OPINION Have a very corporate Christmas
Waking up to how to extract the last Christmas dollar
Dear Santa, I hope you think I’ve been good this year and bring me some nice presents. I don’t care what they are, as long as they are sustainable and family-orientated.
Love, Little Timmy pretend that kids are environmentally conscious, familyfocused angels?
Perhaps that’s just a reflection of the corporates themselves.
Whether it’s banks, retailers or power companies, corporates would rather present as sustainable, diversity-loving charitable organisations than profit-making businesses.
Nike threw its support behind controversial liberal sports star Colin Kaepernick and adidas was quick to dump the increasingly illiberal rapper Kanye West.
On balance, I think this is a good thing. But as a (sort of) liberal, I would think that.
More interesting is why it’s happening.
I think it’s because corporates are future-focused.
They aren’t consulting moral philosophers about these decisions. They are consulting their research divisions.
They are following the numbers. It’s not quite a democracy.
Voting in actual democratic elections (especially in local government) skews towards the values of older people who turn out in much higher numbers.
That keeps conservatives in the game politically.
But corporates care more about who is turning out to spend.
Those numbers skew younger — and woker.
Young people are more valuable economic units because they have a longer life span ahead of them as customers.
So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by politically correct Christmas lists.
If woke millennial parents want their wooden toys FSC-certified and their Barbies made of recycled plastic, then that’s what kids are going to get.