Campaign partnered with MEC to present another smokescreen designed to deny diversity: a new survey to assess ageism in the advertising industry. According to Campaign, MEC UK CEO Jason Dormieux believes “the diversity debate needs to broaden out to include ageism before we lose this incredible wealth of talent.” Dormieux declared, “We want to be part of a more inclusive industry that prizes and supports its talent and one that reflects wider society and communicates with all audiences and demographics. I’m delighted that we are starting the debate.” Yes, let’s delight in broadening the diversity debate by pushing White women and old White men to the front of the fray. The White men who dismissed diversity for decades will now embrace it—for themselves.
Is advertising a young person’s game? Campaign launches ageism survey
Is the advertising industry guilty of seeing age as an issue, not an asset? Take part in Campaign’s Ageism in Advertising survey and have your say.
By Nicole Kemp
Campaign has teamed up with MEC to launch a survey designed to tackle the issue of ageism in advertising.
The study will tackle the big questions facing the industry such as what happens to the people in our industry when they reach 50? What happens to all that knowledge, expertise and experience when they leave?
The survey, which you can take here takes just a few minutes to complete and is designed to uncover the state of play in the industry today, as well as broader consumer attitudes towards how age is depicted, or conversely ignored, within advertising.
Commenting on the launch of the survey, Jason Dormieux, chief executive of MEC UK, said that the diversity debate needs to broaden out to include ageism before we lose this incredible wealth of talent.
He said: “We want to be part of a more inclusive industry that prizes and supports its talent and one that reflects wider society and communicates with all audiences and demographics. I’m delighted that we are starting the debate.”
There's no end to the parade of white people that agencies want to hire in the name of diversity before getting around to ethnic diversity, is there?
ReplyDeleteWhite women are getting their attention, and have been for the last year, now it's time to step up the game I guess and make sure old white men and women get their due.
After they've already had their due, and made sure nobody of color was able to sneak by them for decades.
And we're all supposed to ignore the signs, visible all around us, that nobody black or brown is getting anywhere in advertising TODAY, in 2016.
The only way into an agency is to be lucky enough to be a minority born overseas who made their career there before scoring a visa to work in America... Or be a teenage intern with years to go before being hireable... Or being a MAIP intern who gets a few months in an agency and then stalls out or is quietly frozen out while white must-hires get hired instead... Or be a celebrity athlete, musician or entertainer so you can be an honorary brand CMO instead.
Having been a victim of ageism within a major media agency I'd quite like to fill in the survey - unfortunately the link simply takes me to the YouGov homepage and, after registering & going through the welcome survey etc., I still can't get to the survey.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it won't let me take it because I'm too old. . .
Try the first link in the post to Campaign–you might have better luck using the link directly in the Campaign article.
ReplyDelete