Related Posts
More Posts
Pro
Anyone interested in Theo v2?
That’s all folks
Conversation Starter
Conversation Starter
Conversation Starter
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
I wish there was a way of enlightening those who make hiring / firing decisions based on age. In my thirty plus years of crawling up the ladder and fighting so many decisive battles, my frontline guys who won the day were inevitably well into their 40/50s. We have to separate age and salary. It’s a fact of financial myopia that it’s easier to cut big salaries, which often means older teammates. But I would say the value equation is never really appreciated by those in finance. Those is us on the frontlines have to fight back hard to convince finance on how shortsighted that strategy is.
We live in a youth culture so yeah. Every aspect of work and every job is affected but some more than others.
If you’re an actress it really hits hard. If you’re in higher education or the sciences not as much. One could also argue that some qualified young people get dismissed as being too young. So it can work in reverse as well.
My experience is that creatives suffer the impact of ageism more so than other roles in advertising.
It’s human nature for people to partially judged things based on the messenger delivering it. It makes sense that if you’re trying to propose a youthful, fresh, innovative idea, you don’t do it via a messenger that is old.
The reality is that generally speaking
the account team and other department roles are not being judged as often for their creativity. In fact often they are looked upon to bring stability and grown up accountably. I’m painting with a grotesquely broad brush here but I hope you get the principal and how this might in fact result in the impact of ageism weighing more heavily on creatives than other roles in advertising.
That said, I don’t mean to say that the impact of ageism on non-creatives is unimportant. Unfair practices are unfair practices. No matter the role you play in an agency.
This is an interesting problem because we are at a time in history where people are living longer and validly capable of working and needing to work, while at the same time the generation below them is coming into its own peak capabilities. So unlike in the past, where there seemed to be a natural transition, today the generations are bumping into each other. In this competitive contracting business that’s a real problem.
:-/
Absolutely.