Youthwashing: Cynicism or Realism?

by James Allen

We get it. We can hear the collective groan at the prospect of having to become familiar with yet another ‘_washing’ term, but just bear with us…

Youthwashing. Any guesses what it is?

No, it isn’t when a first-year undergraduate returns from university with a big bagful of laundry. Loosely, it refers to an institution or corporation manufacturing the fallacious impression that young peoples’ views are at the forefront of their agenda, while in reality those young people are merely tokenistic PR tools designed to curry favour with the Next Gen. 

In particular, it typically pertains to climate concerns, with the accusation first being levelled at the fossil fuels industry in 2019, when in response to Greta-mania, many companies all of a sudden had the bright idea of involving youth in their marketing. Just a few such examples: BP sponsored the “One Young World Summit”, Shell launched their #MakeTheFuture campaign, and the International Student Energy Summit sponsored by all the big names in the business. As such, It’s been thrown about a lot over the last week, following the debatable success of the COP26 Conference in Glasgow, which was ominously dubbed by many as the ‘most important conference of our lifetimes’. Gulp. 

As world leaders gathered - some travelling by private jet and some by a ten-strong motorcade (because of course that’s how you pull up to a climate conference without appearing even the slightest bit tone deaf) - there was also a distinct youthfulness that was being reached for, particularly on the Friday, when ‘Youth Empowerment’ was on the agenda. 

Several young climate activists received personal invitations to attend. Greta was, of course, top of the list - but also Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate, and Belgian activist Adelaide Charlier, as well as lesser known young people from all over the world who are members of youth associations for environmental protection, such as Youth For Climate. Granted, it may be a fairly uncharitable reading to deem this as anything other than a sincere attempt to give prominent young voices in the field a global platform. Yet this is not how it has been received.

There are question marks over whether the concerns of these young people are truly being heard (or even listened to) by those very world leaders who they are trying to influence. There was a feeling that it was more akin to when a mother gets her 10-year-old son to show Grandma the song he’s been learning on the guitar at Christmas, generally to be greeted by a chorus of ‘Aw, isn’t Little Timmy precious?’, rather than ‘That’s an interesting point on Carbon, we should be making notes’. 

Not wanting to appear either overly cynical or naive, we should probably entertain the possibility that the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Perhaps the invitation of these youth activists to the conference was entirely well-intentioned, but that doesn’t entail that those with substantive decision-making power were any more likely to take them seriously.

There’s an old saying: ‘you can lead a politician to water, but you can’t force them to give a sh*t about what a 15-year-old thinks about the environment’. 

However, in terms of the lessons that can be gleaned for brands, the intentions of the organisers aren’t overly important - all that matters is how it was interpreted by the Next Gen. The immediate cynicism in response to a potentially positive action is indicative of how uniquely discerning this generation is when it concerns issues they truly care about. Flag-waving isn’t enough for them. They’re willing to dig a little deeper. And, too often in the past when they have done so, they haven’t liked what they have found.

Young people want to be heard, and they want to be represented - whether by politicians, institutions or brands. But, naturally, they are resistant to becoming pawns for those very same, oft-duplicitous, groups. Token gestures don’t fly like they used to when almost each person has a device in their pocket capable of nigh-on endless research into the realities of those institutions, rather than just the appearances. 

The Next Gen are remarkably thoughtful - and sceptical. The line of thinking that goes ‘If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably pretending to be a duck’ is slightly comical, but can be somewhat associated with this generation. However, that needn’t be interpreted in the pejorative sense.

Gen Z don’t have trust issues born out of thin air - they genuinely feel as if they have been consistently let down by the arbiters of ‘truth’ from previous generations and the systems they have left in place.

And, in many cases, they might have a point. They can’t then be expected to immediately fall into line when those same arbiters suddenly perform a complete volte-face to align themselves with the new wave of prevailing public opinion. 

Referring back to COP26, there isn’t a great deal many of these world leaders can do to win back Next Gen trust. The horse has bolted in that regard. Yet the good news for (most) brands is that they are not implicated in the same way. That means lessons can be learnt from the mistakes of others. The Next Gen remember the brands that they feel supported by and stick with those brands - or perhaps more crucially, they remember those brands that they do not feel represented by, and will avoid them like the plague. 

Don’t start thinking about the Next Gen when it’s already too late.

And don’t fake it - they’ll be able to tell.