Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

Millennials are people, too.

Some find this hard to remember, as the slightly younger, occasionally more bearded crowd are smeared with a group name that makes them sound other-worldly. And not in a good way. Mere mathematics, though, tells us that these so-called millennials are the future.

Millennials now represent the largest generation, having finally overtaken the painfully self-regarding, drug-favoring boomers. Which means that brands want to attract them, move them and inspire them to higher levels of loyalty.

Millennials are, though, supposed to be fickle beings. How can you get them to be committed? In the week that Amazon finally takes over Whole Foods, CEO Jeff Bezos showed how.

Bribe them.

In announcing his company’s completed takeover, Bezos immediately lowered the prices of some of the very foods that — so the blessed media and a few hairy-nosed academics tell us — have become staples of the millennial diet.

Suddenly, Whole Trade bananas, organic avocados, organic large brown eggs, organic responsibly-farmed salmon and tilapia, organic baby kale and baby lettuce and animal-welfare-rated 85 percent lean ground beef will cost less than the prices offered by the former Whole Paycheck.

How can any millennials resist the temptation to return to so many sanctimonious-sounding victuals, now that they might cost a few dollars less?

Before Whole Foods was taken over, there were dark portents that it had lost as many as 14 million customers.

It’s a fair (-trade) bet that many of them were millennials who simply didn’t want to pay overly exalted prices. It’s not as if millennials are all paid a fortune, as some are in Silicon Valley.

Still, there’s a noxious myth that many millennials aren’t fond of money. Some would have it that they bathe in so many values and principles, gleaned from yoga retreats, that the lure of lucre is far beneath them.

It’s true that many find corporate life stifling, ignorant, patriarchal, insensitive and conducive to more frustration that unwrapping your average wrapped organic salami.

This doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t be moved by simple human enticements such as the low-price bribe. Bezos understands this.

He’ll weave the savings already earned by Amazon Prime customers into even more savings in the physical store that represents a return to the land.

Suddenly, millennials (and many others, of course) will return to Whole Foods and make it the perfect place to meet someone of their target sex again. While saving money too.

It’s timeless, yet very modern tale.

Written by: Chris Matyszczyk

Source: Inc.

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