No country for old men: Joining a digital agency at 60
After moving back to Australia following three decades in agencies overseas, Iain White realised he didn’t want to be relegated to the world of consulting. Adland was calling, but it looked very different from the place he’d started at all those years ago.
An old adman joins the digital world. 100 days in and he’s still there. And enjoying it.
What? Who? Why? How? Where?
If you’re “old” and more familiar with the traditional advertising world, than the digital one (yes I know we are all ‘through-the line’, but bear with me), this might be relevant to you. If you think you’re young and are over 35, sorry, you’re not – and unless you’re Benjamin Button, you won’t get any younger either.
Returning to Melbourne three years ago, after a dozen years based in Tokyo and Bangkok as the office planning head/regional planning head on various major accounts, I thought coming “home” to Australian adland would be a piece of cake and maybe a few beers too. It was when I left.
This crap about being “old” at 60 is getting tiresome. What many of these so called “young guns” don’t realise is that we have been in the digital age since around 1979 and those of us in this age demographic cut our teeth on this stuff.
When it comes to “digital”, I’ll put myself up against anyone, anytime.
Iain’s quote of “It might be website builds, social media, community management, tactical campaigns” lead me to say “so what”. I do that every day. When someone reaches a certain age, there is no rule that says they suddenly become stupid. I know “bright” 30 year olds who cannot use a bloody spreadsheet or who are utterly baffled by a camera (but they can play online games and find porn – how’s that for stereotyping?)
“When it comes to “digital”, I’ll put myself up against anyone, anytime.”
Greetings old timer!
Idiotic/idealistic young gun here.
Happy to go toe-to-toe in a race. Rules: We get placed in front of a DSP, first to work it out wins.
Alternately, we can do straight to publisher platform and race each other across social back-ends to see who can come up with the best campaign build first.
Alternatively, we can play on your home turf of spreadsheets.
First to sort data through the most efficient means using only VBA Basic wins.
Get those arthritic fingers ready!
Let me know when you will be streaming the showdown.
Should be fun.
(I’ll be sitting that one out)
I think I’ll pass on your rubbish bloatware that slows down my phone to a crawl because you can’t handle anything more challenging than Visual Basic thanks.
Full on agreement that “60” isn’t old David! You can be a gunslinger at any age though I reckon Bjorn Borg would have a tough time against Federer.
My memory of cutting things in ’79 was my fingers on paper on the Roneo machine though. (Ok, maybe it was the Wang Word-processor).
Think there is a bit of a difference between “digital marketing” and “marketing digital things”, be they games (loved Space Invaders and Galaxion in that era) or devices which do go back far before say WWW (mid 90’s) or Facebook and Youtube which are less than 15 years old.
Hey Iain, you are a lucky duck indeed. I agree with you – I think there are places for all. Getting the message right is still the same aim – its just the channels for delivering it that change. Maybe sidestepping the recruiters is the answer. And Dave, ease up mate – its not a fight.
Thanks Sue.
I really think I am lucky as you say. Extremely grateful too.
on ya Whitey !! of course hiring 60+ “older, younger, what ever you want to call them” people should be normal. Next step hiring them at all levels and training them as new entries as well as for experience needed positions
Hi mate, thanks for that!
Full agreement on your statement and the “next step” has been taken here, which I think is rare and very fortunate for me.
Great read, Iain.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Luke, I enjoyed writing it and happy that you enjoyed reading.
Cheers
Chalky
I recall reading an article about Vint Cerf some years ago at a conference.
He was challenged by one of the digerati asking what would a bloke as old as him know about the Internet.
Ever the gentleman he gave lots of credit to people like Bob Khan and Tim Berners-Lee ahead of himself in the creation of the Internet.
He also spoke warmly about his generation. How they created the silicon chip, micro-processors, personal computers, colour screens, the mouse/pointing devices, laser printing, graphical interfaces, TCP/IP, HTML … the list went on.
He drew a breath and said … and in our spare time we put a man on the moon.
Point beautifully made.
Yup!
I’m with Juvenile Firearm on this – and Iain… I’m in awe of my compatriots and their knowledge and dexterity – and try to reciprocate at least equally… I do however think those of us “not under 50” have a special obligation to maintain recency and currency – in other words, make a bloody effort and be seen to be doing so
Iain, congratulations on navigating your way back in – no small achievement! It’s an unfortunate reality in our industry that respect for experience is so often overlooked or dismissd. When I was in my early thirties I knew nothing and headhunters would call me every week. Now that I have some grey hairs and actually know a thing or two, the phone sits silent. Thankfully though, I am now applying my experience in the world of digital publishing where my knowledge is respected. Best of luck with the new gig.