Let me throw down the gauntlet. Someday, AdAge will do a feature on ‘50 over 50’ or god forbid ‘60 over 60’ and it will turn the ageism debate on its head. Experience equals HIGH VALUE ASSET.

If you’re at a large agency @CEO, you have the power to push AdAge to get this going! Would be awesome to see!

I’m 65 and been in Advertising 42 years. Still valued, included and helping lead significant growth opportunities. Been in the C-suite, now I’m not, but value kept me employed. Now it’s gray=gold as I suddenly find myself Yoda. I am totes ready for the 60 over 60 issue if you can find the other 59 people.

Honestly, I have no confidence in them. They have no common smarts, no loyalty. Never take them as seriously as they do themselves. Now I’ve really stepped in it ;)

Sure, once the millennials get that old, so things continue to be all about them

50 over 50 isn’t a list of superlatives. It is just an inventory of everyone left on the industry. 60 over 60 will be an incomplete list.

I love how the “over 30 under 30” interviews are all with very successful people in their 40’s who have never had their lives turned upside down from ageism. They all say “doesn’t effect me”. What percentage of people on this chain have heard “too senior” from every staff position interview in the past 10 years?

I’m 57. Executive creative director client side. I was agency seven years creative. Then a commercial director for 25 years. Not “A” list, but very successful. Read 25 years. I’m now the ECD at the fastest growing restaurant chain in the United States five years in a row. Extremely cool brand. Very young. I’m one of the oldest people in the company. Yet, no one can keep up with me. I have extremely great creative’s and designers. Great producers.  and, I’m doing the best work of my career. We are opening a new store, every 3 to 4 days. That’s 280 locations in two years. Including 10 locations in the UK. And still going. All are snowflakes. I lead all design, graphics, advertising/marketing design, films, swag and special projects. Age is just a number. It’s how you act, live, listen, and feel. Best thing I ever did was get out of the advertising side, you guys spend too much time patting each other on the back with all these fcking award shows, That really don’t mean squat. Stop worrying about age, and just do great work. Who cares how old you are? Age is an invisible number. When you have this attitude, it changes everything. I feel you shoot yourself in the foot, when you hype up “oh we have this young creative....” get it?

Hard to be loyal when the guys at the top are making $46,000,000 at 22K and hour. While squeezing people into open offices like cattle.

Seems to be an every man for himself kinda world. The millennials are just following your example.

A DIY career: plusses—get to stay both curious and challenged, rack up both very wide category experience and the awards to show you can, get to work with people with much better pedigrees, have no one else to blame, and, in now in your 60s, the ability to keep going as long as you have the patience and the energy to put up with the pain. Minuses: pretty much all of the above (plus the moment Dany Lennon, after waxing poetic over your book reads your resume and exclaims, MY GOD, you’ve really never worked for ANYBODY (cue sound of door slamming shut after feeble, « doesn’t GM, Kaiser Permanente, Marriott, and a few dozen others count?). But I will say there’s also the chance/need to keep reinventing yourself to stay fresh. Discovered a passion for directing in my late 50s and get to keep doing it...long as I keep digging up the projects. I admit to a little green admiration for folks like ECD1, Ogilvy 2, and others in this bowl who’ve climbed the high organizational peaks.. But cannot gainsay the ability to keep pressing forward with no end to the runway in sight.

It’s all about the “Interns” in this industry now, I get it, they are the future, but let’s not forgot experience and knowledge about the company past and present add value.

I’m guilty of a sweeping generalization, but...

Cool! As a highly experienced pop culture artist, please name the top 5 musicians you’d use in your next adidas film.

that would be the day

Preach.

Good question. I guess it depends on the brief.

Agencies are obsessed with youth.

Yes this is true but that same experience means first to get cut in favour of cost cutting.

Is anybody from AdAge in this bowl? I think the point has been made here, we need some coverage on this issue.