“You walk into an agency and it’s ‘no country for old men’,” Burrowes joked.
Jacquie Alley, COO of The Media Store and chair of the IMAA, had named “ageism” when asked to discuss a problem in the industry no one talked about.
Alley noted there were “a whole bunch of misconceptions about what youth can bring.”
“Not just young people have good ideas,” she said. “Not just young people can be digitally savvy. Not just young people can be curious. I think it’s about de-mystifying that, because I find that across generations we all have levels of curiosity and it’s not an age thing.
“So I think it’s a perception, which is a problem.”
She put the problem down to money: as budgets shrink, the salaries that come with age and experience often become untenable.