Legacy for Millennials
Being an impossibly distant event, young people tend not to focus on their demise and legacy. However, today’s under-40s are painfully aware of the (bad) legacies bequeathed by previous generations: climate change, unaffordable housing, expensive tertiary education, and a dearth of stable jobs. To add insult to injury, millennial-bashing has become a hugely popular pastime; it’s the macro-scale version of your it-was-alright-in-the-70s great uncle mocking you for being a feminist or a vegetarian (and it smells like envy).
Those now in their 20s and 30s are less snowflake than resourceful. Thwarted by the old order, they are making artisan lemonade from their lemons of inequity. For housing, youngsters are getting creative: London has seen an exponential rise in canal boat dwelling in recent years, and the latest solution is campervan living. On the job front, overqualified and underemployed youngsters are registering as sole traders in droves, so that they can freelance and create their own work culture. They are time-rich, mortgage-free, low-carbon, and they are in love — as every youthful generation before them — with freedom and adventure.
Our young people come with added values: keenly aware of injustice, this lot are empowered by social media to discuss and act on their beliefs. Recent political, social and economic conditions have produced a generation with strong opinions about sustainability, politics, and social, racial, gender and sexual equality. Millennials’ desire to make a positive impact imbues their choices as sole traders, business creators and brand communicators, regardless of their socioeconomic status. What seemed at first a chasm between the young person and the notion of legacy may not be so wide after all.
A couple of years ago — and still talked about today — triathlete Alistair Brownlee helped his younger brother Johnny to cross the finish line, sacrificing his own chance of winning an important race. “I would have done it for anyone,” said Alistair (aged 28) afterwards, upturning everything we thought we knew about competitive sport. What is the point of a race if we are carrying our opponents over the finish line, scoffs your great uncle. I’m not sure, but helping each other makes winners of us all.
Growing up in the digital and social media age has created a generation of discerning consumers, prolific communicators, sharers, self-carers, and sophisticated self-branders. The dominant values of millennial entrepreneurial brands are pro-social, egalitarian, sustainable, slow, local, artisan, natural, organic. The phrase ‘social entrepreneurism’ defines their style of commerce. Our young business-creators are not NGOs — they need to make a living — but they strive to operate with ethics at the heart of their endeavours.
When we think of legends, we think about what they achieved and the lasting outcomes of their actions. They were the best, the first, the fast, the bold, the different, the strange, and they produced enduring change. They were often those who sacrificed a coveted prize for something greater, like love of humanity. Right now, millennials, with their savvy grassroots mentality, are inventing the world-changing brands that will be remembered in decades to come. In their own language, they are working with purpose, to have an impact. Which is what we at Greenspace call Creating Legacy.
(Our apologies to all cool great uncles).
