Stop all that corporate drivel and get to the point
Lots of recent heavy-duty research suggests that millennials and generation Z are different from other consumers.
According to such studies, these younger generations care more about ethical issues and the environment, they want to know what their pensions and investments are being used for, and they want to buy from companies that have a higher purpose than simply maximising profits.
Is this really true?
In reality, many younger consumers don’t really care – they want the best return on their investments (if they have any) and the cheapest goods, wherever they come from. Otherwise, it’s highly unlikely that fast-fashion specialist Primark – which has been mired in criticism over the way it treats its labour staff – would be the most successful chain on the high street.
But despite this, I believe that there is an underlying shift in attitudes, from old and young alike, on a number of fronts. Look at the Twitter outcry against the eye-catching £1 bikini offer from Missguided, or the rise of planet-friendly veganism among younger people.
And even if we didn’t like their methods, the recent Extinction Rebellion environmental protests didn’t just get a lot of support from millennials, but from their parents too.
Virtue-signalling, so popular on Twitter and Facebook, is moving into the real world, and that has a real impact on businesses.
For instance, fund managers are now challenging companies much more aggressively on their production. This is particularly apparent around packaging, after David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series highlighted the amount of junked plastic polluting the oceans.
So how can companies update their corporate messaging?
Companies need to change their communication style for a start – no more corporate robots please.
For some, separating themselves from the crowd by showing that they have a “higher purpose” could be an attractive business model. For the rest, it’s about authenticity and transparency. If what you say isn’t backed up by action, you are in trouble.
So if you tell us that you’re working to improve diversity, you’d better have a diverse set of spokespeople.
If you tell us you promote green technology, you’d better have experts who can explain the benefits in a non-technical manner, so it doesn’t sound like a lot of mumbo-jumbo.
If you have a social purpose, your staff should have examples that show how this percolates through the organisation, rather than just looking like a marketing gimmick or greenwash. If you tell us how hard you’ve worked to pay above minimum wage, you’d better not get found out for using suppliers who are exploiting child labour.
It’s more important than ever for the public face of organisations to be human, and authentic, admitting where mistakes have been made and further progress is required.
And to make this work, the substance has to be there as well.
I am fed up with the kind of media training that produces the corporate robots who are always on-message but never answer the question, and I suspect a lot of other people are too.