A while back, our founder Luke Faccini had a chat with the wonderful folks over on the Business Essentials Podcast about renaming your brand and the right time to do it, you can check it out here.

Recently though, he was invited back to share more of his amazing insights! This time he discusses the millennial demographic and delves into the importance of making this demographic a focus for business success.

Read on to find out what happened, we’ve got the transcript here for you again! Or, if you’re more of a listener then just click the play button below for the full podcast.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast to keep up with Luke in the near future!

The Big Business Case For Millennials 

From BE media production. This is Business Essentials, practical advice and ideas to grow your business.

Peter Leads:

welcome to this episode of business essentials podcast. I’m Peter Leads. The first of their generation were born in 1983 and entered the workforce in 1998. Like all of us, Millennials are getting older. These days, they’re leading some of the fastest growing companies in the world and their purchasing power is massive. If you don’t have Millennials in your workplace, you read a disadvantage in future proofing your Business says Luke Faccini, CEO and founder of brand agency, The Sponge. Luke explains how to attract Millennials to work for you shortly. First, the Dawson asks, why should Millennials be a priority for our businesses?

Luke Faccini:

They are now 35% of the workforce, so that’s a big enough reason that now is the right time. But if you look 10 years into the future, 2030 almost 10 years, they will be 75% of the workforce. So if you want to attract and retain Millennials, which unless you’re going out of business or you’re looking at robotics, then you’ll want to make them a priority.

So why are Millennials any different to any previous generation?

Luke Faccini:

Yeah, there’s a lot of this. We are in the era of connectedness with social media and everything on demand. The Millennials have grown up with that where we haven’t, so they are aware, they’re more aware of what’s going on in the world. They’re more educated. They’ve been spoiled by their parents, which leads them to be known as the stereotype of the entitled generation.

That’s right. And so where does their sense of entitlement come from?

Luke Faccini:

It’s a funny one that, could it be the trophies that they’d been given just for showing up? I don’t know. Could it be that everything seems to be relatively easy for them because their parents have worked so hard to provide that. And I do generalize this just to show how this concept is really important in I guess a socially more mature or a higher consciousness society. It doesn’t play well for everywhere and especially in emerging markets. But for Australia or the US for UK, Canada, having their basic needs met, it is a thing.

So you are saying that we need to consider how our businesses and how our brand sits with this particular age group, but what does that really mean?

Luke Faccini:

Really, if you don’t evolve your business, it means that the people that your brand is currently attracting both for team members and for customers will eventually die off, which means your business will eventually die off. So if you want to future proof your business and attract and retain awesome talent in the millennial pool and actually evolve your customer base to be Millennials also, then you do need to think about this.

Well, exactly what do you need to think about? Do you need to think about proving that you’re changing the world or something like that?

Luke Faccini:

No, it doesn’t have to be that big an impact. You can just rethink potentially how you do your business, whether what you’re producing is done ethically or sustainably and then incorporate that message, that sustainability message, that ethical message into your brand. Make it a part of the culture of the organization, the story that you tell, something that you can authentically live as an organization.

Because not every business can support, uh, you know, doing good in the world type brand can it? I mean making widgets is a bit different from running environmental projects. So do all businesses nonetheless need to take note?

Luke Faccini:

Millennials want to work for a brand that has meaning, that has a positive impact. You don’t necessarily have to be the next world changer and do everything completely without keeping a profit in the organization or without having financial success. But you do need to think about how you’re producing what you do. We just, whatever they might be, the way that they’re produced could be empowering a community. It could be using an alternate material that’s beneficial for the planet. It could be that widget done differently could actually solve a big problem in the world. So it doesn’t have to be a massive shift. It doesn’t have to be a total charitable transformation. It could just be how you’re doing business now and just realigning it. So you give the Millennials and people that align with that way of thinking, something to align with.

What about business to business enterprises as opposed to companies dealing direct with consumers do business to business businesses need to consider millennials too and their ideals?

Luke Faccini:

73% of millennials will pay a premium for goods that are sustainable. And that’s a pretty significant shift in how it was, I think it was 50% maybe five years ago. So it’s a growing trend and if you’re not focusing on the end consumer, this audience still wants to work for and be involved with creating sustainable goods. So you might be a business to business model, you still need people to help you deliver on that. And increasingly the buyer on the other end for that other business will be a Millennial and we’ll want to support brands and businesses that have those values that they align with.

So what do we need to do then to win the hearts and minds of the millennial generation?

Luke Faccini:

It depends on the state of your business. It could be a cultural realignment. It could be looking at your deliverables and how they’re produced and looking at a more sustainable and ethical way. It could be about finding a cause that aligns with what you do that has a clear connection with what it is that you sell. And then making that a focus of supporting that. And again, doesn’t have to be a major thing, but if you do it authentically and build it into your values, into your purpose and into your brand story, into your recruitment process and into your sales, you will get that story into those, uh, hungry millennial minds.

Well, final question, Luke. What about Gen x? Are they continuing the demanding ideals of millennials?

Luke Faccini:

Yeah. Well, in my book (Impact Brand Storytelling), I address this concept as the millennial concept because it’s more of an era today rather than an age or a demographic. I’m clearly not a millennial. I feel like a millennial, but I am a generation x and I feel this shift. I feel this consciousness evolution is happening and I know many baby boomers that are too. So it’s not so much making your brand millennial proof, which it is. It’s making it future proof. So I encourage everyone to take a look at this.

Peter Leads:

Luke Faccini, The Sponge, and that ends Business Essential podcast. So you don’t miss out on future episodes. Why not subscribe? And if you found this valuable, we’d love you to leave a review.

For further information about us, or if you’d like to listen to more interviews like this one, visit businessessentials.com.au, we hope you’ve enjoyed Business Essentials podcast. I’m Peter Leads. Thanks for listening.

This Business Essentials podcast has been produced by BE media production, building engagement and adding value through quality audio communication.

Hungry for more?

Hope you enjoyed this episode of Business Essentials! If you’re interested in learning more about millennial proofing and how it can help your brand, why not have a chat to us?