There’s a debt-shaped content opportunity waiting to be filled by young creators.
One of the reasons we’re launching the Prograd marketplace is to make the world of borrowing utterly understandable and unintimidating for young people. To that end, we want to see a revolution in the way credit information is digested of the scale of that seen in the retail investing space.
Credit-related content is dwarfed by investing tips and tricks 💸
As of Tuesday 15 March 2022, #Creditcard had amassed 957.5 million views on TikTok. You might think that seems a lot. But telling you that #Gamestop (gulp) alone boasts 1.3 billion brings a little context. #Cryptocurrency, #Investing and #Stocks boast another 5.3, 5.8 and 5.4 billion views respectively.
In fact, an accidental search for #Socks instead of #Stocks resulted in 1.9 billion views. The social media platform that is most successfully engaging Gen-Z has resulted in twice as many views of sock-related videos than credit card-related ones. As of August 2021, the UK’s total credit card debt was £56.5 billion, 10 times the size of the whole of the US sock market…
But maybe there’s just as much content out there on debt as there is on investing for young people and it’s just that the investing stuff gets more interaction? Nope. Querying Instagram tells us that as of Tuesday 15 March 2022 there were 1 million posts relating to #Debt and another 2.4m relating to #Creditcard, #Creditcards and #Loans collectively. #Stocks? 8 million. #Trading? another 16 million.
Why that needs to change 🔄
Okay, okay, I’ve very much laboured the point. But it’s a point worth labouring. Multiple studies have highlighted both the lack of traditional financial literacy amongst Gen-Z and the concurrent impact of financial stress on young people’s mental health — 60% of millennials and Gen Z are ‘constantly stressed’ about money.
Despite poor literacy levels, take-up rates of credit are high within Gen-Z. Our own 2,500-respondent-strong study found that 43% of 18-year-olds had taken out credit of some form above and beyond any government-provided debt. 45% of those 18-year-olds had taken out more than one form of credit. By 25, 83% had taken out debt and 81% of those had taken out more than one form of credit.
Given the substantial impact that being in debt has on young people’s day-to-day wellbeing, we desperately need to provide more captivating and sound debt-related guidance.
So what? 🤷♀️
Right, so taking out debt is a very common reality for young people. It impacts their day-to-day wellbeing very significantly. And it’s poorly represented on content channels. Sounds like an opportunity to us.
Prograd is looking to partner with talented Gen-Z influencers and micro-influencers to create great credit-related content. On top of that, we’re looking to bring a Resident Credit Expert into the team to bolster our own content pipeline.
In the meantime, obvs we’re on the Tok. We posted a video about APRs (yes, Annual Percentage Rates) that got 5k views in a day. Even my terrible Toto Wolff impression on the credit catch-22 got 1.7k views. Whilst you’re marvelling at my talent, you can give our Instagram and Twitter a follow.
Just imagine what the creator community could do with “Early Redemption Charge” or “Balance Transfer and Purchase Credit Card”. Phwoar.
Know anyone creating great content in this space? An investor or lender looking to get closer to what we’re doing? Get in touch at: james@prograd.uk
