Dear Big Brands, Your "CSR" needs...CPR - Sincerely, Millennials

I think we can all agree it’s currently a bit of a confusing world. We’re six months into having a controversial U.S. President (whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or…free-thinking Millennial??). Outside of the U.S. needless to say there’s similar uncertainty floating around. France just elected a quite progressive President, the Middle East is increasingly volatile and parts of South America, Africa, and Asia are newly volatile (maybe Australia had it right by actively migrating their land mass towards isolation?).

In any regards, things are “weird” right now shall we say. Numbers wise, the global economy is actually strong (projected 2.9% 2017 growth1) and the U.S. economy is strong as well per leading indicators2 (press bias aside). But without even seeing metrics we all know the “comfort” index of most people is quite low. Most people can’t travel without thinking first and for some people (women, immigrants, minorities, and beyond)…you know, only 70%+ of our population…it seems you can’t even live your current lives without having to think twice. This is just unacceptable. And while our current President may not help this, this is far bigger than him.

Large corporations all seem to understand the importance of one trend: going digital/mobile. And while they may not all be there yet (see: large organization mobilization challenges), they are certainly trying. But one adjustment that could be equally valuable to big brands and more easily mobilized is being hyper socially conscious, especially right now.

In the old world we had a term: “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR). Barf. Jeez, big brands, don’t mind us humans twisting your arms to impose this mandatory need. Talk about the need for a brand refresh. And so some large brands did this – some even had a explicit department for this. It was near-term “good business” and also created some longer-term halo benefits as well. But it was a “nice to have” in that day. Core business operations came first and it made sense at the time.

But big brands: THIS.IS.NO.LONGER.A.NICE-TO-HAVE. What’s more is that you must lead this wave or risk becoming dinosaurs. Having your generic CSR and your mandatory annual charity day boxes checked no longer a strategy makes.

Millennials now comprise 33% (and rising!) of the addressable U.S. population3. We’re 83M and counting. And like us or not, we’re crucial to your business. And what’s more? According to a Millennial Marketing? survey, ~50% of Millennials would be more willing to make a purchase from a company if their purchase supports a cause. Beyond that, I’d even argue many who aren’t Millennials (Gen Zers, Gen Xers) are thinking in a similar way at this point.

Don’t want to listen? There’s a perfectly suited grave site for you right next to other traditional businesses (see: BCBG, The Limited, Bebe, American Apparel, Radio Shack, with Sears, Kmart, JC Penney, Macy’s Abercrombie & Fitch, Guess, Crocs, Wet Seal, Payless and GameStop all in trouble). To be clear, I’m not suggesting these guys all died/are hurting explicitly because they weren’t attuned to current social needs (in fact Tom’s shoes, one of the original examples of social consciousness, is in trouble). Needless to say several of these brands had trouble migrating to the digital world – this in itself could’ve sunk them even with the dial-up of social consciousness. But with half of all Millennials saying social consciousness can shift their purchase decision (with a large skew in cities, the primary commerce centers for a lot of these companies) I think we might be able to say the converse too for still standing companies. Said differently, you can go digital/mobile. You might even be able to pivot your business model well to account for these trends (a good example of this is Best Buy who went more digital, developed price match to combat showrooming trends, and turned their stores into warehouses/distributions centers, amongst other things). But even companies doing something similar are missing the importance of this need for increasing social consciousness.

So what does this mean? Well, to CFOs this may look like a new explicit cost line-item. To brand, PR, and marketing departments this may look like a rebrand, a messaging overhaul, a tone makeover, a channel realignment, and all of the consequential internal/agency brand guideline updates. To biz dev teams this might change the face of prospect lists and partnership guideline matrices. And probably most importantly in the near term, research and data science departments, time to start brewing a serious pot of coffee. You must start to understand who your current customers are, who your target customers are and equally importantly what these people (yes, people) want from this 2017+ world.

Fun and frictionless is simply not good enough anymore.

About the Author

Athan Slotkin is the Founder of glocal, an ultra-personalized recommendation engine designed for our modern world. He’s also the Founder of facesoftravel.org and A5 Realty and always happy to talk loyalty and rewards strategy and general business strategy / entrepreneurship. To learn more about any of these or if you want to discuss something related, reach out any time.

1: conferenceboard.org

2: Forbes, CNBC, thebalance.com

3: U.S. 2016 Census, ages 18-80 years old

4: millennialmarketing.com