Jan 23, 2024
In this episode of CMA Connect, Alison Simpson, the CEO of the CMA, welcomes Anne Marie Wright, Partner and Co-Founder at YOUAREUNLTD, and Marc Cooper, CM, President at Junction59. In this lively conversation, they dive into the opportunities the aging population brings, the challenges they face and the organizations spearheading efforts to eradicate age discrimination in Canadian marketing.
00:00:23:03 - 00:00:47:18
Alison Simpson
CMAs latest research findings echo a concerning truth experience is undervalued within our industry, says we are striving for diversity, equity and inclusion. It is absolutely essential that we recognize that age should not be a barrier to hiring, to working with or promoting a deserving employee. Ageism is a significant issue in the marketing profession, and many believe it's tolerated more than other forms of discrimination.
00:00:48:14 - 00:01:09:15
Alison Simpson
The recent DEI survey that the CMA conducted revealed that on average, marketers consider employees over 48 years of age to be older workers. So not only is are ageism in our industry and profession, it also starts up what I would say is a relatively ignored age. So while many boomers are reporting that they feel disadvantaged because the marketing industry is so image conscious.
00:01:10:01 - 00:01:37:00
Alison Simpson
All of this highlights the biases that can hinder the growth of experienced talent. Joining me today, I am very happy to have two exceptional minds who are actively reshaping this narrative. Anne Marie Wright is co-founder of Duo Unlimited and Marc Cooper is president of Junction 59. Anne Marie and Marc have come together to co-found the third State, a strategic partnership whose goal is to help leaders of businesses identify and harness the potential of aging and the new longevity economy.
00:01:37:16 - 00:02:03:01
Alison Simpson
So together, we're going to explore the pervasive impact of ageism and ages views within our marketing and communications community. We're going to dive into how marketers and communicators are in a truly unique position to help address and combat these problems for the benefit of the workforce. Organizations that engage these workforces and the consumers that we serve. So it's an absolute pleasure to welcome Anne Marie and Marc to join me on the podcast today.
00:02:03:06 - 00:02:03:19
Alison Simpson
Welcome.
00:02:04:06 - 00:02:14:14
Marc Cooper
Thank you very much for having us here today. It's really wonderful to be able to share these thoughts with the CMA and with the marketing community in general.
00:02:14:18 - 00:02:15:23
Anne Marie Wright
We're thrilled to be here.
00:02:16:13 - 00:02:29:06
Alison Simpson
Now I'm going to kick things off with our first question. And Anne Marie, why don't I have you start this one? Can you tell us more about what you mean by the longevity economy and why you see it as so critically important to our conversation today?
00:02:30:16 - 00:03:05:09
Anne Marie Wright
So the most important thing to know this stage is the world is rapidly aging and this is a global phenomenon. What we're referring to here is a demographic trend characterized by an increasing proportion of people over 50, driven by factors such as declining birthrates and increasing life expectancy. This phenomena, which is in fact one of the biggest global trends of our time, has significant social and economic impact.
00:03:05:18 - 00:03:37:17
Anne Marie Wright
And this has been studied by people like the W.H.O., hundreds of think tanks, institutions, global governments, and more. The impacts of global aging populations are both positive and negative. And because this is such a big conversation, what Mark and I want to focus on with you today is to talk about the positive and economic side of this story, economic side of this phenomena, what it means to marketers and communicators.
00:03:39:05 - 00:04:15:00
Anne Marie Wright
So in essence, we need to think about a very large and influential cohort of people, and it's a very misunderstood and very misrepresented audience, which we're going to talk about a little bit later on in this podcast. Fundamentally, this cohort is redefining, disrupting, accepted definitions of what it is to age, what old age means. The influence of this audience has given rise to something called the longevity economy.
00:04:15:00 - 00:05:03:23
Anne Marie Wright
And this terminology is framed by Joseph Coughlin at MIT H Lab. A Fundamentally, what this means is that's referring to an economic impact and potential of the growing and increasingly influential older populations that we're seeing on the global stage. It encourages all businesses and industry to recognize and respond to the diverse needs and preferences of aging populations. This economy, in fact, is so large that it's been referred to as the third largest economy in the world behind only the U.S. and China is $8 trillion and growing in the U.S. Unfortunately, we don't have any Canadian data on this.
00:05:04:07 - 00:05:34:02
Anne Marie Wright
And throughout the world, industry, governments, social institutions have been waking up to this new economy and our team has seen rapid growth and investment in this space over the last five years. For example, in the venture capital community, it's one of the largest segments of investment and in the last three years. So with the size of this market, one might be asking why is there not been more attention paid to the market?
00:05:34:12 - 00:06:15:05
Anne Marie Wright
And the answer is rather straightforward. The challenge is that ageism and ages views. The topic of our podcast has actually been in the way of progress here. And there's a difference we want to make between the topic of ageism and an age just views the challenges that ages and ages views have been in the way of progress. Ageism, as Alison identified earlier in the podcast, is a systematic and often deeply ingrained form of discrimination and prejudice that involves stereotyping against certain individuals or groups based on their age.
00:06:15:15 - 00:06:44:13
Anne Marie Wright
I want to be really clear here that ageism actually impacts many age groups, but the global research, the global study today is very much focused on aging populations simply because this is such a large, impactful cohort of people ages, views that are a manifestation of ageism in general, refer to a specific perspective or beliefs held by an individual or group that reflects ageism.
00:06:45:04 - 00:07:10:17
Anne Marie Wright
For example, if we hold a belief that older adults are not technically inept or older adults are set in their ways, these are fundamentally our just views that we hold. What's important here for today's conversation is that marketers and communicators we think can strongly lead a new narrative and movement to dismantle ageism and ages views.
00:07:11:18 - 00:07:51:05
Alison Simpson
But thanks to Maria, that's a great help. And you call a really important point. From my perspective, a lot of very important points from my perspective. But as marketers, not only do we have a responsibility and an opportunity to encourage diversity and the wisdom that comes with years of experience in how we hire, we also have a real opportunity to influence popular culture or by the marketing we do, and making sure that it's as inclusive as it should be and representative of the real world and the number of Canadians we have that absolutely have so much more to contribute, even though they might be in some people's definition older.
00:07:51:23 - 00:08:12:03
Alison Simpson
So I think there's two really unique, important opportunities there for sure. So certainly the CMA survey highlighted ageism industry as a real issue. Can you introduce some new thinking around ageist views and dive a little deeper into how these issues show up in our industry and as importantly, what we can do to start reframing our thinking?
00:08:14:00 - 00:08:43:04
Marc Cooper
You know, let's start with ageism in the workplace. Our industry is notorious for valuing younger versus older employees. And your CMA survey results actually reinforce this fact. I think there was a stat in there that 44% of marketers believe that age based discrimination is tolerated in their workplaces more than any other form of discrimination. So like all forms of discrimination, not only is ageism harmful to a workforce and a work environment, but it's actually bad for business.
00:08:43:18 - 00:09:09:05
Marc Cooper
There are hundreds of studies that show that a diverse and multigenerational workforce is more productive and produces better business results. This value can only be achieved by creating inclusive environments. Our industry has the capacity to reframe and change the narrative. Our community, we've always been trendsetters and we have a really great opportunity to sink our teeth into this and make some impactful societal change.
00:09:09:12 - 00:09:40:03
Anne Marie Wright
You know this great example from the Publicis group? They have been labeled or certified as an age friendly employer by the age friendly Institute out of the U.S. and they've taken a lot of really great steps to add age into their DEI policy. Publicis has in surveys there are they're very intentional about the experiences of their older workforces.
00:09:40:09 - 00:10:04:14
Anne Marie Wright
They survey them to understand how integration, mentorship programs needs can be incorporated to ensure that they're retaining and hiring in shock older workforces. And then just a number of mechanisms that they've been experimenting with to do so. So the Publicis Group is actually a great example in our industry of somebody who has embraced age.
00:10:04:20 - 00:10:26:05
Alison Simpson
Anne MarieI love that example because while ageism is rampant across marketing communications and the CMA research, we found that in agents sees the definition of what it was to be older was shockingly young, like your late thirties. So the fact that publicists are seeing this as an opportunity and a differentiator and Mark, to your point, it's really good business.
00:10:26:05 - 00:10:32:00
Alison Simpson
So they in many ways they have a competitive advantage by being among the first to identify this.
00:10:33:02 - 00:11:04:08
Marc Cooper
You know, they absolutely do. And, you know, when we look at ageism and ages views in the marketing communications work that we do, numerous studies show that audiences are vastly underrepresented in our advertising communications. While the 25 to 39 year old cohort is highly overrepresented. Equally, older adults are vastly misrepresented and misunderstood, oftentimes made to appear incompetent, especially when it comes to technology, or perhaps they're referred to as being set in their ways.
00:11:05:06 - 00:11:27:10
Marc Cooper
To quote a Forbes magazine article, The World of Old for Teasing is a hellscape full of reverse mortgages, erectile dysfunction pills and bathtub that will kill you. I think we would all agree that the world of stock photos is also filled with stereotypical images of older people doing yoga or running on a beach. Now there are new image banks that exist.
00:11:28:13 - 00:11:57:05
Marc Cooper
Even Getty is getting into the space by improving the images. We just have to source the right images that represent the audience that we know. There's an excellent report from WPP Australia. I think it's called Secrets and Lies. Google it, download it. It's great. It's got some really insightful information in there and it lays out who this new age in consumer is and is not, and their spending patterns, which is maybe the most important piece.
00:11:57:22 - 00:12:22:01
Marc Cooper
In fact, it even calls out that 79% have moved on from brands that are no longer fulfilling or meaningful. So that's a huge opportunity. If you get it wrong and an even bigger opportunity if you get it right. A recent piece in The Atlantic shares research to say that people feel 20% younger than their real age. So understanding this is really important to marketers.
00:12:22:06 - 00:12:28:19
Marc Cooper
We have to make sure that we're talking to people in the way that they see themselves, not in the way that the rest of us see them.
00:12:29:02 - 00:12:59:15
Anne Marie Wright
Outside of the communications side of things. The desire or need to focus on product service solution development for aging population is a real opportunity too, because lots of times we think about products, services, solutions in terms of, you know, moms who are 25 to 45. There's a world of opportunity to develop products, services, solutions. We're going to talk about a few examples of them in a few minutes.
00:12:59:21 - 00:13:27:20
Anne Marie Wright
For people over 50. The cosmetics industry, the beauty industry for a long, long period of time ignored this part. We can give you dozens of examples of how people like Vogue magazine and certain cosmetic brands are developing and focusing on not just communicating to women who are older, but developing new products, services, solutions for this audience in very meaningful ways.
00:13:28:15 - 00:13:52:00
Alison Simpson
You know, market every year, sharing some hugely compelling stats. So an $8 trillion industry in the US alone and the fact that 79% of that market will move on from brands that no longer they see as fulfilling, meaningful, irrelevant, what more convincing reasons do we need to give brands and the marketing community to embrace this incredible business opportunity?
00:13:52:20 - 00:14:05:12
Alison Simpson
It's a bit mind boggling to me that with the size of the audience and their spending potential and their loyalty to brands that actually recognize them, it should be some low hanging fruit for businesses.
00:14:05:21 - 00:14:36:10
Anne Marie Wright
100%. Alison in as our jobs as marketers are to meet our unmet needs to identify and service consumers at all phases and stages of life and the opportunity to open up new worlds, new audiences, innovation pathways for people who are aging. The opportunities are tremendous.
00:14:36:10 - 00:14:44:12
Alison Simpson
Anne Marie, I know you we've talked before and there's a whole industry around age tech, so there certainly are some venture capitalists that are starting to see the offer.
00:14:44:13 - 00:15:17:00
Anne Marie Wright
Yes, 100%. And I'll give a one of my favorite examples is for many years, women's health has been misrepresented as well. So we're starting to see a collision between aging, healthy aging and women's health. So I feel like menopause, for example, which has been misrepresented, misunderstood by marketers, by industry in general, is one of these explosive fields. Femtech for example, in general, especially related to aging, is explosive.
00:15:18:07 - 00:15:41:01
Alison Simpson
So great examples. It's always helpful for me and our listeners to have our topics and certainly true and brought to life by understanding how some brands and organizations are really starting to embrace it and succeeding. So I'd love it if the two of you could share some case studies or examples of what organizations are doing that are targeting consumer aging.
00:15:41:01 - 00:15:42:15
Alison Simpson
Consumers successfully.
00:15:43:06 - 00:16:05:08
Marc Cooper
Well, you know, the good news is that there are some that are doing a great job. So we're not starting from scratch here. One that comes to mind for me is the dove Pro page campaign. They actually first launched those products with a campaign featuring women over 50 showcasing real beauty. Breaking that industry standard of only showing young models.
00:16:05:19 - 00:16:33:14
Marc Cooper
So this is a really great flip on the typical beauty product targeting aging women with anti-aging products. Instead, they're obviously showing pro age products. And their tagline for this campaign is Beauty has no age Limit. So if you get a chance, I'd look up the Dove Pro campaign. And another great example is Saatchi Saatchi. I think it's called Keep on Rolling for Toyota Venza.
00:16:34:03 - 00:16:54:04
Marc Cooper
The campaign cleverly subverted expectations by showing older adults leading rich, active lives, contrasting with their children's assumptions that they were leading dull lives. In fact, I think those children were at home on their computers, living their life through social media instead of living their life in the real in the real world.
00:16:54:06 - 00:17:26:21
Anne Marie Wright
One that I like from the financial service industry is from Merrill Lynch. And they created something called the Seven Life Priorities Program. And what they did was understanding this aging population and understanding that 80% of their business came from people over 65. They started to think about money management in very different ways and supported not by just the conversation on how to manage your money.
00:17:26:21 - 00:18:04:17
Anne Marie Wright
It's how to manage your life until you're going to be over 100. And thought today's five year old is projected to lift the 100th. So what Merrill Lynch has done is said, how do you help? How do we help our clients plan for the 100 year life versus how do we help our clients plan for retirement? And so they're reframing how those what's often times called the third or fourth stage of life, how Merrill Lynch can service their clients in in more than just financial ways.
00:18:05:10 - 00:18:30:22
Anne Marie Wright
The other one that I think we all love is we all know Phil Knight and what he did for Nike and what he did for running. And he's a lifelong runner and he is now, I think, into his sixties and he wanted to create a running shoe that kept him moving, even though his body was aging, even though his body was changing.
00:18:31:05 - 00:18:57:12
Anne Marie Wright
It would be easy to say, I'm creating a running shoe for somebody who saw that, that that's all what he said is, I want to create a running shoe that keeps me moving. And so it was really the shoe was created to accommodate for issues of aging bodies, but it was positioned as something to keep me moving as opposed to something that I need to do because I can't run anymore.
00:18:57:15 - 00:19:01:22
Anne Marie Wright
It was a very positive spin on the proposition.
00:19:02:11 - 00:19:11:11
Alison Simpson
Those are great examples. Now, the media also has a really important role to play on the story. You're starting to see the media start to address this issue as well.
00:19:12:08 - 00:20:01:17
Anne Marie Wright
Yeah, one of the ones I love is with Chris Hemsworth, the big Marvel actor who in his late thirties was identified to have the biomarkers of Alzheimer's. And he embraced that to say and produce a documentary series called Limitless, which is really exploring how he can continue to live better longer. There's a documentary on Netflix which really looks at something called Blue Zones, and these are countries where people have lived longer, better, and the factors that are play into what a longer, healthier life looks like.
00:20:01:18 - 00:20:22:20
Anne Marie Wright
That is a series on Netflix today. I guess the last one that I really like too is I don't know if everyone's seen the new supermodel Syria, where they've taken the four supermodels. I think we all know who they are and and really told the story of their lives and how they're thriving into their fifties, how they're going to continue to thrive into their 60.
00:20:22:20 - 00:20:33:10
Anne Marie Wright
So it's been a very, very positive story on how the recreation and the disruption of aging is being taught today.
00:20:34:01 - 00:20:57:20
Alison Simpson
Those are great examples, and I think it's Forbes that have done it. 50 top women over 50 and just celebrating all of the success and continued ways that people of all ages are contributing. But instead of recognizing only at the young scale the thirties under thirties in the forties, under forties, to actually see 50 over 50, 60 to 60 over 60 like that feels like we're heading in the right direction for sure.
00:20:59:14 - 00:21:18:12
Alison Simpson
So there is no doubt from the insights and the data that both of you are shared with us that there is a tremendous opportunity by addressing aging in our community. So I want to make this super actionable for our listeners. What can marketers and communicators do to start to make a real difference today?
00:21:20:00 - 00:21:54:21
Anne Marie Wright
I think I want to separate Alison, how they can make a difference in their workplace, which I'm going to make a brief comment around and then Mark will talk about how in their work they can make a difference. We're very passionate about the subject of ageism because marketers in fact have the power to make change. It's a very unique form of discrimination because everyone, regardless of their race, age or gender, sexual orientation, will go through the process of aging.
00:21:55:15 - 00:22:29:10
Anne Marie Wright
It's the most universal and unavoidable aspect of the human experience. So if we acknowledge that ageism exists and we acknowledge that we're all going to face it at one stage or another. The more that we can understand and change that by simply creating awareness of it in our day to day and in our workplaces, the more we can eliminate this last form of discrimination, that means including age in DEI policies.
00:22:30:02 - 00:23:02:21
Anne Marie Wright
We don't have the numbers in Canada, but we know that over 80% of Global DEI policies do not include age. It's a really simple thing to do. Number two, look at retaining older workers in the workforce and learning about the benefits of multigenerational workforces. There's tons written about the benefits, the higher return on investment, the higher productivity levels of multigenerational workforces versus one dimensional workforce sources.
00:23:03:12 - 00:23:07:08
Anne Marie Wright
So those resist those with the things I think we can all focus on quite readily.
00:23:08:14 - 00:23:33:20
Marc Cooper
And of course, in the work that we actually do, we can expand our mindset around having multiple segments for our products and services or solutions. Ask ourselves how our brand can promote our brand proposition can be stretch to embrace new audiences. You know, this is what Dove did with their pro age campaign and with the products that they developed and we can understand who we're talking to.
00:23:34:04 - 00:24:11:21
Marc Cooper
I think knowing that 50 plus is not a single audience, you know, that's how we've traditionally grouped this demographic together. But 50 doesn't equal 60, which doesn't equal 70. And getting our heads around that and then speaking to those audiences appropriately is a good starting point. And then authentically represent older audiences in the communications, not based on those stereotypes and it's a great start if we build those multi-generational workforces as marketers and advertisers, because we then see these different perspectives from our colleagues.
00:24:12:02 - 00:24:25:10
Marc Cooper
So when we go to put them into the communications that we're building and we're putting out there, we're not playing to the stereotypes anymore. We're playing to the people we know. We're playing to the environment that we're working in. So I think they are actually quite closely tied together.
00:24:26:21 - 00:24:43:05
Alison Simpson
Really terrific advice. And you both have shared some really valuable insights tonight. So before I let you get on with your day, I'd love to close off the discussion by having each of you share one last piece of advice for our listeners and what they can do to help address the ageism issue. What's the first thing you would have them talk?
00:24:44:17 - 00:25:18:10
Anne Marie Wright
One thing is think stage, not age. When you remove the barriers of age, just view. Demographics mean less than her mindset and what people's needs are. A 70 year old can be just as vibrant as a 40 year old. And if we're building brands around true needs and true mindsets and true behaviors, I think we open a world to think differently about what our opportunities are.
00:25:19:09 - 00:25:33:22
Alison Simpson
I think that's such a great example. And I look at my own personal self, like in my twenties, I was in a lot, a lot worse shape than I am in my fifties. So ages very arbitrary in so many ways. Well, Mark, we'll let you close things off.
00:25:35:18 - 00:26:04:19
Marc Cooper
So I think you could ask us about our Ageless Universe initiative. It's something that third state recently launched and we really can't do what we were trying to do without the support from our industry. This is a multi-phased campaign with the goal of dismantling ageism in the workforce and in the work we do. So you can learn more at ageless University HCA and sign our pledge, which you can also just reach out to us, ask us questions.
00:26:05:10 - 00:26:32:09
Marc Cooper
The two of us are more than happy to talk about what this industry can do. We know that this industry has such a capacity to make change on this really important issue, perhaps one of the last areas of discrimination. And if we can try to beat this together as an industry, we're going to be in really great shape in the work that we're doing and in the way we do work going forward.
00:26:32:18 - 00:26:48:10
Alison Simpson
A great note to end on Marc and Ann Marie, thank you so much for all of the valuable insights that you share today and for helping bring more awareness to this really important issue in the marketing community. I'm very much looking forward to how we can advance this in the months and years ahead.
00:26:49:04 - 00:26:54:03
Anne Marie Wright
Thank you so much for having us. Alison, it's been a real pleasure.
00:26:57:07 - 00:27:11:20
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