Only airbrushed old people get a look-in in adverts

It is time that advertising embraced the range and variety of older people – as well as their spending power, writes ORNA MULCAHY…

It is time that advertising embraced the range and variety of older people – as well as their spending power, writes ORNA MULCAHY

THAT COUPLE with their Zurich Lifestyle pension are beginning to annoy me. You know the couple, Jim and the wife, in the radio ads, him telling us how worried he was about his pension and afraid to tell herself, while she too was worried sick until she found out that “Clever Jim” was with Zurich, which had put his money into a low- risk fund as he neared retirement so that now, though everyone else may be wallowing in the merde, they are absolutely fine, thank you very much. “For God’s sake, woman,” is my first reaction. “Did you ever think about paying into your own pension? Or does Jim do all the thinking in the marriage?”

Cheesy and all as the advertisements are, they do work on a couple of levels. They’re memorable, which is surely the point, and give one a niggling feeling that maybe one should be switching to Zurich oneself – such a good name, with its suggestion of Swiss efficiency. If, as they claim, the low-risk fund has outperformed others, well, what are we all waiting for?

The actors in the radio ads have nice, authentic voices. They actually sound as if they might be at retirement age, but lo! When you see the ad in its print version in newspapers, there’s Jim and the wife, young as anything – at least that is how they look to me. Full heads of hair, just a sprinkling of grey, laughter lines rather than wrinkles, and great-looking teeth. His jeans are positively moulded to him. No doubt a youthful audience might see them as ancient, but I’d say in reality the models are both aged about 50, maybe 55. He looks like Michael O’Leary, she looks like Mary Coughlan, and both look exceptionally smug.

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“You know what?” the caption says, “Our pension matured and wasn’t affected by the stock market dip.” Yeah, right. That’s the pension you started with your pocket money, is it? Does Zurich expect us to believe that Jim has been paying into a scheme since about the age of 10 or 15, and is now happily retired on the proceeds, or is it just that the company cannot bring itself to show people who actually look like, well, pensioners, complete with hairs sprouting out of their ears?

I know that 70 is the new 50, longevity is the new reality, and women of 65 can, with a good deal of help, look a decade or so younger, but this pair, pleasant and all as they are, do not say Retirement, so much as Denial.

It’s easy to see how the advertising agency’s pitch to Zurich might have gone. The creative team suggesting something new, throwing in a bit of lateral thinking perhaps, a script more suggestive than descriptive to make the reader or listener interpret for themselves. However, the device of the inane-sounding married couple is such an old reliable in Irish advertising that the client might have said: “I like what you’re saying, but it’s a bit complicated. What about having a nice couple?” Then, a nice pair of pensioners might have been produced, and the client might have looked at them long and hard, and said: “You know what, they look a bit depressing don’t they,” or “There’s something not quite right about them.” The something not quite right being their age.

Now, the reality is that the Zurich ads are in fact aimed at a far younger group who are thinking about their pension. Visually speaking, 50 or so looks plenty old to them. However, it is also the case that advertising and marketing people simply don’t do “old” very well.

Advertising is a “young” business, and most agencies probably do not have any employees who are either at, or nearing retirement age (unless they own the company). Ditto for the young, thrusting marketing execs who are pushing a product. Put them together, say “aged”, and they will probably come up with a couple of stereotypes – either the worried, cranky, scaly or senile (suitable for ads for bladder control or stair lifts), or the glamorous Silver Foxes, about to embark on a cruise, running along a beach, or teeing off on the golf course (useful for ads for dentures and financial planning).

Why not broaden the range? There are other versions. Older women can and do look beautiful and stylish, as in the Dove Real Beauty ads with all their lumps and bumps, and the Guardian’s fashion pages which show women of all ages wearing the latest clothes. At Paris Fashion Week earlier this month, one Japanese designer, Limi Feu, made the headlines when she chose a bald, bespectacled man in his 70s to strut down the catwalk. It wasn’t mutton dressed as lamb, just an attractive and interesting older man, looking good in the clothes.

However, these are exceptions. Older men and women, particularly women, are under-represented in advertising, according to a recent study of 1,852 adverts in the UK, and it is no different here.

People over 65 make up about 11 per cent of the population in this country, and, as a group, they have considerably more spending power than the mortgage-ridden or redundant young. Let’s have a little more imagination from advertisers in showing how such people really are.