Platform
Zigazoo Is Betting Gen Alpha Brand Loyalty Starts With Participation, Not Messaging
Brands have spent years trying to crack Gen Alpha with better creative, bigger influencer deals, and more platform-native content. Ashley Mady thinks they’ve been tackling the wrong problem.
As President of Zigazoo, the Florida-based social platform launched during the pandemic and now reported to have more than 10 million users, Ashley has spent nearly four years arguing that the core obstacle isn’t messaging. It’s infrastructure. Most platforms simply weren’t designed to safely let young audiences communicate back to the brands that want their attention.
“If all the platforms are designed to limit having an actual conversation with kids, how can you know how to talk to them?” she says. “There haven’t been many ways that you can understand them.”
Ashley brings nearly two decades of brand-building experience across toys, entertainment, and licensing to the role. Before joining Zigazoo in 2022, she founded Brandberry, a brand licensing and creative agency, in 2009, and held brand leadership positions at toy manufacturers including Basic Fun! and Jakks Pacific.
At this year’s VidCon Anaheim, she will carry that argument to the Industry Mainstage as part of a panel titled “Gen Z and Gen Alpha Don’t Care About Your Brand, Why Should They?” The session, presented by Chartbeat, runs June 25 from 11 to 11:30 a.m. in Ballroom AB alongside panelists Jill Nicholson, Andy Pearson, Scott Oklin, and Morgan Seamark.
The Structural Problem Brands Haven’t Named
Ashley’s argument against conventional brand strategy for young audiences begins with platform design. Most platforms collect data about young audiences but offer kids little ability to communicate back to brands.
“Brands just have to talk to kids, and there’s no way for kids and teens to really communicate back online,” Ashley says. “If you don’t know what your audience thinks, how can they fall in love with your brand? How can you shape it to match what they’re looking for?”
That vacuum has produced a generation of consumers who can detect manufactured marketing on contact. “They suss out if it’s marketing by design,” she notes.
The corrective, in her framing, isn’t better creative. It’s participation. Gen Alpha wants to shape what brands do, not just receive what brands say. “How can Gen Alpha give their input on what a product is called, or what the next flavor, color, or theme is?” Ashley asks. “They want to participate. They want to feel part of it.”
Legacy Doesn’t Buy Loyalty
Among the sharper arguments Ashley plans to bring to the panel is one about brand heritage: for Gen Alpha, it carries no weight.
“You could be a brand that’s been around for 20 years. So what?” Ashley says. “It doesn’t mean that Gen Alpha will love you. There could be a new brand that emerges in that category that day that they decide to love more because they’re speaking the same language.”
Speaking the same language, in her framing, isn’t about tone. It’s about whether a brand has created the conditions for actual participation. Established brands that treat young consumers as passive audiences are structurally disadvantaged against newer entrants willing to let Gen Alpha into the process.
The payoff for brands that earn that loyalty compounds fast. “When they latch on to something, they rally around it,” Ashley says. “Once you get them, they’re hooked.” The same speed of attachment means a miscalculated entry rarely earns a second chance.
Winning the Room, Not Just the Kid
At the panel’s pre-VidCon kickoff earlier this week, Ashley says the group discussed how Liquid Death has built household penetration by becoming a family-level staple. The brand’s pantry presence illustrates something Ashley argues brands consistently underestimate: reaching Gen Alpha requires a two-stage strategy.
“You have to win the kid and the teen, but you also have to win the parents to make sure that brand is welcomed in a home,” Ashley explains. “It really is this bigger strategy, to talk to a parent in the way that they’re okay with it, and to make sure it’s cool enough for the kids so that they’re nagging for it.”
Connecting the nag factor to actual purchase is where most brand strategies stall. Zigazoo has built a wish list feature specifically to close that gap. Kids flag products they want on the platform, which triggers a purchase notification sent directly to parents. Every brand appearing in the wish list is vetted by Zigazoo before reaching users, and the purchase decision remains entirely with the parent.
“We curate every single brand that comes on the platform,” Ashley notes. “And from a purchase standpoint, it’s the parents who are sent the link to buy, so they get to make that choice.”
The Safety Moment Is Reshaping the Category
Ashley believes the current regulatory environment around child online safety has created an inflection point that goes beyond any single platform’s decisions. Meta’s legal exposure has moved conversations about where kids spend time online from a niche concern to a mainstream one, giving explicitly safe platforms an opening they didn’t have a year ago.
“This year at VidCon is going to be different than any other year previously, because of the Meta trials and everything that is happening in our world,” Ashley says. “People are paying attention to the need for kids and teens to be safe online.”
Zigazoo recently launched a live streaming feature, adding a surface area that most platforms effectively close off to minors. “Every other place on the internet is not safe for kids,” Ashley says. “In fact, some platforms, if they see a kid come on, they’re getting kicked off right away.”
The platform’s brand partners include the NBA, MLB, WWE, DreamWorks, Paramount Pictures, Amazon, Apple TV+, and Netflix. Its investors include the NBA, Serena Ventures, iHeartMedia, Charli D’Amelio, Jimmy Kimmel, Ciara, and Russell Wilson.
Zigazoo’s VidCon Footprint
Zigazoo’s presence at this year’s convention extends beyond Ashley’s industry panel. The platform is running a second creator session, featuring three Zigazoo creators decoding Gen Alpha for the broader convention audience. Zigazoo will also have a booth hosting creator meet-ups, brand moments, and giveaways.
Earlier this year, Zigazoo partnered with VidCon to launch a Junior Correspondent Contest, giving three young users the chance to attend as on-site correspondents with full speaker badge access. Participants submitted video responses to creative prompts hosted by Zigazoo creator Stella, who has a combined social following of more than 8 million. Three winners, each accompanied by a parent or guardian, will conduct creator interviews and produce social content from the show floor throughout the weekend.
“We’re proud to give young creators meaningful ways to participate in the Creator Economy in a safe, supportive environment,” Ashley says of the contest.
Building Toward the Nickelodeon of 2030
At 10 million users, Zigazoo is placing an explicit bet on where the next generation of kids’ media gets built. Ashley describes the platform’s long-term vision as constructing what Nickelodeon represented for previous generations: a consolidated space where kids watch, play, and interact, connected directly to commerce and creator careers.
“The places where kids and teens watch and play and listen are all different,” Ashley says. “We now have a unique opportunity to bring everything together and pair that with community and really connect it to commerce.”
That vision includes original show formats, a dedicated creator career track within the Zigazoo ecosystem, and a brand identity designed to extend well beyond the app. Whether the platform can hold that position against YouTube Kids, TikTok, and an accelerating field of safety-focused competitors remains the central test.
For Ashley, the argument comes back to timing. Every major platform cycle has rewarded the brands and builders that moved early and committed before the category was settled.
“We’ve seen with every big platform out there, the first to arrive generally are the first to win,” she says. “Now is the moment.”
VidCon Anaheim is officially taking place from June 25-27 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Follow this link for more information.
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