Applebee's, Petco, Zaxby's Split Copy by Generation in New Trend

Petco, Applebee's, Baskin-Robbins and Morton Salt are running side-by-side ad copy labeled "Millennial PR Team" versus "gen z social team," turning a generational contrast into the fastest-spreading brand format of early May 2026.

The format is simple: one panel carries long, benefit-led copy with millennial signifiers like "fur babies" and "doggos"; the other compresses the same message into a few slang words and a wall of emojis. Petco's Gen Z version, posted May 4 on Facebook, reads: "be so fr (for real) they need another toy," punctuated with star and face emojis.

How are brands executing it?

Zaxby's used the trend on May 4 to promote its Cinco de Mayo deal. Its Gen Z copy — "zadd a zuesadilla zor zix zollars zabes" — replaces every first letter with a "z" and shows a quesadilla decorated with eyes, lips and hands. AMC Theatres joined on May 5 with an AMC Stubs A-List post on X, and Keurig Dr Pepper posted dual ads on May 3 describing its K-Mini Mate Plus to Gen Z readers as "she's tiny but she eats."

Ali Ghosh, Zaxby's brand marketing vice president, told USA TODAY the chain leaned in because the trend was "both timely and still early in adoption among brand accounts, giving Zaxby's an opportunity to stand out in-feed with culturally relevant content." He added the format let the chain deliver the offer "in a way that felt native to Instagram and Facebook, trend-driven and highly shareable."

Why did it click?

For Keurig Dr Pepper, the appeal is the contrast itself. "People don't engage with 'perfectly-curated' brand language, they engage with what feels real," said Alysse Schneider, the company's coffee social media manager. "The gap between those two (generations) is what makes this so relatable."

Hallie Santos, a community manager at a Phoenix ad agency, made a similar argument on LinkedIn. "The joke is simple; one side is polished, benefit-led brand copy, and the other is the same message translated into internet language: short, to the point, and funny," she wrote, noting that the side-by-side structure makes the contrast sharper than earlier versions of Gen Z-flavored brand language.

What are the critiques?

Not every practitioner is convinced. Jon-Stephen Stansel, a social media consultant and self-described "elder millennial social media marketer," called the trend "lazy and unoriginal marketing" in a LinkedIn post.

"Seriously, can we not perpetuate false generational stereotypes in our advertising?" Stansel wrote. "Does anyone besides marketers actually get this sort of self-referential meta-advertising? Does your target audience really care about the difference between your PR and social teams?"

That objection cuts at the format's core mechanics: the joke rewards audiences who already understand how brand teams operate, which may limit its reach beyond marketing-literate followers. The source material offers no engagement metrics from any participating brand, so claims of stand-out performance remain unverified. What is documented is adoption speed — at least seven national brands posted variants within roughly the same week in early May.

For social teams weighing entry, the calculus Zaxby's describes matters most: the brand saw value in joining "early in adoption." As more accounts copy the template, the differentiation argument weakens, and the window for standing out in-feed narrows.