A Self Fulfilling Pro-Piecy

Old age starts at 61, say those aged 16 to 24. Nope, it starts at 72, say the 55- to 64-year-olds, according to an IPSOS study. The truth is, age is just a number. With longer life expectancies and a better quality of living compared to our grandparents, we are living in a time when our lives are truly being shaped by our thoughts. So if you think you are young, you’re young. And if you think you are old, you’re old.

- Josh Sims

David Stewart’s revelatory moment came behind the lens. “I was an advertising photographer for a long time and I began to notice that the people I shot all seemed to stay roughly the same age while I just got older,” he laughs. “And when I did shoot people closer to my age, they were all medical basket cases. I just started thinking: ‘I don’t know anyone like that’. The thing is that we’re all subject to this cultural brainwashing that’s set these ideas as to what people of my age and older are supposed to look like and how they’re supposed to behave. It’s a mass delusion. And it’s very powerful.”

Stewart went on to become, four years ago, the founder of wear eageist. com, a creative agency (“terms the likes of ‘golden years’, ‘silver’—as in dollar, surfer or fox—and ‘boomer’ are banned,” he notes) that’s found itself busy explaining to brands selling everything from insurance to sneakers how to reach ‘older’ consumers. These, after all, account for some 70 percent of global spend, with those aged 60-plus—the year in which the fourth and final phase of life begins, according to Pythagoras—expected to spend USD15 trillion next year.

“The people at these brands aren’t dumb,” he says. “They just consistently get the messaging wrong. But then go to an ad agency and there’s nobody over 40. They can’t know what it’s like to be older when they’re not. So they just keep selling everything to younger people—even if that’s not the target market—because that’s all they know how to do.”