“This ain’t your daddy’s oil,” the commercial proclaims, cutting to shots of spray paint being made and a wall covered in fanciful graffiti. “Oil strikes a pose. Oil taps potential. Oil pumps life.” Oil, in short, is cool, the industry’s branding braintrust has declared.
As Bloomberg reports, the 30-second spot rolled out this year is part of a broader American Petroleum Institute campaign to “raise awareness about the role natural gas and oil has in economic growth, job creation, environmental stewardship, and national security.”
Dubbed Power Past Impossible, the ads by the lobbying arm of America’s oil giants are all about millennials, the generation of roughly 21 to 35 year olds which makes up the largest chunk of the American workforce.
“It’s a shift in our messaging and our target that’s been in the works for several years,” says Marty Durbin, the institute’s chief strategy officer. “There isn’t a company out there that isn’t chasing the elusive millennials.”
The Big Energy ad blitz has a more daunting task: convincing millennials to work for the industry. In the coming years, fossil fuel companies expect “to see a big turnover, sometimes called ‘the big crew change,’” Durbin says. “We started to reach out to different demographics—women, veterans, minorities—to educate them on what the industry does and to learn what would pique their interest.”
Getting millennials to take these jobs, which tend to pay well but come with their own risks, won’t be easy for an additional reason. Unemployment is at a 16-year low and talented engineering graduates are flocking to Silicon Valley for internships and first jobs that pay more than the median national wage.
This adds even more pressure on the oil industry to spiff up its image, insofar as it can, to lure young workers with lots of choices. Asking a millennial to work for an oil company instead of Tesla is a tough proposition.
