Tegan Marie Participates In Sweety High Gen Z Panel At SXSW

Pictured (L-R): Sweety High Founder / CCO, Veronica Zelle, country vocalist Tegan Marie, singer/dancer Mackenzie Ziegler (Dance Moms), actress Skai Jackson (Disney’s “Bunk’d”), entrepreneur/fashion designer Alexandra Chang (The Zeitgeist) and aspiring astronaut Abigail Harrison (AKA Astronaut Abby) Photo Credit: Sweety High

Tegan Marie was part of Sweety High’s South By Southwest panel, “GEN Z: The New Power Brokers” at the festival on Sunday (March 12), and the girls’ online media platform commanded one of the largest collective audiences at the annual festival with a live streaming audience of 120,000, reaching over 750,000 in less than an hour. The mass live audience largely tuned in through Musical.ly’s live stream platform Lively.TV.

The panel was moderated by Sweety High founder and CCO Veronica Zelle, and included five young ladies who are all under the age of 20 with a combined online fanbase of 35 million: Marie, singer/dancer Mackenzie Ziegler (Dance Moms), actress Skai Jackson (Disney’s Bunk’d), entrepreneur/fashion designer Alexandra Chang (The Zeitgeist) and aspiring astronaut Abigail Harrison (AKA Astronaut Abby).

The panel provided insight on the qualities, values and consumer spending habits of the Gen Z generation (roughly 4-20 years old) that is predicted to be 40% of the U.S. consumers by 2020. Gen Z currently accounts for a quarter of the U.S. population, nearly 67 million kids, and makes up the largest, most tech-savvy generation in history with over $600 billion in direct and influenced spending annually.

“They carry tremendous spending power to influence almost everything,” Zelle said. “If you’re not culturally relevant enough to make it into her social feed, you will not be able to have a relationship with her [the Gen Z girl].”

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Lorie Hollabaugh

Hollabaugh, a staff writer at MusicRow magazine, has over 20 years of music business experience and has written for publications including American Profile, CMA Close Up, Nashville Arts And Entertainment, The Boot and Country Weekly. She has a Broadcast Journalism and Speech Communication degree from Texas Christian University, (go Horned Frogs), and welcomes your feedback or story ideas at [email protected].

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