The 'M' word in fuel marketing is not 'mileage.' It's 'millennials'

Millennials are today's low-hanging fruit for a joke. I'm guilty. A few weeks ago at a party, discussion turned to their sense of entitlement. The office gets pizza. The millennial gets a salad. The office gets the local donut chain. The millennial wants Krispy Kreme. A friend who, like me, is about 20 years older than the people we were unfairly criticizing behind their backs noted, "It's all the trophies." I laughed. We all did.

The reality is that millennials are very much no joke to US marketers, who so desperately want to separate them from their cash.

At last week's Sigma annual meeting of fuel marketers in Boston, panel moderator and OPIS gas guru Tom Kloza directed the conversation toward the nation's young spenders.

"The millennials, the spoiled brats, how at the end of the day do you sell them on your stations?" Kloza asked longtime US and Canada fuel marketers Bob Espey, Jack Pester (pronounced PEEE-ster) and Eric Slifka.

Slifka, CEO of Global Partners LP, said if there's anything millennials like, it's convenience, and retail chains are uniquely poised to provide that. The bigger problem, the panelists noted, is getting millennials to work at convenience stores.

"It's a human resources challenge," said Espey, CEO of Canada retail fuels giant Parkland Fuels. "They are willing to work hard. It's our task to get them excited about the industry."

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This is heady stuff for me. I come from a high school where the joke was that if you failed in life, you would end up pumping at the Citgo. (And that also betrays how old I am, because everyone pumps themselves in Maryland today.) But I certainly can imagine that managing a store with 30 gasoline pumps probably pays fairly well these days.

The problem may be that the millennials aren't driving as much. Edmunds.com economist Lacey Plache noted recently that (opens in a new tab) that while millennials comprise 30% of the potential car buyers in the US, they are buying only 12% of new cars and 18% of used cars.

The retailers said the way to reach the millennials is where they communicate: social media. To that end, Parkland brands Fast Gas and Pioneer have boosted their presence on Twitter, Espey said. Check this exchange Parkland had with a customer. No word on how old either the Pioneer clerk or the customer was, but I am willing to bet a few Loonies that they weren't much north of 35.

Pester, recently retired from Pester Marketing and formerly a key driver of the Coastal brand on the US West Coast, said he would have loved to have had the power of social media in the 1960s. He said Sheetz, Kroger and Costco are among the companies doing dynamic things with their brands today, so much so that the gasoline brands are developing independently from the store side of the business.

"With social media, you can absolutely develop a brand," Pester said.

What do you think? Might 7-Eleven need to start carrying those crazy new Oreos flavors? Perhaps a bacon bar at Buc-ee's in Texas? Supergirl Slurpee cups (especially as The Washington Post reviewer Hank Stuever has noted that Supergirl is a carefully cloaked critique of millennial wish fulfillment(opens in a new tab))? Let us know in the comments how many millennials you see at your next fill-up.