Op Ed: How To Monetize The Millennial Love Of Coffee

via Datassential’s report

Everyone’s after that sweet, sweet Millennial paper—be it allowance, trust fund, or unrecoupable college loan. Despite claims of being lazy good-for-nothings, the 18-34 year-olds seem to have a lot of buying power and disposable income, and oh how companies covet it. Many reports have been commissioned by thirsty corporations interested in capitalizing on the Millennial dollar, and now there’s one about coffee.

The report was brought to light by Food & Wine’s article titled “Millennials Have All The Feels About Coffee“, whose headline perhaps intentionally gave me all the feels—punchy ones. But let’s not shoot the reblogger. “Millennials: The Language of Coffee and The Role of Sustainability” was commissioned by S&D Coffee & Tea to figure out what those darn kids are thinking when they’re buying a orange mocha cold brew-cinos or whatever. You may remember hearing about S&D in the news recently when they were purchased for around $355 million by Cott Beverages, the makers of RC Cola, Snapple, and [woof] Orient Emporium Tea.

Performed by Datassential, the study is 14 pages of terrible Getty Image-type clip art of young people smiling and holding coffee beverages (though a Kees Van Der Westen Spirit does make a cameo in one, so that’s pretty cool) to give visual cues for how “emotionally engaged” Millennials are with their coffee.

“And how can I monetize this emotional engagement?” you might be asking, Pavlov’s bell ringing in your eyes, on-trend French bulldogs salivating at the ready, water dish full of La Croix. Simple: talk about sustainability. That’s what the kids crave. Of the 904 people surveyed, the term “sustainably-sourced” received the favorability rating, with “organic” and “Fair Trade Certified” being the highest indicators of sustainability. Responders also showed a strong propensity for “locally-sourced” coffee. What does that even mean? If you are being asked for your opinion because of your age/buying power, you’re probably in a first world country. There is no locally-sourced coffee here, you dipshits, unless you took this poll in Hawaii or near that one farm in Santa Barbara. Please stop giving the other generations reasons to hate us by caricaturing what they already think we are.

The worst part is, there’s nothing inherently wrong with those impulses. Wanting to buy stuff that is grown in a non-evil way and connects with a community doing non-evil things is itself not evil. Wanting to do good with your purchasing power is not a bad thing. Just make sure your heartstrings aren’t attached directly to your wallet without first stopping over at your thinky place, because that will help you distinguish actually buying ethically from being tricked out of your hard-earned dollar by some faceless corporation going point-for-point down some marketing bozo’s glossy buzzword report.

Here’s a fun game: after reading the report, count how many instances on the S&D Coffee homepage appear to be a direct response to the findings. I got three.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.

The post Op Ed: How To Monetize The Millennial Love Of Coffee appeared first on Sprudge.

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