Rival corporate giants join forces to get millennials acting on climate change

A coalition of otherwise rival global corporations announced on Tuesday they have jointly created a digital platform for young people to take action against climate change.

Many of the 29 partners behind Collectively.org are fierce competitors – such as drinks giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, consumer goods companies Unilever and Nestle, and global advertising groups WPP and Omnicom – but they have set aside their differences in a bid to engage and activate so-called millennials between the ages of 18 and 30.

In order to have maximum impact on social media, Facebook, Google and Twitter are partners on the project, which will focus on “passion points” such as innovations in fashion, food, design and technology and avoid the depressing consequences of inaction such as animal extinction, pollution and deforestation.

The approach is based on the idea that doom and gloom stories fail to inspire change. “Every single day, the most creative minds in the world are thinking, designing, testing, building and launching awe-inspiring new solutions to help us thrive,” according to Collectively.

“Collectively will connect millennials to the innovations that are shaping the future, making it easy for them to act, buy, invest and promote the ideas that they believe in. To be part of the solution.”

Finding common ground

The initiative breaks the corporate mould in several ways that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.

It sends a strong signal that large numbers of multinational companies are increasingly frustrated at the fossil fuel lobby’s stranglehold on the political process, and are prepared to become more involved in pressing for change.

While arch competitors have for many years been collaborating in pre-competitive areas such as the management of their supply chains, the website also represents an increasing willingness to join forces in the public arena.

The companies said that “the pace and scale of what’s required now demands new business models, based on radical collaboration with each other, with NGOs and with consumers”.

Corporations are obsessive about maintaining absolute control over all aspects of their brands, but in this case they have ceded some influence by setting up Collectively as a nonprofit venture. They have also agreed to keep their branding off the website in order not to damage its integrity in the eyes of those young people who may be cynical about the motives of big business.

While the pilot phase of the project will focus on the US and the UK, there are already plans to expand it into a global organisation, with negotiations taking place with businesses in India, China and Brazil by the end of the year, another 20 multinationals around the world are expected to come on board as well as NGOs which focus on engaging with young people.

Young media for a young audience

Another innovation is that rather than creating partnerships with traditional media organisations, Collectively is collaboration with Vice Media as well as Purpose, the creator of movements for social change, and sustainability NGO Forum For the Future.

Jonathon Porritt, founder director of Forum, said the digital platform would be a welcome antidote to the failure of politicians to act. “Back they come, election after election, with the same old growth-at-all-costs prospectus, with a few green sops thrown in, essentially to keep their own green-ish activists off their backs,” Porritt writes in Guardian Sustainable Business.

“That’s how it’s always been, and pretty much how it is today, which is why so many environmentalists hold the whole damn lot of them in contempt.

“Happily, beyond the grim reality and beyond the limitations of science, lies a very different impulse: unconstrained excitement at the rising surge of brilliant organisations and people already crafting the solutions to today’s converging crises.”

Keith Weed, the chief marketing officer and global head of sustainability at Unilever, which is the second largest advertiser in the world, says it is important to create a global movement of change.

“Maybe mother nature has invented a solution by creating the internet so that we can create movements at scale,” he told Guardian Sustainable Business.

“As individuals we are powerless, but collectively we are powerful. People are moving away from thinking about my world, my family and my next door neighbour to our world.

“There are a number of companies involved that normally compete but if we don’t collaborate to build awareness, engagement and action, all our efforts on the supply side such as ending deforestation will not succeed.

“The fact companies involved are not natural bedfellows shows we are on the edge of something. There is a growing momentum among individuals, governments and companies that this is an agenda to address. We are coming together collectively to inspire a generation to think differently.”

Weed said that if the project were to achieve only more awareness without increased activism, it would be deemed to have failed.

Niall Dunne, chief sustainability officer at BT, which is also a founding member, said the initiative highlighted that the world was nearing a tipping point on creating a global movement to address issues such as climate change.

He said: “We’ve seen the Rockefeller Foundation divesting from fossil fuels, long term investors wanting to put their money towards creating a low carbon economy and 400,000 people marching in New York on the largest ever climate rally. There is a real sense that the planets are aligning and by acting together, we have a real potential to reach a tipping point.”

While those aged 18-30 are socially aware and have a strong sense of purpose, Dunne says they feel there is no common platform on which they can build a movement. Research showed that young people were not opposed to corporate engagement but they do not want to be marketed at and Dunne says the project will “just die if it is brand heavy”.

He said: “This platform is the next beachhead for the sustainability movement and should be looking to engage hundreds of millions of people and change conspicuous consumption to mindful consumption.”

The brands will have a 50% representation on the board of directors of Collectively with the rest made up of NGOs and journalists.

The editorial committee will be comprised mainly of millennials, with expertise in sustainability, journalism and social movement building and there will also be an advisory panel.

Companies will be able to pitch stories to the website but Collectively insists that these will be subject to independent editorial guidelines. Collectively refused to say how much money the companies are investing in the project.

The full list of corporate partners is: Audi; BT Group; C&A Foundation; Carlsberg; Diageo; Facebook; General Mills; Google; Havas; IPG; Johnson & Johnson; Kingfisher; Lenovo; Marks & Spencer; McDonalds; Medialink; Microsoft; Nestlé; Nike; Omnicom; PepsiCo; Philips; SABMiller; Salesforce; Coca-Cola; Dow Chemical; Twitter; Unilever; WPP.

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