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.
I was wrong.
I used to love recruiters and they loved me. Now I found most seem to have vanished, all but one didn’t reply to phone calls or messages, and the one that kindly did, suggested that my 30 plus years experience in creative and major multi-national accounts would make me an ideal consultant. As would my grey hair.
So that’s what I became for the next two years.
I enjoyed running workshops in Oz, training marcoms clients overseas and helping a couple of other agencies in the region with effectiveness and Agency-of-the-Year award submissions.
On the surface all was great. Underneath I was missing the daily contacts with colleagues, clients and creative challenges.
Then advertising saved my life!
Well, a specific advert. A vacancy. Online. For a planning director. At an agency I hadn’t heard of.
HardHat, a Melbourne-based “creative agency built for today” was looking for a planning director.
I met them once and fell in love. Met them twice and wanted to get married. Met them three times and had found a new home together.
Two connected ironies weren’t lost on me.
Firstly, that the majority of new hires, training and acquisitions of the major agency networks are in the digital area. So if all the traditional agencies were looking for young digitally savvy guns, what would a digital agency want someone older and more experienced in the traditional communications world for?
Secondly, that while I’d never considered joining or approaching a “digitally born” agency, the reality was they didn’t want someone in the role primarily for their digital planning skills.
They reassured me, and it’s been true, everyone else in the company is a digital expert – they have no shortage of them.
So what can grey hair (I was 60 when I joined them and 61 now) bring a young agency, other than raising the average age from 25 to 27?
I think a few things, and am glad the agency did too.
A lot of digitally-led work is project work. It might be website builds, social media, community management, tactical campaigns.
But as projects, digital agencies are often briefed after the “lead brand agency” and may for larger clients, need to base their work on existing brand and communication ideas, even repurposing the client’s existing creative assets for the digital world.
It’s good business, growing business, profitable business. No wonder the major communication groups/management consultancies are so keen to enter the space.
So what’s it been like?
The first 100 days was a bit like Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison going back to school. Older than the other kids and with lots to learn and unlearn.
The mantra old adland proudly boasted was “Do you want it on Tuesday, or do you want it right?”
Most clients don’t buy that anymore. They want it right and by Monday!
The similarities in being consumer-centric with a passion for brand, creative communications and effectiveness, plus a drive to improve the quality of our creative work has made the agency a welcoming new home.
Is there a broader lesson to be learnt by the old folks out there?
One is obvious. Keep up to date! Not all channels are the same. They never were in the traditional world, they aren’t in digital either.
The second, not all digital agencies are the same either. You may well have skills that a digital agency is looking for, not digital ones, but in complementary areas such as your passion for communications, consumers, creativity, culture. If you find each other you may well like your new country more than the old one.
Welcome home.
Iain White is planning director at Hardhat Digital.
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?)
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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.
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“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!
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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
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Great read, Iain.
Thanks for sharing.
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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.
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Let me know when you will be streaming the showdown.
Should be fun.
(I’ll be sitting that one out)
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Thanks Sue.
I really think I am lucky as you say. Extremely grateful too.
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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.
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Thanks Luke, I enjoyed writing it and happy that you enjoyed reading.
Cheers
Chalky
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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.
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Yup!
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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
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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.
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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.
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