Millennials’ Don't Have A "Social Conscience", So Don't Build Your Retail Strategy Around This Myth
February 12,2015
Fortune has published a commentary from NRG Energy CEO David Crane about the "divestment" campaign against fossil-fuel companies, and while describing NRG's favorite demographic, millennials, he wrote something which just doesn't ring true.
Crane writes that millennials are, "a generation that wants there to be a purpose and a social conscience embedded in every consumer decision they make."
This is not the first time NRG has emphasized millennials as some sort of transformative generation with a social conscience.
If millennials' purchasing decisions and behavior are driven by a social conscience, we'd hate to live under such a regime. Because, based on their favorite products and services, millennials' social conscience apparently accepts worker abuse, misogyny, and experimentation on uniformed subjects as tolerable tradeoffs for their desired services.
We reach this conclusion based on the track record of millennials' favorite companies -- Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Uber, Facebook, and Google.
An Uber senior exec floated developing Nixonian enemies lists to combat the press, and the company has been alleged by some to have a, "misogynistic culture that causes it to under-invest in protecting the safety of women."
Hardly actions which we'd call consistent with companies that have a social conscience.
But do millennials care? Based on the lack of "divestment" campaigns for any of the above companies, we'd have to say, No.
Instead, these companies are hailed as "progressive" and "disruptive", and adored by millennial zealots.
That's because millennials don't have a social conscience, or at least don't act on it. Like most things millennials do, it's all about spouting platitudes about "socially responsible" companies, not actually following through on that behavior. To millennials, image is more important than substance. It doesn't matter what a company's track record is, as long as they tout progressive causes, greenwash their companies with some token renewable purchases, and gush mantras against traditional corporatism and greed (all while laughing all the way to the bank as millennial zombies eat up the propaganda), millennials will love you.
Indeed, such is evident in the companies targeted for divestment. Crane notes in Fortune that divestment is not targeting consumers of fossil fuels. And while Crane cites several reasons for this, the most evident is that, millennials don't want to have to take any action which effects them
Targeting Big Oil or Big Coal isn't going to impact the life of your everyday millennial, but they can sound important doing it.
But start requiring companies like Apple or Amazon to be socially responsible, that would require millennials to disrupt their own lives.
Millennials would rather bask in their own vanity by posting to Facebook how evil non-progressive companies are, rather than actually taking action by boycotting Apple or Amazon until conditions improve. If millennials cared about carbon, they'd live a much more disconnected life, free from technology powered by carbon-spewing generation, but instead, they make a meaningless show of caring (Earth hour), but then gobble up electrons the other 364 days of the year (and not for some greater good, like electrifying developing nations, but to vainly post to Facebook what they had for lunch).
Now, all that being said, we do agree with NRG that millennials, currently, are more green-focused than the average consumer, and targeting that market makes sense. However, it's not because they are millennials and have been imbued with some sort of social conscience; it's because they're young, and they skew progressive and green.
Just like any other generation. All the way back to the college students who brought us Earth Day. They probably thought they had a social conscience too. But what happened to it?
They got old, and green became less important. Millennials will too, eventually, and don't expect their tenuous "social conscience" to buck the trend repeated over the last 40 years.