Billboards and bus wraps carrying the White Fox Boutique logo began appearing on the streets of Australia in late December – the same month that Australia enacted its under-16 social media ban. The fashion label, built largely on its social media reach among Gen Z shoppers, was forced to rethink how to reach teenage audiences.

White Fox was not alone in its quandary, after Australia became the first country to bar under-16s from holding accounts on major social media platforms, stripping brands and influencers of direct access to millions of teenagers overnight. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act applies to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Kick and Reddit, with platforms facing fines of up to $49.5 million if they fail to take reasonable steps to keep under-16s off their platforms.

The legislation threw a spanner in the marketing works of many brands that target under-16s, according to Carmen Leong, an Associate Professor in the School of Information Systems and Technology Management at UNSW Business School. Speaking with Dr Juliet Bourke, Adjunct Professor in the School of Management and Governance at UNSW Business School for The Business Of, a UNSW Business School podcast, A/Prof. Leong said the change amounted to a full reset of the marketing ecosystem: one that businesses of every size would need to navigate in the months ahead.

How important is the influencer economy?

Before the ban, brands had spent years building relationships with teenage audiences through content creators and social media influencers rather than through traditional advertising. "People are able to relate to what influencers are talking about,” said A/Prof. Leong. “They're recommending a product or a service, it's much more real compared to advertisers or the brand coming straight at you who say, ‘Hey, I have got a great product for you.’ So, it's almost like a friend recommending something for you," she said.

The global influencer marketing market was worth an estimated US$32.55 billion in 2025, up from US$24 billion the previous year. A large share of this spend is aimed squarely at the youth audience – many of whom can no longer legally hold accounts on platforms in Australia that social media influencers (and the brands behind them) rely heavily on.

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"You could see how much the ban is having an impact on influencers who already have a massive presence and follower base on social media, because this is a business for them,” said A/Prof. Leong, who observed that businesses have had to find new ways to reach audiences and sustain the engagement they had built up over the years.

How are brands adapting?

In response, A/Prof. Leong described a portfolio approach among marketing teams, where social media had simply been the best-performing channel among many, rather than the only one available. "Some of the brands, for example, the White Fox Boutique, a fashion retailer, and Frank Green, are going from all the way from the digital world, coming back to the physical world, to having more events, more fans, activities offline," she explained.

Beyond this, A/Prof. Leong highlighted a second path: building on channels brands already owned and partnering with platforms adjacent to their category, rather than relying on individual influencers. "Can you move your social media followers to those apps, and even think about working with channels or apps that are adjacent to your brand? If you are in gaming, for instance, instead of going through influencers, YouTubers, or Facebook accounts, can we actually work with relevant brands?” she asked.

"You could see how much the ban is having an impact on influencers who already have a massive presence and follower base on social media"

CARMEN LEONG

She pointed to education as an example: rather than working through influencers, brands in that space could consider advertising on education-focused YouTube channels. “That's the sort of ecosystem I'm talking about," she said.

Isn't moving to apps just a new form of social media?

Dr Bourke asked A/Prof. Leong whether teenagers who simply migrated from banned platforms to brand-owned apps had really left social media behind. A/Prof. Leong drew a distinction based on how each service operated: YouTube content, for instance, remained viewable without an account, while platforms such as TikTok and Facebook required sign-in to interact.

Brand-owned apps, however, came with a different set of risks. "That's where cyberbullying and harmful content could come in very, very easily, comparatively," she said, noting these apps typically operated with less oversight than the regulated social platforms teenagers were used to.

How should a business position itself for the next wave?

A/Prof. Leong suggested that brands begin by auditing every available channel, not just the one that had gone dark. "Businesses really have to take a step back and think about, okay, you have your 10 channels in front of you, one of them (hopefully one of the 10) being social media. And now that this one channel is being shut down, how do we leverage the other nine channels, so to speak – and one of them being very realistically the physical channels," she said.

She gave a working example in the form of McDonald's collaboration with Netflix's animated film KPop Demon Hunters. The chain built a range around the film's two rival groups, HUNTR/X and the Saja Boys, complete with a purple demon sauce, the Derpy McFlurry and collectable photo cards, folding an existing teen trend into its Happy Meal format.

"Kids are being drawn to this brand they already know through other channels, and McDonald's is doing it so smartly, tying it into their Happy Meals. And even think about this: this blind box that McDonald's has been doing for a while, but also, really, it's been amplified so much by Pop Mart," A/Prof. Leong said.

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Dr Bourke described this as a form of diversification – a point which A/Prof. Leong agreed with, while stressing that abandoning social media entirely was not the lesson to draw from the ban. "You shouldn't be giving up entirely, but of course, you have to readjust in the omnichannel strategies,” she said.

Which brands and industries feel the impact the most?

A/Prof. Leong identified two pain points for marketing teams stemming from the social media ban. The first one was consumer categories, where purchase decisions had traditionally leaned most heavily on influencer recommendations. The second one was where user interaction formed part of the product itself.

"We've talked about retailers, we talked about beauties and fashions, where you are seeing a lot of purchasing as influenced by what we call the influencers,” she said. “I think that, when it comes to products like fashion, beauty, and even products like gaming, which a lot of teenagers are into, there are a lot of interactions that are involved in these kinds of products."

"A lot of the time we are watching those YouTube videos together in the living room, so this is the way kids are growing up"

CARMEN LEONG

Gaming as a category stood out in particular, given how much of its appeal rested on social interaction rather than the game alone. "You're not just consuming the product, you're not just playing the games, but you're interacting with your friends and other fellow gamers in the product,” said A/Prof. Leong. “So those interactive elements are key in the influencer economy.”

Can a regulatory crisis become a branding opportunity?

Dr Bourke raised the possibility that businesses that are willing to embrace the restriction (rather than merely comply with it) could position themselves as responsible operators in the eyes of parents. A/Prof. Leong drew a parallel with China, where the government had imposed limits on the time children could spend on gaming platforms rather than a full account ban.

The policy hit gaming companies hard at first, but some responded by reframing their relationship with families. Some of the big companies in China, such as WeChat, moved quickly and A/Prof. Leong said they started thinking about how to work with parents and wanted to be seen as organisations that help protect children, not just companies complying with government policy.

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A/Prof. Leong drew on her own personal experience to illustrate how families consumed content together. "If you think about my own experience as a parent and the scenarios where my children are consuming social media content,” she said. “A lot of the time we are watching those YouTube videos together in the living room, so this is the way kids are growing up."

Dr Bourke noted the parallel with earlier generations of family television viewing, where content built to appeal across age groups (such as SpongeBob SquarePants) had long given parents and children a shared point of reference.

What comes next for engaging young audiences?

Moving forward, A/Prof. Leong outlined two paths brands were likely to pursue. The first was a continuation of the offline pivot already underway. As brands worked around the ban, she reiterated that they would lean more heavily on physical events and offline interactions to maintain engagement, shifting from the digital world to the physical one.

The second involved engagement migrating into private, unregulated spaces beyond the reach of the new law. "Some of this engagement might shift into the closed space,” A/Prof. Leong observed. “They're looking at those platforms and social media, not necessarily social media channels, but online platforms that are not subject to the scrutiny of the social media ban, as simple as WhatsApp groups," she said, adding that she had already observed influencers in China's hyper-competitive platform market using private groups to retain audiences across rival apps.

Top 5 recommendations for marketing professionals

1. Audit the full marketing channel mix rather than treating the loss of social media reach as a reason to withdraw from the youth market. A/Prof. Leong's "10 channels" framework offers a practical starting point: map every channel a business uses, identify which sit outside the ban's reach, and redirect budget there before cutting youth marketing spend altogether.

2. Build owned channels, such as branded apps and adjacent partnerships, that sit outside the scope of the social media restriction. This includes category-adjacent placements, such as advertising on education-focused YouTube channels rather than through individual influencers, and developing existing digital assets, like loyalty apps, to carry the community engagement once held by social media.

3. Strengthen physical and retail presence to reach audiences no longer accessible through direct platform interaction. White Fox Boutique's outdoor advertising, MCoBeauty's supermarket and pharmacy placement, and McDonald's in-store collaboration with KPop Demon Hunters show how retail visibility and cultural partnerships can recover this reach, with pop-ups or in-person activations offering a lower-cost entry point for businesses without an existing retail footprint.

4. Design campaigns that include parents as co-viewers rather than as a barrier to reaching teenage audiences. A/Prof. Leong's own experience of watching YouTube videos with her child points to a genuine shared consumption pattern, one that campaigns can be built around using the same cross-generational logic that made content such as SpongeBob SquarePants effective for decades.

5. Monitor audience migration into closed messaging platforms, an outcome already observed in more heavily regulated markets such as China. This shift removes the visibility and moderation tools available on mainstream platforms, so marketing and compliance teams should coordinate early on how to track it and what safeguards apply if a business chooses to operate in these spaces.