Take a look at the Instagram profiles of Gen Z users. You'll quickly realize they keep them intentionally sparse. Why? There’s an overwhelming amount of pressure to be perfect and polished; and it’s stifled their creativity, reshaping how they show up online.

Recognizing this, Instagram expanded its beloved Close Friends feature to create a more controlled, depressurized, and playful space for Gen Z to engage on platform. The brand knew it needed a big, explosive idea to break through with the audience target though.

Knowing Gen Z doesn’t care for traditional advertising, or take well being talked at, Instagram tapped us to develop a razor-sharp POV and an explosive idea that would:

- Make the expanded Close Friends unmissable in culture

- Instantly connect with our target audience

- Generate a groundswell of earned media

- Lift brand sentiment with our target audience

- Drive new user signups on platform

On November 13th, 2023, 11.3 million people unknowingly found themselves inside Lil Yachty's Close Friends list. And they instantly took to the internet to share the news.

Instagram used the moment to launch its expanded Close Friends feature, extended from just Stories to now include Carousels, Reels, Notes, and In-Feed posts.

It started with the overnight addition to Lil Yachty’s Close Friends list. Then, was followed up with an unhinged selfie posted on Stories, revealing he’d thrown up during a recent performance. From there, he proceeded to drop captivating posts exclusively to his Close Friends that lowkey advertising all the newly expanded ways to share.

He premiered unreleased music in a Reel, shared a BTS look at tour life in a Carousel dump, and even sneak previewed his upcoming Nike AF1 project in-feed. Sure enough, the internet went berserk, making the stunt quickly spread like wildfire across culture.

Gen Z is not afraid to draw outside of the lines to fully unlock their creative spirit. They frequently hack systems and content to suit their needs, on their terms.

So we pushed Instagram to behave like their audience target and “hack” their own system. Knowing the ads that best resonate with Gen Z are purpose-driven, unobtrusive, and entertaining, allowing them to connect with it on a more personal level, we pushed Instagram to “hack” their own system. Doing so, would allow the brand to show up in an unprecedented way and take the world by surprise.

We knew behaving like the target would unlock our creative potential to make this idea explode in culture.

Instagram’s product team broke the mold to shock the world by secretly adding all 11.3M of Lil Yachty’s followers to his Close Friends list. Then, for the following two days, he treated them like his most trusted inner circle, sharing glimpses of his world with them through the expanded surfaces: Carousels, Reels, Notes, and Feed posts. We even temporarily changed Instagram’s like button to green, driving awareness of Close Friends.

Complex dropped the exclusive story.

Loved social personalities like Druski, Speedy Morman, 21 Savage, and Elsa Majimbo reacted.

And the internet went wild.

Together, we orchestrated a moment that made Close Friends unmissable in pop culture. The moment birthed new memes, trended globally, and has even turned into a replicable marketing tactic for creators and entertainers like Billie Eilish and Will Smith.

The best part? We did it without producing a single piece of original content.

By subtly leaning into Gen Z’s most important advertising tenets – authenticity, expression, and accessibility, we broke the fourth wall to make Close Friends explode in culture in ways no one ever saw coming.

As a result of this first-of-its-kind idea, we:

- Generated over 1B organic impressions

- Drove organic audience participation through UGC creation

- Increased Google Search volume for Close Friends by 300%

- Created Lil Yachty's four most engaged with posts of all-time

- Made Close Friends & Lil Yachty top trending topics on X and TikTok

- Grew conversation around Close Friends and Lil Yachty x Close Friends by 191% & 5400%, respectively

- Lifted brand sentiment amongst our Gen Z target

- Grew Lil Yachty’s Instagram follower count by over 700K, with over 60% coming from our target Gen Z consumer segment

- Created a replicable marketing tactic for creators and entertainers to deploy