Generation Y (those born from 1982 to 1997) has received a lot of buzz recently. Indeed, much has been made of Gen Y attitudes over the past few months (see this Post). Gen Y “millennials” are apparently looking for:
- Better work-life balance
- “Flex” work hours
- More time to travel
- Purpose driven companies
Many I talk to in Gen Y are indeed pushing for their companies to find “a purpose”. Millennials want to work for companies that actually stand for something.
But wait! One could be cynical with all this talk about purpose driven Millennials…last year a San Diego University Study bashed the Gen Y kids. The study was entitled: Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before.” Here is a link to an interesting commentary on the article by Evan Maloney, which sparked some passionate comments!
Whatever you think about the Millennials, they aren’t wrong if they want to see more purpose at work. I had the pleasure of stumbling upon a great internal P&G blog today written by Matt Carcieri. He notes in a recent post that Brand Purpose is not just a nice to have…it is actually a winning model.
Matt leaves reminds us of a couple of good resources on the topic of purpose: Built to Last and Firms of Endearment. Both books call out purpose as a serious value creator.
What do you think about Gen Y?
Two things happened this week to prompt this post about the halfway point of 2008.
1. I looked over at the calendar and saw the month of JUNE staring me down..
2. I took part in a great discussion on grassroots/personal sustainability with Saatchi & Saatchi S.
GROWTH:
As we all know, personal growth is not automatic. When we stop learning, we stop growing and when we stop growing there is no way we will reach our full potential. All too often, we let life get pretty routine & our passions then start to wane. Once our passions start to wane, we tend to get lazy and even fall asleep at the wheel. So I am asking you (and myself)…are we heading down the path envisioned at the start of this year? And what about that seminar, or that book reading plan? Where do we stand with our relationships? Are we reducing our carbon footprint?
THE GOOD NEWS:
There is still time left in 2008!
PERSONAL SUSTAINABILITY
Many of us set out this year to start becoming more Green or BLUE or whatever, but maybe we have been a bit slow to start. S & S S has proposed a way for corporations to help “nudge” people toward change via simple voluntary commitments called Personal Sustainability Practices (or PSPs). In a nutshell, S&S S’s PSPs are SMART…(3 acronyms in 1 sentence!)
Sustain the planet
Make you happy
Affect the community
Repeatable
Take visible action
PSP Examples: Biking to work. Parking in the spot that’s farthest from where you’re going. Changing your lights bulbs to CFLs. Caring for a park.
Picture credit: Pushing America by hypertypos
NUDGE ME PLEASE
Currently, P&G is competing against several other companies in Switzerland to see which company can get the most employees to bike to work during the month of June. I realized after the S&S S discussion that I had been gently “Nudged” by my company into a sort of PSP via the corporate biking to work incentive program. Indeed, I haven now decided to turn biking to work into my own PSP. Side Note: For more discussion on using “nudges” to improve health/wealth decision making, check out the much hyped recent book, NUDGE by Thaler & Sunstein (tks to my dad for recommending). Click here to check out a blog called the lazy environmentalist. Josh Dorfmann keeps his blog packed with ideas for sustainable day to day decision making. You might find something in there that you can make a PSP.
PSPs are a great idea…what are yours?
Today, I had the pleasure of hearing Saatchi & Saatchi S talk about their vision of a mass social consumer movement that goes beyond “green” and lands “in the BLUE”. In the words of Adam Werbach at S&S S.
BLUE is a platform for sustainability that goes beyond the deep, beautiful green of environmentalism Green puts the planet at the center of the dialogue. BLUE puts people at the center…BLUE integrates all four streams of sustainability: social, cultural, economic, and environmental. BLUE puts the way we treat ourselves and each other at the center of our focus.
I like the idea of BLUE. As I have talked about in previous posts, getting more people/consumers involved in change is critical. The guys at Saatchi & Saatchi S. have done an excellent job in coming up with a new idea to widen the focus beyond green.
Saatchi & Saatchi S. also propose a change to the classic 4 Ps of marketing…here are their “3 Ps”.
Price, Process, and Purpose.
PRICE: First, we need to democratize sustainability and make it available to everyone. You shouldn’t have to be rich to be sustainable.
PURPOSE: What’s the purpose of what you’re buying? Do you need it? Does it fit into the healthy practices in your life?
PROCESS: What was the process to make the product? Was it energy intensive? Did it use pesticides or petroleum? Were the workers paid a fair wage? How will it be disposed of?
To track sustainability-focused campaigns, Saatchi and Saatchi S also have a new blog called The Wash. Go over and check it out. I have added it to my blogroll.
Cause marketing campaigns are on the rise…indeed, companies have increased their “cause spend” significantly since 2005 (click here for details). All this increase in spending would suggest that marketing mix models (within companies) are signaling high ROIs for cause related campaigns. But is this really the case? Are TV, Print, Interactive campaigns centered on cause being rigorously measured internally? Jack Neff posits in a recent AdvertisingAge article that YES, there is an ROI for Doing Good but admits that numbers are “hard to come by.”
Wouldn’t it be great to see cause campaigns measured more effectively? If there was more convincing data available to the global marketing community, doing good would become even more fashionable…
On m-cause, I discuss marketing and good causes. Sometimes I talk about P&G (my company). Sometimes I talk about life in Europe. Sometimes I talk about random things. If you want to connect further, email me at roborj@yahoo.com or connect with me on Facebook. If you see any "good" stuff happening out there, please let me know...