Why Diversity Needs to Include Age, Now!

While many companies address diversity to achieve compliance standards enlightened organizations also embrace diversity to accomplish business goals Experts like McKinsey have proven that there39s a correlation between achieving diversity gender and ethnicallyculturally diverse leadership and creating business value and profitability MediaVillage recently published a wellresearched white paper The Case for Education and Diversity as Core Pillars of Business Growth and hosted a Leadership Conversation focused on ageism in the advertising businessIn advertising and media the business case for diversity is very straightforward That is the better we are at mirroring the complexion of the consumers we39re creating for the better we are at creating truly effective consumerinspired communications But historically our industry39s definition of diversity has been limited to gender and ethnicity to the exclusion of age While there39s still important work to be done on our gender and ethnicity initiatives the business case for addressing ageism has never been more compelling Now is the time to embrace age and here39s whyAge is where the money isWhile there39s a subjective bias to believe that there39s more opportunity in marketing to youth the statistics tell a different story With more people living longer better lives than ever before the US now has 106 million people aged 50 and the total value of all economic activity associated with them is 71 trillion dollars a year Seen as GDP that39s larger than the economies of Brazil Russia and India combined 63 trillion and larger than any other countryamp8217s total economy with the exception of China If you39re an advertising or media agency that39s in the business of creating value for its clients you can39t possibly ignore the enormous and underleveraged potential in prioritizing older consumers To do so you39re going to need to have highly specialized teams that understand the unique and irrational needs of people of age You are going to need to hire older employees who understand the consumer they39re creating for because they39re living their lives When you hire the right talent for the opportunity at hand the aging of the market you will also be solving for the social injustice of aging in the agency business This is clearly one of the smartest winwins in the business todayThe quotjuniorizationquot trend must be reversedIn the recent Leadership Conversation on ageism in advertising and media referenced above Jack Myers cited research that 62 of agency personnel have less than eight years of experience increased from 40 a decade ago This is one of the symptoms of the quotjuniorizationquot of our industry a trend that has been driven by relentless cost pressure coming at a time of low growth Since client demands have remained largely unchanged the only way to costeffectively get the work done has been to hire younger less expensive talent While the justification for hiring younger people is that they39re the digital natives we need to master modern touchpoints this rationale is masking a deeper more concerning trend for our industry ie eroding capability It39s time for us to put a stake in the ground to reverse the downward spiral of quotjuniorizationquot by hiring back older talent that brings essential experience and wisdom to the creative mix Hiring people of age will help us to do three things at once 1 reverse the trend toward less experience 2 have talent that mirrors the complexion of today39s aging consumer mix and 3 take a step in the right direction on ageism If this is the right thing to do for all these reasons and I believe it is the money challenge will figure itself out along the wayWe39re in the business of differentiationWhile we39re in the business of finding creative ways to differentiate our clients39 brands and businesses we39ve never been good at doing it for our own agencies While it39s easy to blame clients for our cost pressure we may have brought it on ourselves by letting commoditization blur and devalue our offerings This is the world I left when I founded BoomAgers nearly a decade ago opting to become a true specialist that could add meaningful value to our clients39 businesses To do so we staff our agency differently our average age is 53 we work differently and we39ve generated bestinclass results Regardless of what your agency does you should be motivated by the goal of working differently to get different results Since we39re a human capital business that39s going to mean working with different people In a recent column I suggested that our industry consider teams made up of quotyoung minds and old mastersquot so they could get the best of both worlds from young imaginative digital natives and older creatives whose vast experience brings wisdom to the creative mix It39s another example of how you can apply the skills of older talent not just to check the ageism box but to build a highly differentiated operating model that can generate breakout results in a commoditized businessThe business case for ageism means that the people at your agency who are responsible for growth need to take it on In my many years in the business the diversity challenge has always fallen on the human resources department In this sense improved diversity has been seen as a hiring task ie recruiting more different people Take nothing away from the highly talented people who lead your personnel efforts but diversity actions like ageism need to be an organic motivation for everyone in your organization It won39t succeed if it39s just another project on the todo list Instead it needs to be driven by a shared fervent belief that adding older talent to the mix will drive a different and better type of creativity for the general marketWhile these are all the right intentions we all know that change is never easy When dealing with deeprooted systemic change like ageism the best way to make meaningful longterm change is to focus on small marginal changes in the near term With this in mind start with the small things that come easily and can be done well and sustain your commitment to the task over time You39ll be amazed by how far you can go by taking a small step every day for yearsPhoto courtesy of BoomAgersClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Why Diversity Needs to Include Age, Now!

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Peter Hubbell

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