Big Oil goes prospecting for millennials
“This ain’t your daddy’s oil,” the advertisement proclaims, cutting to shots of spray paint being made and a wall covered in fanciful graffiti. “Oil strikes a pose. Oil taps potential. Oil pumps life.”
Oil, in short, is cool. The 30-second spot rolled out this year is part of a broader American Petroleum Institute campaign to “raise awareness about the role natural gas and oil has in economic growth, job creation, environmental stewardship, and national security.”
Dubbed Power Past Impossible, the ads by the lobbying arm of America’s oil giants are all about millennials, the generation of roughly 21- to 35-year-olds.
“There isn’t a company out there that isn’t chasing the elusive millennials, ” says Marty Durbin, the institute’s chief strategy officer.
Beyond boosting oil’s image among a group worried about its environmental impact, the Big Energy ad blitz has a more daunting task: convincing millennials to work for the industry.
While those jobs tend to pay well, attracting young workers won’t be easy. Unemployment in the US is at a 16-year low and talented engineering graduates are flocking to Silicon Valley.
As well, millennials prefer brands that come across as “conscious capitalists,” says Jeff Fromm, an expert in marketing to younger Americans. “Any mature industry has to think about the fact that there’s a new sheriff in town with new values, new spending habits.” This adds even more pressure on the oil industry to spiff up its image, insofar as it can, to lure young workers with lots of choices.
Asking a millennial to choose between a green-tech company like Tesla, which makes cars that don’t pollute, and an oil company, which fuels those that do, is a difficult proposition.
A McKinsey & Co study last year found 14 per cent of millennials would reject a career in oil because of the industry’s image. That’s the highest of any industry it polled. Only 2 per cent of US college graduates list the oil and gas sector as their first choice for a job, according to research by Accenture, a professional services company.
A study by EY found women were more likely to reject the industry than men. And the generation after millennials, commonly referred to as “Generation Z”, turned their nose up at oil jobs even more frequently.
Asked what they prioritise in a job, 56 per cent of millennials said salary, followed closely by work-life balance, job stability, and job happiness. Industry executives thought far more millennials were driven primarily by salary.
Millennials have a similarly dated outlook. EY found they view the oil industry as packed with roughnecks, and the work as “blue-collar, dangerous, and physically demanding,” despite much of the sector being office-based and engineering-focused.