Marketing loves to talk about inclusion. But when it comes to age, the industry can be frustratingly quiet. We mock recruiters who use biased language in job descriptions. We insist on equitable hiring practices. We’re quick to call out ageist stereotypes when we see them. And yet ageism persists.
Many teams quietly believe what their job descriptions imply: that experienced marketers are “too traditional,” “not digital enough,” or “not a culture fit”—buzzwords that are often euphemisms for one supposedly disqualifying trait:
Being too old.
At the same time, brands are giving enormous resources—budgets, teams and strategic responsibility—to people who know the newest platform but can’t seem to build a sustainable business. That’s not progress. That’s bad marketing.
Knowing the Tools Doesn’t Make You a Marketer
Being proficient at creating a TikTok video does not make you a marketer. Sure, those can all indicate skills that would be valuable on a marketing team. But they don’t make you a marketer. Marketing is much bigger than a collection of tools.
Great marketing requires a deep understanding of customers, positioning, pricing, distribution, brand, human psychology and commercial realities. It requires the wisdom to know that strategy isn’t about getting attention. It’s about creating demand.
Activity isn’t the same as progress. And “engagement” is merely a potential path to revenue—not revenue itself. Building that sort of judgment usually takes time.
When Experience Becomes a Liability
Experience is something many organizations treat like a liability. Instead of valuing expertise and ability, companies search for youth-coded qualities such as “high energy,” “digital native,” and, of course, the perennial favorite: “culture fit. Then they complain that their marketers lack rigor, consistency, or accountability.
The results are obvious:
- Trendy campaigns with no connection to the brand.
- Teams focused on optimizing impressions while revenue suffers.
- Full content calendars with no clear brand positioning.
- Constant activity without meaningful commercial progress.
Whatever went wrong, try turning it off and on again. Nothing changes because the problem is the strategy, not the tools. So we rewrite the tweets. We schedule more webinars. We redesigned the logo. After all, if your brand doesn’t look like it belongs on the latest platform, it must be falling behind.
At some point, these activities become nothing more than measures of production. It doesn’t matter how many you complete if you’re still not creating value. That’s not progress. That’s bad marketing.
Age Is Not the Same as Ability
This isn’t an argument that older marketers have all the answers. Age does not automatically bestow curiosity, relevance, or competence. Some older marketers get set in their ways and stop learning. Some young people are phenomenal strategists.
Ageism is harmful not because young people are unintelligent. It’s harmful because so many marketing organizations treat young people as qualified simply because they aren’t “old.”
Hiring should be based on the quality of a candidate’s ideas—not their familiarity with a particular social platform or their willingness to work unreasonable hours. We should judge candidates by their skills and proven capabilities, not by whom they’re socially “aligned” with or what salary they’ll “expect.”
Experience doesn’t make someone immune to failure. But rejecting experienced candidates because of their age assumes that less-experienced employees won’t fail. It assumes your company can avoid learning what doesn’t work by hiring only the people who know the least about marketing.
That’s absurd. And it hurts brands.
What Brands Lose When Experience Leaves the Room
Without experienced professionals in the room, companies lose institutional knowledge. They lose the ability to recognize patterns and anticipate outcomes. They fail to identify weak ideas because no one remembers the last time marketing tried the same tactic—and it exploded.
Teams also become susceptible to repeating the same cycle. Without a diverse range of ages in the room, everything becomes “new” every few years because no one was around the last time it happened. Good marketing departments have both fresh minds and experienced leaders who have watched trends come and go.
They know the buzzwords will change. Brand fundamentals won’t.
Build Multigenerational Marketing Teams
The solution isn’t to hire older people instead of younger people. Don’t throw out one generation to make room for another. Instead, build multigenerational marketing departments that value skill and capability over keywords and jargon.
Take age out of the equation. Hire for ability. Challenge every job description that asks for “digital native” candidates or someone who “fits with our culture.” Assume experienced professionals are just as trainable as their younger counterparts.
And please, stop placing entire brands in the hands of people who have never proven they can run a marketing department.
We know how to spot talented marketers. Let’s start trusting ourselves to do it, rather than excluding qualified people because of our biases. Hiring based on appearance is damaging to people—but it’s also damaging to brands. When companies choose trendiness over talent, they don’t just waste salaries. They waste their ability to execute good ideas, exercise sound judgment and build lasting brand equity.
The Industry’s Inexperience Problem
Marketing has an ageism problem. But more importantly, marketing has an inexperienced problem. We hire people without experience and expect them to have strategic minds. We place entire brands on the shoulders of people who have never run a marketing department.
We’re so busy looking for the next shiny object that we forget the branding fundamentals we learned five, 10 or 15 years ago.
It’s time we admitted both of those facts.
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