Ageism and Social Media Expertise: Implications for Intergenerational Dynamics in Advertising Creativity

Abstract

Intergenerational tensions in the creative departments of advertising agencies have long been a topic of interest. Recently, the emergence of social media proficiency as a symbol of youthfulness has intensified these tensions, creating contested expertise within workplaces. The article explores how this particular marker of ageism influences the creative processes and identity formation of practitioners who are older than the average age of industry workers. Drawing from in-depth interviews with twenty-one creatives (copywriters, art directors, and creative directors), this qualitative study reveals that, in response to feeling sidelined based on perceptions that they lack social media expertise, "older" creatives reaffirm their strategic experience yet resist challenging claims they are "out of touch" with online cultures. We argue that the valorisation of younger practitioners' social media savviness is contributing to the transformation of advertising creativity while placing additional pressure on practitioners to leave the industry while in their thirties. Furthermore, the article identifies broader concerns regarding ageism in society, which advertising content can exacerbate when creatives rely on flawed stereotypes to shape knowledge of audiences or cultural representations.

Advertising workplaces have long been characterized as contentious environments. Strained relations among creatives (copywriters, art directors, and creative directors), conflicts between different agency departments, and contentious client interventions have previously been documented.¹ This article considers tensions within creative workplaces from an underexplored contemporary perspective by examining how prevailing associations between youthfulness and social media expertise are shaping advertising production and notions of who is considered "creative."

Our research seeks to explore the nature of creative practice in advertising at a time when strict distinctions between traditional and digital advertising have significantly eroded, with contemporary practitioners being expected to possess advanced skills and knowledge across all communication platforms.² It contributes to the existing literature on contemporary advertising workplaces as well as to emerging research into ageism in an industry encumbered with quantifiably ageist tendencies. A survey of Australian advertising agencies indicates that 62% of employees were aged under 35, while just 10% were older than 45.³ In the US, statistics indicate 60% of advertising and promotional managers sit within the age grouping of 25 to 44, with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) reporting that the average age of a creative advertising professional is 28.⁴ An extensive survey of UK advertising industry professionals in 2023 for the Advertising Association's All In Census showed that 41% of practitioners fell in the 25–35 age group.⁵

Recent research has sought to understand why this age imbalance is the case and how older practitioners negotiate identity formation in an industry that valorises youthfulness.⁶ Yet there is still much to consider on this topic. Based on interviews with Australian creatives aged from 35 to 53 (and thus exceeding the industry employee average age of 34), this article builds on existing research by exploring how age-related perceptions of social media expertise shape the identity work of "older" practitioners (over 35) and the associated implications for creative practice.⁷ The researchers used social identity theory and the systems model of creativity to examine participants' perceptions of their social media proficiency and the role of social media in the creative process.⁸ Based on this analysis, we argue that the seemingly unassailable association of youthfulness and social media expertise further contributes to the marginalization of older creative practitioners and presents tensions capable of limiting rather than encouraging the successful development of creative and diverse advertising content.

We address this topic at a time when the changing media landscape is transforming advertising workplaces and doing so in ways that present both distinctive new opportunities and obstacles for creative practitioners and their employers. This research also relates to the industry's recent efforts to be more inclusive and less stereotypical in advertising representations. For instance, both the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) as well as the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) have in recent years updated their rules and guidance on stereotypical advertising representations, promoting more realistic and diversified portrayals.⁹ Yet despite older people representing a growing demographic group globally, they are still not only underrepresented in advertising but also regularly depicted in stereotypical ways.¹⁰ And, as research indicates, circulating these typically negative images of aging negatively impacts older peoples' self-concept and mental health.¹¹ Researchers have attributed the problematic portrayal of older people in advertising at least partly to the fact that most practitioners working in the industry are young and that younger advertisers may—either consciously or unconsciously—choose endorsers with whom they can identify.¹² Thus, the negative effects associated with the marginalization of older advertising practitioners are not restricted to individual experiences of inequality; they can have wider societal consequences in the form of underrepresented and stereotyped older people in the media.

This article begins with a background section on previous research on the nature of advertising agency creative departments, the negotiation of identity in these workplaces, and the social construction of advertising creativity. We then describe the method used to collect and analyze the experiences of older advertising practitioners. Next, we present the findings from our analysis. The final section discusses the implications of these findings, research limitations, and areas for further study.

Background

Sites of conflict, competition, and macho comradery

Literature on the occupational cultures in which advertising is produced reveals the existence of competitive, tension-filled workplaces dominated by male influence and ageist conditions. A study of New York advertising agencies by Hackley and Kover identified working environments characterized by insecurity and conflict among agency departments.¹³ They write that an "us against the world" mentality held by many creatives helps solidify a collective identity that distinguishes these workers from their more business-focused colleagues. Nixon found a "robust masculinity" and intense rivalry between peers working in London advertising agencies that sat in contrast to the progressive and inclusive ideal of the emergent cultural industries discourse of the time.¹⁴ Researchers have also noted an endemic lack of diversity in creative departments; for example, underrepresentation and structural conditions that limit women's ability to achieve success.¹⁵ Our research found that "older" creatives—those aged over 35 in this workplace context—feel marginalized and face limited career prospects yet respond with a resigned resilience to their plight given their seemingly inevitable "use-by" dates.¹⁶ Further, our analysis highlights and attempts to explain the ambiguous nature of ageism in advertising—a phenomenon practitioners acknowledge but appear unable to identify why it exists and persists. While this literature reveals the extent and nature of gender and age inequalities in the advertising industry, so far researchers have paid little attention to the way in which age inequality and intergenerational tensions manifest in terms of collaboration and ideation within creative departments. This article thus aims to add to this body of literature by considering how older creatives negotiate identity formation in response to an emergent form of discrimination—the perception that older creatives lack expertise with social media—and its impact on the creative process.

An identity in constant (re)negotiation

Previous research on the workplace identity formation of advertising creatives has applied Jenkins' social identity theory.¹⁷ This approach posits that individual and collective identities are formed through an internal/external dialectic in which "others don't just perceive our identity, they actively constitute it"; these perceptions manifest through "labels" that shape identity in both positive and negative ways.¹⁸ In the context of advertising creativity, this identity work is shaped by indicators of success, with practitioners' subjectivities influenced by the maxim that they are only as "good as their last piece of work."¹⁹ Accordingly, identity is never fixed but instead exists in a constant state of negotiation and is dependent on peer recognition in addition to, according to Hackley and Kover, an improvisational process in which practitioners "draw on the available discursive resources to present themselves as credible or authentic professionals."²⁰ Nixon and Crew note an innate tension in the "competing identifications" of advertising creatives, who simultaneously framed their working lives as demanding and arduous yet also fashion-conscious, social, and hedonistic.²¹ McLeod, O'Donohoe, and Townley write that "learning resilience" is a key aspect of identity work for advertising creatives in response to the inherent "vulnerability and insecurity" of an occupation that sees them repeatedly move from expert to novice as they rise in the ranks and respond to industry changes.²² This paper builds on these perspectives by arguing that prevailing beliefs that inherently link social media expertise with youthfulness present a contemporary form of conflict that exacerbates existing ageist tendencies.

The social construction of advertising creativity

Framing creativity as a socially constructed phenomenon, as opposed to an individual series of actions or personality traits, allows this exploratory study to delineate the identity formation of older advertising creatives regarding internal and external perceptions of social media proficiency. The systems model of creativity, developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, considers creativity as emerging from the interactions of three forces: a field that selects novel variations produced by an individual creator, a domain of cultural resources that serve to inspire and shape future novel variations, and the individual or creator who develops a novel variation by drawing on cultural resources that exist in the domain and have been previously validated by the field. In the context of creative advertising, the field consists of the clients, agency colleagues, and audiences; the domain encompasses popular culture, including previous exemplars of advertising creativity; and the creator is most commonly the art director and copywriter team who develop novel communication outcomes.²³ Importantly, the systems perspective allows us to understand the conditions that both encourage and limit creativity by providing a means of tracing power relationships and flows of information within the creative process. Vanden Bergh and Stuhlfaut have used this model to identify the sociocultural influences on creative advertising production in research that moved beyond a purely individualistic perspective centered on the actions of creative teams. Windels and Lee have applied a systems approach to analyze the experience of female creatives working within a masculine paradigm in which "creativity is constructed based on mostly male gatekeepers using masculinity as a model."²⁴ Other recent research on the influence of new media on the creative process has identified the reshaping of the ideation process at both individual and organizational levels.²⁵ Applying the systems model of creativity and understanding organizational or structural responses to emergent media thus provides a valuable entry point for achieving this article's research aims. If, as the systems model suggests, creativity and the recognition of artifacts as being novel is a result of the interplay of individual expertise, the domain zeitgeist, and the evaluation of relevant members of the respective field, the model lends itself to tracing the interrelationships and dynamics that impact older creatives and their work. Moreover, it helps explain how technologies like social media are crucial communication tools and how proficiency in their use becomes instrumentalized as a marker of status and creative capital in advertising agencies. Specifically, this article seeks to answer the following research questions:

RQ1:

How do older creatives negotiate identity formation in response to the association of social media expertise with youthfulness?

RQ2:

What are the attendant effects of the association of social media expertise with youthfulness on the creative process?

Method

The researchers used a qualitative methodology to understand the lived experience of older creatives in advertising agencies in their own terms and in its richness and detail. While this method is well suited to exploratory research and studying complex phenomena, care was taken to limit subjectivity through the application of systematic procedures and reflexive processes.²⁶ We employed a purposive sampling approach, initially inviting practitioners in our professional networks to participate.²⁷ Subsequently, we asked these participants to identify further potential informants in our application of the snowball recruitment technique.²⁸ All participants had more than ten years of experience in the advertising industry. The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with seventeen male and four female creatives (see Table 1) aged between 35 and 53 years—meaning all participants were "older" in the sense of being close to or above the average age of someone working in the Australian advertising industry (34). These practitioners were employed at advertising agencies in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne on either a permanent (eleven) or freelance (ten) basis. Consisting of predominantly White Anglo-Saxon males, the participant group does not reflect the make-up of Australian society but is indicative of the limited diversity within the advertising industry.²⁹

Table 1.

Study participants.

The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews of between forty-five and ninety minutes either in participants' workplaces, at a location of their choosing, or via video calls. Our questioning followed an interview protocol that helped us to draw out the lived experiences of older creatives by broadly exploring two key themes: (1) how participants perceived the interrelationship between age, social media, and creativity in their profession, and (2) how in their view specific age-related routines, rituals, beliefs, and worldviews manifest themselves in daily workplace practices and agency cultures.

We employed an inductive approach to establish a series of findings. Following Miles and Huberman's three-stage model for qualitative research, both researchers independently read the interview transcripts and reviewed fieldwork notes to reduce the data to the most relevant insights and identify categories of information.³⁰ This data was analyzed using an open coding protocol that involved organizing interview excerpts and summaries into categories and subcategories, thus allowing for the formation of a series of thematic clusters. Both researchers then reviewed these findings by returning to the original transcripts to confirm the coding analysis and our identification of themes and inferences.

Findings

We present our findings on older creatives' perceptions of how social media expertise is framed with regard to age in advertising workplaces in three sections that reflect the core dimensions of Csikszentmihalyi's systems model of creativity. This organization of findings allows the article to explore the identity work of older creatives in response to both internal and external perceptions of their social media proficiency and implications for the development of creative advertising content.

Age, social media, and the individual creative

The systems model of creativity posits that the individual creators' backgrounds and experiences shape how they draw symbolic meanings from the cultural domain to produce a novel variation that responds to the expectations of the field. When discussing their social media proficiency as producers of advertising, most participants expressed confidence in their own abilities yet highlighted a series of challenges that specifically related to being an "older" creative who didn't "grow up with" social media (CD8). Some framed a high level of proficiency based on their personal engagement with social media. For instance, one participant confessed, "My wife hates how much time I spend on social media. I understand [social media], I have seen every single development" (CD7). For others, social media were predominantly used to fulfill work-related tasks: "I know about social media, because I have to use it, I have to do ads and stuff on it, but I don't use social media, I can't stand it" (CD2). While social media knowledge was deemed important, participants suggested there were challenges in working with these platforms. Barriers included keeping up to date as there is "always something new" (AD3) to master, with another participant stating that "certain briefs exposed knowledge gaps" (CD3). Participants also emphasized the need to quickly learn the nature of new social media platforms: "I'm certainly expected to have to come up with creative concepts for new media platforms that we may have not even heard of until the moment we get briefed on it" (AD2). Participants commonly framed their perceptions of their social media knowledge around colleagues' experience, with the belief that younger creatives "are more in touch" as "digital natives" (AD1); in contrast they, as older creatives, had to "work harder to understand the landscape" (CD8).

While participants generally felt that older creatives were perceived as less knowledgeable about social media platforms and cultures, they often countered these claims by highlighting their more advanced ability to "understand the strategic value of ideas" (AD1), emphasizing that "experience trumps everything" (ACD1). These participants identified "experience" as allowing senior creatives to avoid or see through the "hype" surrounding social media, as the following argument indicates: "It's merely another channel. It's not the universal panacea toward their [the client's] marketing challenges" (CD7). With this perspective, participants are referring to a well-established differentiation in advertising agencies between a focus on individual communication tactics (e.g., TV spots, billboards, social media videos, etc.) and broader strategic campaign thinking capable of holistically achieving a client's business goals. They also argued that despite clients' particular interest in social media due to its novelty, advertising campaigns still need to communicate across media, a perspective exemplified by the following observation: "Every single campaign I work on has social media attached to it … [but] it's only a third, a tenth, and twentieth of the whole campaign" (AD3). The same creative positioned himself as being able to identify weaknesses with a social media-centric paradigm: "It's very frustrating to watch because so often I've had to pick up campaigns [where] younger guys have said they've got this really cool idea with this celebrity, and this influencer. [And I ask] 'now can you try and roll that out into a full campaign?'" (AD3). This common perspective among participants tends to reflect a creative idealism "laced with pragmatism" identified by Hackley and Kover, yet conflicts with Stuhlfaut and Windels' conclusion that new media technologies are increasingly being used across the field as inspirational starting points in the creative process, at least for the older creatives we spoke to.

Age, social media proficiency, and the field

In the context of advertising, Vander Bergh and Stuhlfaut describe the field as consisting of account managers, account planners, audiences, clients, and creative directors—but also the broader industry that collectively shapes expectations and notions of contemporary creativity. Each group of field actors wields varying degrees of influence, with the client ultimately having a final say on whether an advertisement is disseminated to audiences. Besides this gatekeeper role, the field can influence the creative process by providing (or withholding) guidance, support, and access to particular projects. Participants' observations and experiences revealed that the field's perception of older creatives' social media contributions can generate tensions, potentially limiting career longevity.

Despite most participants describing themselves as sufficiently "social media savvy" to do their jobs, they overwhelmingly reported that there was a perception within their work environments that older creatives didn't "get social media" (AD1). The majority, however, rejected the accuracy of the contention, with some saying it was not the "reality" (CW4) and "perception more than fact" (CD8). One creative director described the implications of this stereotype as such: "It's not ideal. Particularly if you are at a stage in your career where you're seen as one of the leaders within the agency and the industry" (CD8). Participants noted the effects of this labeling in descriptions of recent creative process experiences. One senior art director recalled his creative team being asked by an account manager to work with a younger colleague to put "a young social media lens on your thoughts," a request he found insulting and demoralizing (AD3). Participants considered the commonly attributed "don't get social media" perception to be a difficult external view to challenge due to broader cultural associations. In the words of one participant, "Not being a digital native, irrespective of how good you are, that perception is going to be an issue" (CD8). Overall, participants did not predominantly respond to this external stereotyping in ways that suggested overt insecurity but instead alluded to an essentialist belief that there was a link between social media expertise and youthfulness. One senior art director connected his perspective to clients: "Clients ask us to embrace new media, new channels, new things that have come up. It's like a self-propagating thing that creates the impression that younger people have a better understanding of this, or they have a better understanding of the whole communication process" (AD2). Another participant highlighted broader contextual factors, specifically the industry's thirst for being "at the pinnacle of the latest trend" and for exploiting "each trend for the benefit of clients" (CD4). The identification of these external perceptions, based on observed instances of stereotyping, suggests older creatives may be deemed less capable of meeting the field's expectations of social media expertise.

When discussing external beliefs that older creatives lacked social media expertise, participants commonly returned to their own experience and, in effect, their role as members of the field who guide younger practitioners more broadly. For example, several creative directors spoke of the benefits of younger practitioners having a stronger knowledge of social media that they could then "apply smart thinking to" (CD7). While it is the job of the creative director to provide this guidance, the art directors and copywriters we interviewed also highlighted their mentorship of younger colleagues, as the following statement paradigmatically reveals: "Younger people can actually benefit from the older guys being around them. It's not a generational war, it's about the passing on of skills" (AD4). Other participants, however, identified specific examples of intergenerational tensions: "I just have witnessed very little of them with a commercial ability to solve business problems" (AD3). He continued this line of argument by saying that helping younger creatives learn how to translate a social media-focused idea across an integrated advertising campaign was "what we're here for, but it's really frustrating."

Despite attempting to counter negative external labeling of their social media abilities with an articulation of their role as guides and mentors, the overwhelming belief that the field associated younger creatives with social media expertise indicates a perceptual tendency that older creatives are less able to convince colleagues and clients that they have expertise in this particular dimension of practice. This perception reveals a strained relationship with the field and a lack of credibility in a growing area of advertising creative practice and thus limited social validation of their work in a profession in which identity is never fixed but shaped around perceptions of the quality of their most recent work.

Age, social media proficiency, and the domain

In the development of creative advertising, the domain consists of a repository of creative advertisements and relevant cultural representations, such as popular culture, film, television, and online content, that have previously been accepted by the field as novel variations. Noting that "advertising thrives on popular culture," Vanden Bergh and Stuhlfaut write that the domain provides the "frame of reference" that "gives ads their cultural meaning."³¹ An analysis of participant observations of the cultural resources they draw into the creative process and how they perceive their actions to differ from younger colleagues—within the context of social media—allows us to further explore generational differences in advertising production.

Interestingly, several participants were critical of the nature of contemporary social media brand communication. For example, one senior art director described social media creative as either "gimmicky" or "safe" and lacking "exciting interpretations or art or thoughts" (AD4). Participants also discussed a change in focus from message novelty to medium novelty in social media brand communication, a shift linked to how younger practitioners viewed creativity: "I think often there is a danger that people might be looking more at the bucket that you're trying to fill rather than what you're filling it with" (AD2). When discussing the creative process of younger colleagues, another participant noted that they "confuse the channel with the idea" (CW4). This criticism of the nature of social media creativity could be read as older creatives' construction of identity based on what Hackley and Kover term "legitimate creativity" but also reveals a resistance to what other members of the field consider "good work" in an emergent area of practice. Where previously creatives often sought to ideate away from media and, in effect, draw on their internalized knowledge of the domain, participants described younger creatives as always "being on their laptops" and rarely seeking to "experience stuff outside of social media" (AD3).³²

While participants said they had little difficulty understanding the technical aspects of emerging platforms, the commonly held belief that younger creatives are more in touch with social media cultures was difficult to overcome. This common perspective among participants was noted as having a ripple effect, as revealed by the following account: "There's a longing for young talent because there's a feeling that they understand modern channels of communication or things that are happening in the world" (AD2). This perception indicates that it is not the mechanics of social media that older creatives purportedly do not understand but their lack of awareness of online cultures which, in effect, is considered to limit their ability to understand relevant cultural resources more broadly. Importantly, this assumed lack of attunement to the social media zeitgeist is much harder for older creatives to invalidate than a purported lack of "technical" knowledge of social media. Given the dynamic nature and unlimited breadth of "online culture," older creatives can always be accused of gaps in relation to this kind of knowledge. Thus, social media expertise becomes a subjective, vague, and constantly moving cultural-aesthetic target for older creatives to attain.

Discussion and conclusion

Creativity is a social process. Understanding the identity construction of older advertising creatives in this context allows one to more fully delineate how creativity is achieved in the digital era and problematize transformations that present both opportunities and challenges to the evolution of advertising creativity and production. This section explores the implications of the study's findings to reveal a distinctive form of change in advertising practice that is capable of intensifying ageism and reshaping the nature of creative advertising content. We consider the significance of the association of social media expertise with youthfulness in three ways. Firstly, we explore the implications of identity formed around deflecting rather than addressing social media as a contested form of expertise. Secondly, we use the generational tensions fueled by ageist conditions as a means of exploring how emerging media is reshaping the creative process. And thirdly, we discuss the shaping of advertising by ageist paradigms promoted by the algorithmic gatekeeping of social media platforms.

A new form of identity-based conflict and its implications

The observation that advertising creatives are in "conflict with their own industry" may not be a new one, but the identification of social media knowledge as a contested marker of expertise is a distinctive outcome of the transformation of advertising production in the digital media era.³³ Focusing on how older creatives perceive their own abilities in this realm as well as how they feel they are labeled indicates an intergenerational point of conflict in creative advertising production. Rather than attempting to address specifically what many participants felt was an inaccurate evaluation of their knowledge of social media and associated online cultures, these practitioners instead sought to craft identities as strategically skilled mentors who reinforced the importance of ideas over technologies. However, this pragmatic approach to identity work does little to counter the belief that not being immersed in social media meant that they were disconnected from contemporary cultural representations more generally. This perceived weakness has particular significance in advertising, as it is the role of creatives to interpret cultural symbols and shape them into novel ideas. As such, the possibility emerges that older creatives are viewed by younger colleagues, agency management, and clients as lacking credibility—a vital currency in creative advertising production—and, in turn, are experiencing a reduced status. In some instances, practitioners in our study said they deferred knowledge of social media environments to younger colleagues—a development that suggests they do not possess the discursive repertoires required to develop or validate creative outcomes. As such, it could be argued that older creatives are self-excluding by restricting their access to social media-derived cultural resources that can inspire new ideas. In effect, they are limiting the extent to which the field is responsive to the novel variations they produce in this realm. Given the prominence of social media in contemporary advertising production, it is problematic that older practitioners may lack a voice on (or credibility with) a channel that is, of course, not solely used by younger audiences.³⁴ It appears from some of the perspectives offered by participants that broader ageist perceptions and digital native discourses channeled through an internal-external dialectic are proving to be insurmountable barriers. While a series of ageist connotations linked to social media appear to be at play here, it could be argued that choosing to deflect rather than to explicitly refute claims around what they see as flawed assumptions reinforces a tendency for older creatives to be further marginalized. A reduction in access to high profile or creatively fulfilling work is one detrimental outcome; another is an intensified exclusion of older creatives in advertising workplaces, as indicated by both the statistics presented in this article's introduction and descriptions of lived experience offered by the practitioners we interviewed. This trajectory in turn not only limits the mentorship and domain knowledge older practitioners bring to the creative process as members of the field but also raises questions about what constitutes creativity and how it is formed in contemporary advertising workplaces.

From "living with media" to "living in media"

Stuhlfaut and Windels' recent research on the changing nature of creative advertising production identifies a shift in traditional notions of the creative process, where the "big idea" was developed in isolation from technology or without seeking out specific sources of inspiration from existing media content. While limited to the reflections of a small group of older creatives, this study provides further insight into the changing nature of the creative process and allows us to consider the influence of greater immersion in social media content within converged professional and private contexts. Drawing on Deuze, we can conceive a generationally relevant shift in creative advertising practice from living with media to living in media. The "media life" conceptualization is one in which "consuming media regularly takes place alongside producing media."³⁵ If this shift is considered in the context of creative advertising practice, we can note the tendency for more influence on ideation tasks from outside of the workplace and less drawing on internalized knowledge of cultural resources. Just as the previous generation of creatives may have intuitively avoided deliberate exposure to media content before developing the "big idea," these younger practitioners appear to be intuitively and directly folding it into their creative process. The immediacy of this form of media-making encourages a greater influence of newer technologies on ideation tasks. According to Stuhlfaut and Windels: "Technology no longer is used just to produce campaign materials; it is used as an input that influences the development of ideas."³⁶ The recent "Ain't no small fry" campaign by KFC in the United Kingdom offers an illustrative example: the brand centered its creative around social media comments that complained about the standard of its French fries to promote its new recipe, thereby turning "hate into hype" according to the agency Mother.³⁷ This campaign, a collaboration with the social media platform known as Twitter at the time of the interviews, exemplifies a particular approach discussed by Deuze, one in which social media is remixed or repurposed to achieve an innovative effect that has been accepted by the field as a novel variation and helps to shape future creative outcomes. In effect, these conditions also constitute greater influence of the audience as a member of the field and blur boundaries between brand communication producer and receiver. There are clear benefits of this approach. The most obvious is the potential for a deeper understanding of audiences and, of course, the ability to respond using appropriate discursive resources in the fast-paced, often ephemeral, and conversation-driven milieu of social media brand communication. This is a noteworthy change given that Hackley and Kover's previous research indicated that advertising creatives are often indifferent to consumers. As Deuze points out, "a pervasive and ubiquitous digital media environment can inspire new forms of storytelling, combining stories and experiences within and across media in a recognition of people's migratory, mobile, and multisited behavior."³⁸ At this point, we can go so far as to question whether this new form of storytelling constitutes a social media precipitated "creative revolution" in the early twenty-first century. Nixon has noted that the creative revolution of the 1960s and 1970s shifted notions of creativity and consumer engagement; this and other recent studies of the changing nature of the creative process appear to support this occurrence in contemporary advertising practice. However, it is worth noting that many of the creatives in our study appeared to resist this kind of change, with some framing it as a "fashion" and thus an impermanent trend. While we cannot speculate on the extent to which social media will change the creative process of advertising in the long term, we can once again highlight the value of a greater understanding of audiences and the fluid nature of contemporary brand communication that encourages co-creation and audience interaction—conditions that are bypassed when an "old school" approach to creative practice, as one participant put it (CD2), is strictly maintained.

The challenges of advertising made with a social media lens

While there are benefits in responding to how contemporary audiences use media and in folding knowledge of platform affordances into the creative process, it is also instructive to problematize whether some of the resistance or concerns raised by older creatives have legitimacy. As previously noted, recent research by Stuhlfaut and Windels has identified a focus on technological novelty in the changing nature of creative advertising production.³⁹ It is important to consider whether this emphasis could provoke an imbalance, as the focus on technological innovation may overshadow the enduring and boundless nature of storytelling. There is also scope to question the nature of cultural resources drawn into the creative process from the domain as sources of inspiration and knowledge-building. In this context, older creatives appeared to reject what constitutes novelty in social media brand communication. Participants commonly felt that much of the social media brand content currently disseminated was safe, predictable, or lacking originality. It is possible to theorize that a shift to the greater use of external sources of inspiration, such as social media content rather than internalized experience and knowledge, is resulting in an intensification of a filter bubble that already exists within advertising production.⁴⁰ One of the participants explicitly stated this concern: "In the communication, marketing, advertising business we tend to live in this bubble that assumes that everybody else in the world consumes media the same way that we do" (CD6). This perspective, which is supported by statistics that indicate "ad people" have significantly different social media habits than the general population, is relevant to a discussion on ageism in advertising creativity as losing "older" workers equates to losing diversity of perspective.⁴¹ Following the logic of algorithmic gatekeeping, younger creatives are likely to be exposed to content that reflects their age, a tendency that manifests in a lesser understanding of audiences other than themselves and thus a limited capacity to access qualitatively diverse cultural references. One participant expressed this view paradigmatically when saying that the person that most ads were targeting—women, mothers, and people over the age of 35—were "the persons that are driven out of the creative department first" (CW4). It is beyond the scope of this study to expand on how these internalized norms may shape broader representations and stereotypes of older people and other members of society who are not part of the algorithmically curated in-group consisting of younger creatives who are immersed in social media. However, studies have found that social media discourses tend to make youthfulness more salient and reinforce negative perceptions of old age, which reinforces the invisibility of older people in social media and related advertising.⁴² Furthermore, researchers have noted an increased circulation of negative ageist stereotypes across social media that are being intensified by biased algorithmic processes.⁴³ There is an opportunity for advertising agencies to challenge the status quo by confronting ageism, which, as this article demonstrates, is imbued with often superficial perceptions about age and social media use and knowledge.⁴⁴ This reflects Deuze's call to action for the advertising industry to respond to technological change by embracing a more "critical, ethical, and socially responsible role in this world."⁴⁵

In conclusion, this article has revealed that the intergenerational dynamics regarding the association of social media expertise and youthfulness have inflected the experience of the older creatives we interviewed. Our analysis of participants' perceptions of their social media expertise and how they feel they are perceived by others has allowed us to map out the shape of an emergent marker of status inequality. Specifically, our analysis has sought to offer an initial understanding of the pragmatic yet self-exclusionary identity work undertaken by older creatives. In addition, we have considered the implications of social media as an area of contested expertise to provide insight into how the creative process is transforming in both beneficial and limiting ways. An understanding of generational differences, albeit from perspectives gathered only from older creatives for this exploratory study, in notions of expertise reveals a greater emphasis on technological novelty that is capable of further marginalizing older practitioners and ultimately pushing or encouraging them out of the industry. And while this "changing of the guard" could be considered a logical form of succession, there is value in considering what is potentially lost when those who have experienced creative advertising practice without a "social media lens" are no longer present. In addition, this article has problematized the algorithmic gatekeeping that can emerge from a reliance on social media as a dominant conduit for accessing the cultural resources required to produce successful creative advertising outcomes.

Given the qualitative and exploratory nature of this study on an emergent phenomenon, we do not seek to present generalizable or truly representative findings. Importantly, there is a need for future research to explore additional workplace factors associated with ageist stereotypes and to incorporate larger, geographically diverse samples from a variety of agency types. Moreover, there is a pressing need to examine the topic with greater emphasis on the industry's gender imbalance to understand how notions of social media prowess shape the experiences of female creatives. This article has pointed to broader concerns regarding ageism in society which advertising content is capable of exacerbating when knowledge of audiences or cultural representations shaped by flawed stereotypes are drawn into the creative process. As such, further research into the extent to which advertising workplaces reflect and reinforce ageist perceptions is warranted. To this end, both educators and agency management are in a position to encourage a more nuanced understanding of the contribution and value of older practitioners by addressing the often casually accepted markers of structural ageism. The problematical stereotyping of older creatives as lacking technological and cultural knowledge is not necessarily going to be solved by these practitioners leaving the industry. Rather, this departure calibrates expectations that are likely to be passed on to younger creatives as they move forward in their careers and newer technologies emerge. Accordingly, a starting point may be to encourage young creatives to be more aware of the contours of ageism to better prepare them for a career that extends beyond their mid-thirties. If they remain in the industry, aging is, after all, inevitable.