Download cultural age and seniorism in an advertising context abstract

CULTURAL AGE AND SENIORISM IN AN ADVERTISING
CONTEXT
Maria Suokannas,
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration,
ABSTRACT
Age and ageing are topics with immediate interest. The reason why, is that
many western countries are facing a situation where people live longer and
have more elderly in society than ever before. In a marketing context
(journals, seminars, advertising agencies) the birth of a lucrative market is
announced and e.g. different ways of segmenting the so called 50+ -market
has been developed. In a market communication context the lack of
representation of older models in advertisements has been discussed mainly
in academic journals (e.g. Szmigin&Carrigan) but also in popular
magazines. How people talk about older models in advertisements and how
old age is constructed through this talk is the main aim of this article. The
talk, comments or accounts about an older model in an advertisement
represents a new situation in the marketer-consumer dialectic and will
probably have an impact on consumer culture and how age will be
constructed in the advertising context.
143 accounts about older models in advertisements were gathered during
autumn 2003 and the accounts triggered by one advertisement for bras is
analysed using a discourse analytic approach. The contribution is mainly in
consumer gerontology and consumer culture.
INTRODUCTION
My heart has remained so young that I have the continual feeling of playing a
part, the part of the seventy-year-old that I certainly am; and the infirmities
and weaknesses that remind me of my age act like a prompter, reminding me
of my lines when I tend to stray. Then, like the good actor I should like to be,
I go back into my role, and I pride myself on playing it well (André Gide on 6
March 1941 quoted in Beauvoir de Simone 1972, p.296)
One of the bigger issues in the near future is that the shape of the
population pyramids changes in an unforeseen manner. In the future the
concept “pyramid” could even be replaced by the word “light bulb” because
of the bigger age-groups’ (baby-boomers) moving into an older age
category and simultaneously changing the form of the pyramid as the
subsequent age-groups are proportionately much smaller. It is mainly the
post-war age-groups that are in focus when discussing the societal ageing
phenomenon. Some discrepancies can be found when discussing which
group to focus. In the U.S.A. the baby-boomer concept has been launched
to describe or group individuals born during the years 1946-1964 with
higher birthrates. In Finland, where the data for this article was gathered,
the years with the highest birthrates are 1946-1950 (Karisto & Konttinen,
2004) . The Finnish ageing phenomenon is slightly different from e.g. the
Kuluttajatutkimus. Nyt. 1/2005, 79-89.
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American as the birthrate was extremely high in Finland during the abovementioned period. The baby-boom generation, and its impact on the ageing
phenomenon, is especially interesting to research because of its role as a
change agent of society. According to Dychtwald (2000) “baby boomers
have radically transformed every stage of life through which they have
traveled” (Dychtwald 2000, p. xvi) and has even been “likened by
demographers to a ‘ pig moving through a python’ “ (Dychtwald 2000,
p.xvi) . Babyboomers can be seen as children of their time i.e. children of
the cultural revolution in the 1960s (1958-1974 according to the historian
Arthur Marvich) entailing new ways of looking at young age, beauty and
authorities (Marvich 1998). The ageing of the babyboomers will have an
impact on the national economy but it will be of special interest to see what
impact the ageing will have on consumer culture and how this will influence
the dialogue between marketers and consumers will change the
marketplace. It can be imagined that for example consumer culture will
change focus from youth to old age, which will challenge the marketers
wellknown for emphasizing the young image in their communication. What
the advertiser-marketer-consumer dialectic will bring into the construction
of the senior consumer concept and what kind of impact it will have on the
age-concept is of special interest in this article.
ARISING CONFLICT BETWEEN ADVERTISERS AND TARGETED
GROUP
We can already experience a rising wave of criticism towards the lack of
older models in advertisements and the picturing of old age (see e.g.
Carrigan & Szmigin, 2003; Carrigan & Szmigin, 2000; Carrigan & Szmigin,
1998). For example Carrigan & Szmigin (2003) argue that “not using older
people in advertising is potentially discriminatory and socially exclusive”
(Szmigin & Carrigan 2003, p.198-199). Karisto (in Karisto & Konttinen,
2004) criticizes the way marketers ignore the paying capacity of the big
age-groups especially when advertising is scrutinized. Looking at
advertisements it seems that all the customers are young (ibid.). What we
really do not know at this point is what older models in advertisements are
revealing about what is going on in the age discussion. Identifying the
baby-boomers´ interpretations about an older model in an advertisement
has not been researched for, to my knowing, i.e. how this special age group
in focus is talking about advertisement endorsers of their own age. There
seems to be a slight controversy between what picture the consumer wants
and what will be served in advertising. The advertisers have been criticized
for not using older models as endorsers or for picturing old age in a
negative manner. In an exploratory interview in november 2001 an art
director at one of Finland’s major advertising agencies mentioned that
taking senior models into advertising was frown on because the advertising
agency did not want to have a senior image. Another advertising agency
was beating around the bush when asked about what an older model brings
into the advertisement. During a recent seminar arranged around the
subject 45+-consumers, there were voices raised about the fact that elderly
people are not represented in advertisements. This implies that there is a
strong feeling of neglection among this particular age-group. It could be a
result of the stereotype that seniors do not have financial resources, needs
or wants to consume (Alalääkkölä, 1994) and thus are of no interest to
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marketers. Or it could be that marketers usually want to target younger
age-groups because of the idea that this group is having more innovative
consumption patterns (Ekonomi-magazine 4 /2003). Whatever the reason
may be for under-representing older consumers in advertisements, it surely
has an impact on the image we create of this particular group.
THE ROLE OF ADVERTISING
In contemporary society advertising is part of our everyday life and has
developed a different role than in earlier years. Advertising has usually been
seen as a tool for product promotion or corporate persuasion (Schudson,
1989). Today advertising definitely plays an important role in shaping
consumer culture and is a part of the cultural discourse or in other words
represents “expressions of contemporary consumer culture” (Stern 1997,
p.61). Advertising, as a means of communicating, has always an ideological
background according to Hackley (1999) which gives even more importance
to the market-dialectic perspective. Elaborating a little bit on the dialectic
and discussion about the power of advertising we should take into account
that it is an everyday process: Blaikie (1999) includes, among other
phenomena, media (including advertising) in culture, here within the ageing
context: “my interpretation focuses on the dialogue and dialectic between
everyday perceptions, policy, media and academic attitudes, and the lived
realities of ageing” (Blaikie 1999, p.3). Kilbourne (2004) is going even a
little bit further in the narrative power of advertising as she compares it to
myths in ancient society:
Advertising performs much the same function in industrial society as myth
performed in ancient and primitive societies: It is both the creator and
perpetuator of the dominant attitudes, values, and ideology of culture, as well
as the social norms and myths by which most people live” (Kilbourne J in
Kasser & Kanner eds 2004, p.252)
Putting advertising even on a higher power level in society it can be seen as
an important player in cultural production as it mediates fundamental
problems with dichotomies as good-bad, happy- sad (see Tinic, 1997). The
dichotomy old-young is certainly an interesting issue in the context of this
article and especially how it is mediated by the advertisement that has been
in focus here. These “ kind of binary constructs” (Horton-Salway in
Wetherell & al 2001, p.168) are “general-purpose discursive device for
constructing the world as such” (Edwards 1997, p. 237). Age could be seen
as a tool for this binary construction especially as it is one of the three most
important dimensions we categorize people along, the two others beeing
race and sex (Kunda Z in Nelson T, 2002) and can thus be seen as a very
powerful agent in consumer culture.
It is not enough to use traditional age concepts, such as chronological age,
when we study how age is culturally constructed. This is because becoming
old is a result of an interactive aging process in a social context, and
especially in a marketplace context where advertising plays an important
role. Both old age and being old are an entirety that is continuously
produced, renewed and changed (Jyrkämä J. 2001, p.276-77). In this
process both social interaction and interaction with different change agents
in society, e.g. advertising, will influence people’s age perceptions. Norms
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and other social barriers will decide how old you feel or look or what your
interests or actions are, in other words your cognitive age (feel-age, lookage, do-age or interest-age according to Kastenbaum& al, 1972) is defined
in social interaction.
Combining advertising with stereotypes brings up interesting issues about
the force of media or advertising on stereotyping and categorizing
processes. One might ask what representation would be preferable in order
to avoid negative stereotypes or one might ask what impact
nonrepresentation will have. The representation of older consumers in the
advertising or media context has been dealt with in many studies
(Carrigan&Szmigin, 1998, 2000, 2003;Nelson, 2002; Roy & Harwood, 1997)
bringing up both ageist matters and representation as a whole. According to
Laws (1995) mass media has even an impact on people´s identities, selfidentifications and body perceptions: “we respond to the representation of
an older person as much as, if not more than we respond to old people”
(Laws 1995, p. 116). Frankly speaking mass media “defines and redefines
the meaning of aging” (Wilkinson & Ferraro in Nelson 2002, p.345) and
shows an ongoing semiosis, i.e. interpretation process
RESEARCH QUESTION
There has been more talk in media lately about using older models in
advertisements and it is interesting indeed, to see how this will influence
the advertisers and advertising industry. It is known that older models are
not widely used in advertisements so researching cultural talk (meaning) of
the older model is especially interesting at this phase of history.
This study is exploratory and one step on the way to find out have age
discourses are constructed in the dialectic between marketer and consumer.
In the short accounts, gathered during autumn 2003, I tried to find different
traces of so called interpretive repertoires, which is one of the key concepts
in discursive psychology (Edley N in Wetherell et al., 2001). By revealing
the interpretive repertoires I try to show how people construct age when
confronted with an advertisement that shows older age ( at the same time I
define this advertisement as a representative for older age because of the
models age ). These interpretive repertoires can be used by people to
construct versions about reality (Jorgensen et Phillips 1999 ) and are seen
as different ways of talking about a phenomenon:
By interpretive repertoire we mean broadly discernible cluster of terms,
descriptions and figures of speech often assembled around metaphors or vivid
images. ( Wetherell et Potter 1992, p.90 )
The advertisement that will be analyzed in this article, represented the
advertiser’s contemporary interpretation of old age. This interpretation can
be seen as the advertisers’ account, which is the concept for the description
that is inspected within discourse analysis. Through accounts people make
themselves and the world understandable to other people (Jokinen et al.
2002, p. 20) and this is a part of the communication process.
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METHODOLOGY
The aim of this article is not to find direct effects of different variables on a
phenomenon. The research finds its place on the poststructuralist and
postmodern arena as language is not seen as a neutral medium of
description (Elliott R, 1996) and it is known that there are only
interpretations and no real truth. In this research I am not looking for the
truth of reality but emphasize that the social world is complex and never
fully predictable (Wetherell et al. 2002). It is emphasized that there are
many interpretations (see e.g.Ozanne &Hudson, 1989). Compatible with the
interpretive perspective is social constructionism, that sees the world to be
constructed in social processes e.g. interactions. Without digging any
deeper into the conceptualization of social constructionism there are some
typical features that are important to put forward. The researcher is closely
related to the research because when observing social reality he or she
creates it (see e.g. Jokinen et al., 2002). According to Hackley (1998) the
task of social constructionism is not to quantify data, categorize or find
causal relationships. It emphasizes “the structure of meanings as
constructed by individuals engaged in a social process”. In a marketing
context this perspective is even more important as marketing definitely is
part of the social world and theory building in marketing should be founded
on a reflexive understanding (Hackley, 1998)
It is emphasized that age is constructed in social processes and with the
help of e.g. advertising. As mentioned above advertising can be seen as an
important part of consumer culture and it both reflects and affects
consumer culture and thus has an important role in creating the age
concept. Advertising has mainly been researched with effects or attitudes in
mind, emphasizing scripts or schemas in consumer cognition. In a social
constructionist perspective the spoken or written word is the focus of the
research and it is believed that everything that is said or written, constructs
what we will be (identity) or what we will do. The accounts are analyzed in
a discourse analytic way where “…they do not just describe things, they do
things. And being active they have social and political implications” (Potter
& Wetherell 1987, 6). Analyzing for example speech or text, these are in
focus of the research and it is not interesting to know what lies behind the
utterances or if there is a factual reality behind the words (Jokinen in
Jokinen et al., 2002). As such the speech or texts does something.
The accounts should be analysed remembering that they are“the building
blocks that people use constructing versions of actions, cognitive processes
and other phenomena in their discourse” (McKinley& Potter & Wetherell,
1993, p. 147). With a material as I had it is possible to find interpretive
repertoires that “are part and parcel of any community’s common sense,
providing a basis for shared social understanding” (Wetherell et al. 2001,
p.198). There are often difficulties in knowing how to find interpretive
repertoires. It is often some kind of craft skill (ibid.). Through reading and
rereading your data and knowing your data almost by heart you get more
skillful and you discover that some things are repeated. The interpretive
repertoires I have found here are representing how age is constructed in
talk in an advertising context. The talk shows also how this particular
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advertisement is consumed ( see e.g.
Fairclough 1995 )
about consumption of texts in
Discourse analysis can be criticized for being too relative or not giving
enough validation but its role is more to show things that are taken for
granted. Through the analysis of discursive practices ( or interpretive
repertoires ) in the accounts about an older model we can trace what is
typical of today´s talk about age and draw some conclusions about cultural
constructs.
METHOD
The short accounts (143) were collected in October 2003 by students at a
consumer behaviour course. The students were thoroughly instructed during
a two-hour session about the aim of the research i.e. to get comments on
eight different advertisement, where half of these pictured an older model.
The interviewers were requested to be as passive as possible when
interviewing, in order to have descriptions, accounts as spontaneous as
possible. It was recommended that the interviews should be recorded and if
this was not possible everything should be written down straight after the
interview. In order to get the big age-groups represented, people born
between 1942- 1956 were interviewed. These accounts represent
contemporary culture. And according to Alasuutari: “The sample can be a
bad representative for the entirety but it cannot offer wrong knowledge”
(Alasuutari 2001, p. 114)
Finding older models in advertisements was not an easy task. I tried to find
models that could be described as older with typical signs of older age
(wrinkles, gray hair) and I wanted both male and female representatives.
The chosen ad was part of Lindex’, a clothing company´s newest ad
campaign for bras and was used because of its visbility (outdoor advertising
also) and because of Lindex advertising policy. In a short interview with
Lindex (June 2004) I was told that Lindex wants to appeal to all ages and to
be a store for everyone. They have also aimed at using ordinary people
instead of models to strengthen their image of being a store for everyone.
ACCOUNTS
Having read and reread the accounts I found the following interpretive
repertoires.
At this time of history an older model seems to awake astonishment in
many of the accounts in this study ( the astonishment interpretive
repertoire). It could show that it is appropriate to talk in this way, now.
…Astonishingly old model, which is positive…
..Not a typical advertisement and therefore good. It is not typical because of
her age.
Nice that they have chosen an older woman to their advertisement, charming
advertisement..
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With as many accounts as we have in this study it is natural that the
opinions were not undividedly positive. In some cases some hesitation
ensued as (the hesitation interpretive repertoire):
…here they have seized the opportunity to use an older woman. Maybe it is
good…
Confusing, unusual…
This hesitation shows that the combination of old, woman and
advertisement is a known possibility but perhaps too uncommon to awake
positive reactions. It is confusing as aging easily is seen as something
negative. It could even awake some disgust.
Some accounts showed even a very negative attitude towards the use of an
older model (the eliminating interpretive repertoire):
Oh no, an older aunt in an advertisement for bras. She looks alright. But I
don´t think that it is suitable to have older women in advertisements for bras.
Artificial and unconvincing as the earlier one. Besides, I don´t understand
why older people has to be forced into advertisements
…Is it so wise to make advertisements for bras with old aunties, isn´t it better
to use Janina Frostell or any other beautiful model?
In some of the positive utterances the older model as a spokesperson
meant inclusion and show some of the age stereotypes that are mastering
our talk today. The stereotype referred to here is that old age means hiding
yourself and especially hiding your sexuality (e.g you can´t use beautiful
clothes when you are older.) ( the inclusive interpretive repertoire ):
In fact this is also pretty good. That you can use beautiful clothes even when
you are older. It doesn´t have to relate to youth as advertising has made us
believe, that only youth is something. As a matter of fact this is really good! A
good picture and the lived life is seen. Surely it will touch people of our age
This advertisement shows that even an older woman can be sexy! More
advertisements of this kind and a lot! When you look at this you get the
feeling that it is worthwhile to invest in yourself although you have passed
menopause.
I recognize the advertisement. Mmm…you get a positive picture; also older
women should and could dress sexy. It is not dangerous to get older.
In the accounts different nouns have been used to describe the older
woman or lady in the advertisement. Looking at the nouns takes makes the
discourse analysis lexical as it studies local meanings of words ( van Dijk in
Wodak & Meyer 2001). According to Lerner (1999) there is a certain
difference between the use of woman (kvinna), lady (dam) and girl (tjej)
and it shows a different attitude towards females. At first sight you can
perceive the three nouns to be equal but at a connotative level the word
woman has more sexual or aggressive implications (Lerner 1999, p.104)
and refers to reproduction. The word lady, on the other hand, is calming,
pure and asexual. It should of course be remembered that the use of the
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word is highly contextual but in this case the respondents were referring to
the same picture.
”pretty and young-looking older lady”
“good that they have included an older woman”
"well-preserved older lady"
In the interviews some of the respondents did not even use the word
woman, lady or girl but used the word people, model or she, which made
the woman in the advertisement more distanced.
” nice to see older people in ads”
"though it is good that they also use older models”
"She is stylish and okay, however”
In Finland we have a noun that is difficult to translate, which was mentioned
in some of the accounts. This noun is “tant” in Swedish and “täti” in Finnish
and translating it straight to English it would be aunt or maiden or even
lady. In Finland the word has a different connotation meaning e.g. that a
person is old-fashioned and a little bit funny, perhaps not having any power
at all. There is even a Swedish book (Khaldi & Welander 1999) that is called
“Tantvarning” (Beware of the auntie) which gives some advice on how to
avoid being “auntish”. The advice were gathered by a magazine and people
had a possibility to send in their own warnings. This book is a
representative of contemporary discussions about ageing women. The
warnings show that the connotation of “tant”, “auntie”, is unmodern,
unsexy, slow motion and past their prime. In the following accounts the
word “tant” was used
"Ooh..an old auntie in a laced bra”
”It is good with older aunties every now an then”
”Old aunties are seldom seen in advertisements”
Some utterances refer to stereotyping (the stereotyping interpretive
repertoire). For example, the combination of old age and beauty being
astonishing shows attitudes that are deeply rooted in society. Beauty is
usually combined with young age and a lot of effort, especially by women, is
made to remain young e.g. by using cosmetics and having cosmetic
surgery. According to Wilkinson & Ferraro (in Nelson 2002, p.343) “most of
these procedures to ‘look young’ reinforce the notion that beauty is in the
domain of the youth” and “ the dual forces of ageism and sexism still
emphasize youthful appearances for women”.
”mmm, she is even well-preserved although she is pretty old”
“ She is beautiful although she is a little older and has grey hair”
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With these interpretative repertoires I want to bring forward what is allowed
or possible to talk about when confronted with an older model in an
advertisement. We can find how age is constructed and how some norms
are alive in the talk. Some similarities can be drawn from a study described
by Nigel Edley, where he looked for ways how people talked about
masculinity and men.:
By looking for the different ways that people can talk about men and
masculinity, we begin to understand the kinds of limitations that exist for the
construction of self and other” (Edley N in Wetherell& al 2001, p.201)
Advertising should be seen as the act of ”telling a story” that makes an
interaction and management of ´reality’ possible (Slater in Meijer 1998,
p.236). These accounts have interacted with the advertisement’s story and
is part of the market-consumer dialectic.
DISCUSSION
The accounts of this study are a snapshot of how people construct the social
reality of ageing through the semiosis of one particular advertisement.
According to Gergen (1994) any utterance is a signifier until some fellow
actor signifies it to become a socially shared sign (using the concepts of
semiotics). Which of these utterances will become a sign depends on
interpersonal relations, power and human agency. There will always be an
ongoing dialogue between the society and the individual. Social structures
of society will form the individual but the individual will on the other hand
influence society or exert human agency. (Wilkinson & Ferraro in Nelson,
2002).
How future advertising will consider the senior consumers and in which way
senior models will be used depend on which of these accounts will be
powerful enough. We will have to find out the following in a Foucaultian
way: How will some power relations be supported by the use of different
discourses? How will some terms be strengthened and other weakened?
(Foucault 1976, p.97). Will an overall stronger age discourse see the
daylight? Are we going towards an ageless society where no models will be
used at all? One important issue is that the baby boomers are known for
changing society because of being numerous. How the baby boomers' aging
will change the construction of age and especially in a
marketing
communication context could be found in the analysis of cultural practices.
The age concept’s changing from a chronological discourse to a more
socially constructed discourse will be a process that every marketer should
follow in order to know how to communicate with the lucrative, babyboomer’s market.
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AUTHOR
Maria Suokannas, , M.Sc. (econ), is a doctoral student at the Swedish
School of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Marketing,
Arkadiagatan 22, 00100 Helsingfors.
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