Ageism in the advertising industry: ‘Hard to find people who’ve done anything’
The Mumbrella360 conference closed with a bang, as a panel moderated by publisher Tim Burrowes discussed a variety of topics, among them “the ageism in this industry.”
“You walk into an agency and it’s ‘no country for old men’,” Burrowes joked.
Jacquie Alley — COO of The Media Store and chair of the IMAA — had named “ageism” when asked to discuss a problem in the industry no one talked about.
Alley noted there were “a whole bunch of misconceptions about what youth can bring.”
“Not just young people have good ideas,” she said. “Not just young people can be digitally savvy. Not just young people can be curious. I think it’s about de-mystifying that, because I find that across generations we all have levels of curiosity and it’s not an age thing.
“So I think it’s a perception, which is a problem.”
She put the problem down to money: as budgets shrink, the salaries that come with age and experience often become untenable.
She said “there is a conversation around clients, and what they’ll pay. They want the head of strategy in the retainer for 5%, okay? But I’ve got to recoup their salary – therefore, experienced people aren’t billable. That’s a problem.”
She challenged agencies who are thinking younger and cheaper is the only path to profit to consider that “flexibility for someone as they’re getting older just looks different.”
Natalie Harvey, Mamamia, and Jacquie Alley, The Media Store
This means a growing group of experienced workers who may want to transition into part-time hours. Alley said her own goal is to not be working full-time in the next five years. She currently employs a number of older people on a part-time basis.
“I can afford the experience and they get the flexibility they want.”
John Schoolcraft, chief creative officer of Swedish oat milk company Oatly, built the company’s marketing team from the ground up. He confessed to having the opposite bias when hiring.
“I had a bias towards the experienced,” he said. “If you were to guess who works in the Oatly creative department, you would probably say some pretty young people. They’re all over 50.”
The reason: “It’s really hard to find people who’ve done anything before.”
Schoolcraft
Schoolcraft said Sweden’s advertising industry tend to also skews very young.
“It’s just that Oatly wasn’t a great place to come to learn how to do things,” he said. “You had to know how to do it, and you had to have some experience and frustration of being somewhere where you knew it was wrong.”
He said you don’t need to be over 50 to have this experience, but noted “a lot of the key creative directors are. They just have that experience, but they also have that burn and desire to continue to work.”
He fears some of this ageing talent might also be turned away by the shrinking budgets in the industry.
“That, for me, is the big challenge now. How do you get talent into this industry, when you stop standing up for yourself? I mean, clients have just made it smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and now the advertising industry makes ‘content.’
“You need to be able to help people grow their business. That needs some experience. It’s not that you can’t be 25 and know exactly what to do, but you need to have some failures.”
Schoolcraft and Burrowes
As CEO of Mamamia, Natalie Harvey employs plenty of 25-year-olds who know exactly what to do. She estimated the average age at Mamamia is around 27, “which is great”, but noted they also “have experienced people on the older end.”
“We have a really good balance because we’ve got people who deeply understand content and have been doing it for 30 years – and then we get some of the younger guys who are bigger on the pulse trends. They know what’s trending on Tiktok. They know what’s going to work from our content perspective, and then what’s going to work for buyers.
“Our audience is pretty much in line with what the ABS age distribution is, but I think that balance of having a mix of older and younger is what we need.”
Harvey and Alley
Alley said she remains hopeful that “strategic thinking, the smarts, the business partnership, the relationships with clients, is only going to get more and more important.
“And so I’m hopeful that means that the more experienced employees will start to finally be valued across the industry and that we won’t have people, as they’re approaching 40, trying to plan what their next career is. Because that scares me.”
Burrowes said he cannot think of a time “where I’ve seen more senior marketers talking about leaving their job and being excited about what comes next, and then not necessarily seeing them moving to something else very fast.
“It’s not a great time to be a senior marketer, is what strikes me”, he concluded.
The wide-ranging conversation also covered artificial intelligence, mental health, declining budgets, and also featured insight from Josh Faulks, CEO of national advertising body AANA.
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The demands of the industry regarding hours worked, salary paid, lack of advancement, any sort of pay rise after years of service etc., is unrealistic. Yes it is a capitalist and commercial endeavour, but the squeeze on staff can’t continue, and these are the results. Cutting costs and pushing productivity and efficiency takes a toll. Senior executives have no ideas beyond these two and this is the result.
See me for Ad Age 6 years ago – Eight Ways To End Ageism In The Ad Industry: ‘It’s time to do what we’re great at: reshaping culture. For too long we’ve been part of perpetuating a culture that celebrates youth. Evian’s long-running tagline presumes that everyone wants to #liveyoung. But there’s so much we’re not leveraging, strategically and creatively, around the idea of #liveolder.
Tap into the aspiration of age. We’re very happy with who we are. We don’t aspire to be young. But young people aspire to be us. Here’s why:
We don’t give a shit. We have self-confidence that comes with age. We know what really matters. We’re free to express our individuality. We’ve developed our own sense of personal style. We’ve developed our own sense of home style. We have better relationships because we know what really matters. We’re experienced—at everything. We’re well-traveled. We’re starting businesses at the highest rate of any entrepreneur group. We have money to spend.
Lead with what’s aspirational about being older, and the young will follow—not the other way round.’
https://adage.com/article/opinion/opinion-eight-ways-turn-ageism-its-head/2174851/
the older executives pull the ladder up behind them. they get paid tonnes whilst the older middle layers are reduced. If you’re 40+ the older upper management will deem you as surplus and find a cheaper 26-29 year old and then claim the cost saving as evidence they’re growing revenue.