Don’t throw the baby boomer out with the bathwater
Ageism is rife in adland. Headjam’s Mike Preston makes the case for why agencies should take a long, hard look at their hiring policies in order to combat this invasive form of discrimination.
I started my first job in advertising as a junior art director at a time before mobile phones, personal computers and the internet. As a result, I was the beneficiary of the social change that happened in the 1960s and 70s.
A new generation had taken over the advertising industry. Bill Berbach’s creative revolution began on Madison Avenue, changing creative departments around the world. It introduced the concept of a creative team, made up of an art director and copywriter, opening doors to young people from all walks of life.
The key reason this happened was that nearly 50 percent of the American population was under 25 years of age, forming a new market of consumers, and traditional advertising wasn’t cutting it with the young generation.
Yay for the older generation, we are still a powerful group of consumers that seem to be ignored more and more in the advertising/commercial world. Now if we can just get the television world to understand the same concept with their programming they might see some improvement in their viewer numbers. A lot of the younger generation aren’t into free to air television, yet the programmers seems to think they are the only ones watching!
Nice to see the elephant in the room getting called out.
Kudos to Luke and Sarah.
Nothing but envy for Mike.
More please.
PS
What does the recruiting industry say about this?
Are they part of the solution or part of the problem??
Smart hire Luke and Sarah.
My motto is “it’s your attitude that makes you old not your age”
As a 50+ advertising maven I totally agree with this piece (love it!), and add the secret is to be ageless, not ageist (either end of the spectrum). I have met some very talented 70-year-olds and many that are not – same with 20-year-olds.
A senior media person from Newscorp mentioned to me last week the real issue of ageism in advertising starts with the media briefs – only 3% of the briefs they get in include the mature cohort in the target audience.
Agree wholeheartedly Gill – age does NOT predict behaviour or attitudes … and after 20+ years in the industry I can count on one hand the number of briefs that I’ve seen targeting 50+ and with 3.1m Australians aged 45-54 with the highest HH income of any demographic – how can any any marketer afford to ignore them?