village, which includes a jailhouse, inn, blacksmiths and is a Youtube hit.
It is bizarre, fun and, Bradley hopes, also helps teach people about how to keep guinea pigs as pets.
“We explain what’s an appropriate diet, what is an appropriate space. Too many people keep guinea pigs in tiny spaces, which is really sad.”
Innovating is important to the zoo, which is the reason Ralph the racoon is also available to do birthday wishes or pep talks on the greeting video site Cameo. Why Ralph? “Raccoons can be difficult. They are one of the only animals in the world which will seek revenge,” said Bradley. “But Ralph is our nicest raccoon. People love him.”
‘I couldn’t believe my parents were so up for it. The video took two hours … neither of them know what they were saying’
Maxine Bradley Zoo manager