Can the CEO be your best (millennial) marketer?
We know when CEOs speak it can have a big impact on their stock. But do potential customers, beyond the investment community, respond to CEO external communications? And what about millennials, who bring their own brand of skepticism to the table?
I found myself asking these questions recently while working on a CEO communications assignment for a top global airline who wanted to use their CEO to appeal to the next generation of travelers--millennials. In essence, I needed to figure out what it would take for a CEO to become the company's most effective marketer and ambassador to the much younger (and cooler) crowd. Or if that was even possible.
I found airline Chief Executives, like most other CEOs, speak externally about their company's growth (or lack thereof) or spend their time in the public eye defending a costly error the company or one of its employees has made. Unless you're a trader, not very compelling stuff.
For B2B marketers, millennials are an ever important audience. They are no longer the leaders of tomorrow. As the current majority of the labor force, they are the leaders of today.
So what do millennials want from brands anyway? Recent research shows they want their brands to:
Engage (and provide a reason to engage back)
Give back and be socially responsible
Be transparent
Be human vs. a faceless corporation
These are not the traits of a typical CEO's external communication style. But if a CEO can pull these off and endear millennials to their brand, the rewards can be worth it:
73% will pay extra for products from a company dedicated to social and environmental change
85% correlate their purchasing decisions to the responsible efforts a company is making
80% participate in loyalty programs
43.5% use social media to spread the word about products or services
There are a select few CEOs who do this well, providing a model for other CEOs to follow. Among them are the obvious--Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Howard Schultz--and the less obvious--Google's new leader, Sandar Pichai and PepsiCo's seasoned Chief Officer, Indra Nooyi.
Each possess a blend of admiration from millennials, employees, and the general public. And both receive an inordinate amount of positive press because they stand for something and have a well-defined platform. Two in particular score high points with millennials.
PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi is a leading voice on leadership, business, and diversity in the workplace. And while she's vocal about a number of social issues, she also communicates how her company can help solve some of these issues. For example, she has been vocal about the importance of health and said it’s up to Pepsi to help solve “one of the world’s biggest public health challenges, a challenge fundamentally linked to our industry: obesity”.
“To get the best you have to pick from
the entire population.”
Pepsico's Indra Nooyi on diversity
Sandar Pichai, Google's newly appointed CEO, is typically a private person, but he is willing to speak out about certain causes that he believes in. He has a tremendous ability to see what's ahead and mobilize people around his vision for the future and Google's role in getting us there. In large part, he accomplishes this by showing his personality via social media. And he is a regular visitor on college campuses.
"Let's not let fear defeat our values."
Google's Sandar Pichai on the U.S. election
They and the other select few who are able to reach the minds of millennials have these common characteristics:
Highly visible and vocal, especially on social media, and not just when a crisis demands them to be.
Speak (and market) to where millennial values lie, not where the status quo expects them to be.
Visionaries of their industry and able to communicate how that translates into making millennials' lives, and the world at large, better.
Take a stand, especially on social causes.
Well-liked by employees, who are harder to fool as they have an insiders view.
While the jury is still out on the airline CEO, it is possible, and imperative for CEOs to connect with the millennial generation. But it takes more than run of the mill investor relation pieces and crisis communications.
