Too Old for Public Relations? Why Age is Still the Industry’s Blind Spot

It doesn’t matter whether you’re 25 or 55. 

If you speak and people listen politely but not seriously, it hurts. 

Too young to be trusted.

Too old to be creative.

The message lands the same way. 

You are not seen. You are not heard. You are not valued.

Ageism cuts in both directions and it leaves a quiet bruise that people carry long after the moment passes.

How does this happen in Public Relations, a profession built on understanding people? 

It does. And ageism is a major component of the profession. 

That’s why a Cultural Reset is needed.

Listen For

4:50 What does a "cultural reset" in PR mean when addressing ageism?

7:30 How does ageism quietly impact training and promotion in PR agencies?

9:54 Do certain sectors of PR treat older professionals more fairly than others?

15:55 Will AI help or hurt age diversity in PR careers?

17:25 Answer to Last Episode’s Question from Guest Cindy Lang

Guest: Jenny Manchester

Centre for Ageing Better Website | LinkedIn

Jenny’s Report An age-old problem: What can we do to tackle ageism in PR?

Follow Farzana on Substack

Follow Doug on Substack

Curzon Substack

Stories and Strategies Website

Curzon Public Relations Website

Are you a brand with a podcast that needs support? Book a meeting with Doug Downs to talk about it.

Apply to be a guest on the podcast

Connect with us

LinkedIn | X | Instagram | You Tube | Facebook | Threads | Bluesky | Pinterest

Request a transcript of this episode

Chapters

• 4:50 What does a "cultural reset" in PR mean when addressing ageism?
• 7:30 How does ageism quietly impact training and promotion in PR agencies?
• 9:54 Do certain sectors of PR treat older professionals more fairly than others?
• 15:55 Will AI help or hurt age diversity in PR careers?
• 17:25 Answer to Last Episode’s Question from Guest Cindy Lang

Transcript

Emily Page (00:00):
Age is not a limit on creativity or relevance. It's only a limit when a culture decides it is. And few people proved that more brilliantly than Betty White.

Farzana Baduel (00:18):
There was a time when Hollywood had quietly moved on from Betty White. The studio calls slowed. The scripts thinned. The industry politely assumed she had reached the end of her story. She was in her 80s after all, and in Hollywood years that might as well be centuries. Then something remarkable happened. A new generation found her first through reruns of The Golden Girls, then through a viral Facebook campaign that insisted she host Saturday Night Live. Millions of people rallied around a woman pushing 90 as if she were a brand new discovery. The result was one of the most memorable SNL episodes of the decade. Ladies and gentlemen, Betty White.

Betty White (01:01):
I'm not new to live TV. In 1952, I started my first live sitcom, which was Life of Elizabeth. And of course, back then, we didn't want to do it live. We just didn't know how to tape things. So I don't know what this show's excuse is.

Farzana Baduel (01:25):
Betty walked onto that stage and delivered line after line with a precision that made the cast look like her supporting act. Her humour was kind of a gentle troublemaker. She once said she was not afraid of dying, but was afraid of missing happy hour. She said vodka was her hobby, but underneath every laugh was something sturdier. Betty White outlasted an industry that thought it had outgrown her. She proved that creativity does not have an expiration date. She proved that timing and instinct do not wilt with age. She proved that experience can be a superpower when the culture finally remembers to value it. The twist is that her resurgence never required reinvention. Nothing about her changed except the culture around her. The world opened its door again and discovered she had never left. She simply kept doing the work, waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

(02:24):
What happened to Betty White is happening in quieter ways inside public relations today. Talent is overlooked. Experience is undervalued. Assumptions are made before skills are measured. What would it take for PR to rewrite this story and build a culture where age is not a disqualifier, but an asset? Today on Stories and Strategies, as Betty White liked to say, you don't need a hot body when you have a hot mind.

(03:09):
Hello, my name is Farzana Baduel.

Doug Downs (03:11):
And my name is Doug Downs, our guest this week, Jenny Manchester, joining today from the London Borough of Bromley. How are things in Bromley today? Bright and sunny and warm and ...

Jenny Manchester (03:24):
Sunny and icy.

Doug Downs (03:26):
Sunny and icy. Well, we get that every winter. Jenny, you're the head of communications at the Centre for Ageing Better, leading communications to influence attitudes, policy, and practice on ageing and inequality. You're a CIPR member, or as it's known, MCIPR, and a communications leader with 20 plus years in purpose driven work, including roles across charities and local authorities such as Marie Curie and The Campaign to End Loneliness. And you're the author of CIPR funded research on ageism in public relations, drawing on interviews with practitioners across roles, sectors, and career stages.

Farzana Baduel (04:04):
OK. So now, Jenny, everyone has been talking about your report. It just completely dominated my social media feed because when people think about challenges in the PR industry, often they think about gender, they think about ethnicity, they think about socio economic, and actually ageism tends to be quite overlooked. And so I think that's why your report made such a splash because it just opened up a debate and it made it possible for us to really understand what it is that is creating all these barriers. And I wanted to ask you, from your perspective, what do you actually mean when you say that PR needs a cultural reset to address ageism?

Jenny Manchester (04:50):
Thank you so much. Yes. I started this research or this question because I'm really lucky in my current role that I manage a really age diverse team. So I manage people from the ages of about 22 to the ages of 62. And you get into sort of a bubble and you think that's normal. And then when I was meeting people who work for PR agencies, for other organisations, I realised there were very few people that were my age and above and that age diverse teams were very unusual in PR. And I couldn't work out why that was, what had happened to people that I'd perhaps done my PR degree with at the beginning of my profession, what had happened to people that I used to work with, where had they gone? And I couldn't work out why that was. And my assumption was there must be some sort of ageism or something going on in play.

(05:36):
And that's really why I started out the research. It was a question, what's happening here, particularly in PR? The thing about ageism, which I've discovered as part of my research and talking to so many people about their experiences, is that I found ageism is one of those areas of discrimination that's sort of hidden in plain sight. It's really perpetuated by the assumptions people make around what people can do as they grow older in the profession.

Doug Downs (06:05):
So how does it show up in workplaces for public relations? I know I saw it when I started applying to things to try to advance myself and was getting passed over and thought, wow, I am completely qualified for that. And yeah, that's how I saw it. But how do you see it?

Jenny Manchester (06:22):
There's lots of different examples. There is the overt ageism, which is obviously comments that people make about older people in the workplace. Somebody said to me they were called the grandma of the office, the grandma of the workplace. I mean, that's really direct and overt, and it's probably easier to tackle in some ways with people being aware of it, but there's hidden discrimination as well. So out of 44 people I interviewed, not one older person could point to any training that they'd received by their employer post 45. And that's incredible, really. And that's sort of another example. In fact, rather than being offered training, they're actually asked to provide training for more junior members of staff. And that sort of cultural assumption around the role of older professionals, I think, really, really ties into that. And that's what really was clear to me, that the role of culture in driving some of these ageist actions towards PR professionals is so important and that tackling culture will address those.

(07:30):
So another, I mentioned comments, I mentioned training. I also mentioned promotion. I think that's really important because that's a real thing, particularly in PR, about the assumption about what happens to you when you reach a certain age, particularly, I have to say, amongst the people that work in agencies. I noticed that they were expected to sort of shuffle off to freelance life once they reached a certain age.

(07:57):
If you weren't seen as going higher, you were expected to be sitting and quite happy in your current position, your level. Perhaps that's account director level. If you weren't seen to be wanting to go higher for that extra responsibility, you then had to decide what next rather than being a good member of staff and a good colleague and someone that's really capable and adept at their role. That wasn't seen as ideal amongst agency owners. Well, it felt that the culture had meant that that wasn't seen as ideal, I should say.

Farzana Baduel (08:30):
Jenny, you mentioned that agencies in particular have that churn. Do you think that in house obviously is a much kinder environment for people as they go into their 40s and 50s and above? And also, do you think there's a difference between consumer and, for instance, say corporate? Because I mean, I remember about 10 years ago, I consciously thought about ageism and I thought that I don't see that many people being celebrated in consumer PR in their 40s and 50s, but I do see them much more visible in corporate government. And I was sort of deciding which areas to specialise in. And I think I was thinking about ageism and I think I sort of moved away from consumer PR because I felt that it wasn't an environment that I would flourish in because I would be deemed as past it. And I always felt that there were slightly consumer obsessed with the next generation coming in and this sort of thinking that actually you have to be close to that generation in order to understand that generation, which I think makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

(09:47):
So I wanted to ask you, Jenny, you identified obviously a difference between agency and in house, but what about sectors?

Jenny Manchester (09:54):
That's so interesting you say that because a couple of people did, although the research was obviously qualitative, not quantitative, so I can't make any direct predictions on it. But I did notice actually a number of people who had moved from consumer PR, who'd worked for big consumer PR agencies because of that reason. They felt that their face didn't seem to fit once they reached a certain age. But what was ironic about that was that two or three of those people had moved to set up their own agencies, which was brilliant. But once they'd reached then their early to mid 50s, they'd found that that same attitude prevailed amongst younger colleagues that they'd actually hired themselves in terms of making assumptions and talking about the fact that they wouldn't recognise certain music or certain trends because they happened to be older, for example.

Doug Downs (10:46):
Of course, it goes the other way too, right? I can remember distinctly being 19 in my first broadcasting job. The company had to come up with a slogan for something. And as Farzana knows, I tend to have ideas, but some of them are really kind of, they don't at first, at least at first, they don't flow until you think about it and then, "Oh, well, there's brilliance there." And then a couple of days later, one of the better known, the morning broadcasters in his 40s, word for word, the same suggestion, word for word. And the GM loved it. So did your study look at when it's from the other angle as well?

Jenny Manchester (11:28):
It didn't actually, but I think what you're alluding to is actually one of these other drivers around ageism is about assumptions, and we shouldn't assume about younger people's skills and talents and make predictions that the ideas are not worthy simply because of someone's age. But equally, we shouldn't make assumptions about older people's, for example, tech abilities and abilities to navigate the digital world, for example, just because they happen to be post 45.

(11:58):
So I think it's all about assumptions. It's also about standards and identifying what are the skills actually needed to carry out PR roles at different levels. What's the difference between somebody having three years media management experience and having 10 years media management experience? What do you need in that job? What do you need in that role? And being really clear about that when you're looking for people as well. Because also something we haven't touched on is the issue about ageism in recruitment, which can affect both ends of the spectrum, younger people because of those assumptions about skills, but also can really affect older people. And there's been a lot of publicity recently around the challenges that older people have in terms of their CVs and getting their CVs across people's desks, for example.

Farzana Baduel (12:44):
When we were having a conversation about your incredible report, which I really do recommend our audience find and read, you mentioned that women react to ageism in a different way than men.

Jenny Manchester (12:58):
Yeah, this was so sad actually. This is the saddest part of the report for me because although again, it's qualitative, what was really clear to me when talking to people was that when people were telling me about their experiences, women in particular were just really sad about their experience. They turned it in on themselves often as well. It made them lose their confidence. It made them look at the roles that they would want to do next. It made them look at their ability to secure roles in the future. But the men I spoke to were more angry and there was also a sense of, how can this happen? And also turning the anger, if you like, against the industry. The PR industry needs to get better. It needs to get better about being more professional and more systemic and systematic about the way that it recruits and retains staff on a more logical basis.

(13:54):
And what was really sad to me is that I felt that emotional response from women and disappointment in the industry, disappointment often in themselves that they should be doing something to address the ageism they'd experienced, that they'd handled it wrong or something.

Doug Downs (14:12):
At the same time, I mean, I have grey in my beard. My job is to convince clients I have the experience, I have the knowledge, I have the leadership to do what they are hoping I can do. I swear to God, the grey in my beard helps. So am I just whining from a point of privilege? "Oh, I didn't get that job and that 25 year old got it. When I have all this experience."

Jenny Manchester (14:37):
That's such a really interesting point as well, because what was interesting about the research is that the only complaint about people's age had been made by the PR agency that they had worked in or their direct employer. There was no record of anybody saying that the client had complained. The client was very happy having an older person on the team. The feeling of being held, like the gravitas that you've got from your grey hair and your beard, they felt really comfortable with that, but that wasn't reflected in the agency or the direct employer's view of that person. And I think just to go back to that first question really is about why is it happening in PR? Part of the challenge around PR is it's such a new industry. I think we haven't matured as an industry and we haven't, and therefore we sort of reflect what we think is the perfect PR professional back onto our employees, which hasn't borne fruit in reality.

(15:39):
We have an ageing population. The likelihood is their clients are going to be older. The customers we're talking to are going to be older, and it's right that our workforce reflects that.

Farzana Baduel (15:49):
Jenny, I wanted to ask, is AI going to make things worse or better?

Jenny Manchester (15:55):
Yeah, that's a great point. I spoke to Alastair McCapra, who's the CEO at the CIPR, and I felt my feelings were in agreement with his, that he felt that AI would potentially benefit junior members of staff, so potentially younger members of staff in terms of, as you say, that content production, task orientated aspect to AI, but that the judgment making, the analysis that you still need people to be able to do would fall to the more senior members of the team. But the problem was that that middle market, so that middle level, would be potentially wiped out by AI. And I agree with that. I think that's what we're seeing. So potentially, say, levels of heads of comms, that level is under pressure, I think, from AI because directors of comms will be doing those areas of work if we're looking at in house examples, and then you've got your junior officer level doing the content production.

(16:56):
So I think that's a really real risk. And of course, what that does, where are future senior leaders then going to come from because you've got a massive gap, haven't you, between junior and senior? And you don't necessarily have people equipped in five years' time to make those analysis judgments on how we use AI and what's the purpose, really.

Doug Downs (17:17):
Jenny, thanks for your time today. Thank you so much. It's been such an honour. Oh, hey, Jenny. In our last episode, our guest, Cindy Lang, she left a question for you.

Cindy Lang (17:27):
What do you think PR and communication professionals need to better understand about how their messaging lands during the most tender or high stakes moments in people's lives?

Jenny Manchester (17:43):
Thank you. This is a really important question for me because I was recently made redundant and I found in that conversation, I only remembered one thing, which was you've been made redundant and you don't remember any of the process, you don't remember what form you have to fill in, you don't remember any of the questions. And us as communications professionals, we know that. We know that that's the case, but yet we often complicate things, particularly around internal comms, and we forget that actually people have different stages and phases of being able to listen to information. And I pride myself on being someone across the detail, fairly intelligent, but I could only remember one thing from an hour conversation. And I think that was a really important lesson for me to learn and to be reminded of.

Farzana Baduel (18:29):
Now, your turn, Jenny, what question would you like to leave for our next guest?

Jenny Manchester (18:34):
Well, I would like to leave the question because I'm thinking it's new year, new beginnings. It's very cold here and the hours are dark and it's tough, isn't it? And I would like to leave the question on what brings you joy in PR.

Farzana Baduel (18:52):
I love that. I absolutely love that. That's a wonderful question to ask.

Doug Downs (18:57):
Completion of a project.

Farzana Baduel (19:00):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Doug Downs (19:02):
Thanks, Jenny. Appreciate it.

Farzana Baduel (19:03):
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you both. So here are the top three things we got today from Jenny Manchester. Number one, ageism is assumptions, not just insults. Most ageism in PR shows up through quiet assumptions about what younger or older people can do. Number two, agencies push people out by design. In agencies, mid career and senior people often stop getting training, stall on promotion, and get nudged towards freelancing. Number three, fix it with data, hiring, and everyday culture. You can start by mapping where people drop out, rebuild recruitment to welcome all ages, and change how teams talk about age and capability.

Doug Downs (19:53):
Yeah. Do you want a cross section of voices within your business or do you want to appear younger and hipper and whatever suits your brand, I suppose. If you'd like to send a message to our guest, Jenny Manchester, we've got her contact info in the show notes. Thank you to producers, Emily Page and David Olajide. Now, I know we ask you every episode at the end to do us a favour, right? Share the episode. Let me tell you a really quick story if I could. Benjamin Franklin. Yes. That one. Franklin had a rival in the Pennsylvania legislature that he didn't get along with. They would barely speak to one another. Franklin wanted to change that, but instead of doing his rival a favour, Franklin asked his rival to do one for him, specifically to loan him a rare book. And later Franklin returned the book. See, that strategy worked and they became good friends.

(20:50):
With today's science, we know why. When you do a favour for someone, your brain experiences a tiny jolt of cognitive dissonance. You think, why did I just help this person? And your brain concludes, well, I must like them. So when you willingly do a favour for someone, or a podcast show in our case, you like them more. Do us a favour and share this episode with one friend. Thanks for listening.