Nothing like a provoactive statement to get things moving: “Australia's at a crossroads and I just want to make sure marketers don't go down the same path as America or the United Kingdom, where they are humiliating seniors regularly". The article makes many of the usual complaints and observations about the youthism of the advertising industry.
The article has lots of gripes but not many solutions."At best [boomers] are used as comic foils, sentimentalised or dressed in Spandex and given a surfboard”
“Marketer’s ignore female boomers at their peril. Of the people in the ads depicting boomers, 85 per cent were men.”
"There's the issue that everyone wants their brand to be youthful and they don't want too many 'old people' in their advertising"
The article from the US has a much more measured and broader look at the issue of ageism.
As the article observes: “That ageism exists, in a society captivated by youth culture and taut-skinned good looks, is scarcely debatable.”
Erdman Palmore, a professor emeritus at Duke University, who has written or edited more than a dozen books on aging, counts himself - cautiously - among the optimists. "One can say unequivocally that older people are getting smarter, richer and healthier as time goes on," Palmore said. "I've dedicated most of my life to combating ageism, and it's tempting for me to see it everywhere. ... But I have faith that as science progresses, and reasonable people get educated about it, we will come to recognize ageism as the evil it is."
I think I count myself in the Palmore camp.
It is very easy to become obsessively grumpy and see a conspiracy by the young against the old. I recently interviewed Robin Wight, the chairman of WCRS and one of the UK’s leading practitioners and thinkers about advertising (age 61), he said the reality of today’s consumer is a “non-aging mind, in an aging body, with a maturing wallet”. I reckon the maturing wallet bit will eventually win out! Dick Stroud: www.20plus30.com
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