Because of various migration flows in Flanders many urban areas have become more and more multicultural and multilingual, as is the case in the former ghettoized areas (cités) of Limburg, where a new urban vernacular – often called Citélanguage – has appeared. This vernacular has lately gained popularity in mainstream media and has been assumed in public and commercial campaigns to address Flemish youth, albeit its efficacy had barely been explored. This paper joins theoretical insights from language accommodation theory, sociolinguistics and advertising studies to explore the persuasiveness of this exemplar of youth slang. It examines the influence of advertising slogans in Citélanguage on youngsters from Limburg, while reckoning with their local identity (living inside or outside Genk), their ethnic identity (youngsters with or with no ethnic background) and other sociodemographic features as possible predictors of advertising responses. Additionally, the social meanings attributed to Citélanguage are scrutinized, as Citélanguage has been formerly found to elicit both positive and negative language associations. These social meanings are evoked by means of an experimental free response task and then quantified based on former affective norms studies. The results validate that language accommodation may be a workable strategy to address the wider youth population in Flanders, as it transcends classic sociodemographic segmentation criteria. The valency attributed to Citélanguage accounts for variances in advertising attitudes and particularly directs the behavioral intentions of Flemish youth with no migration background. Departing from these findings as well as the limitations of this inquiry, this paper debates the caveats, opportunities and added value of urban vernaculars in advertising and stipulates a tentative agenda for future interdisciplinary work.