When I have a contrarian reaction to something, it inspires me to think of what I would like to see in its place. That happened today after someone in my LinkedIn feed shared the Snickers commercial that featured Betty White getting pounded in football practice back in 2010.
Another senior actor who appears briefly at the end is Abe Vigoda, who is famous for his role as Fish on Barney Miller.* (What's really remarkable is that he looks very much the way he did in the 1970s, and he happens to be playing to type, as Fish was constantly complaining of his aches and pains that he attributed to again.). No one focused on Vigoda, though who is not named in the commercial the way White is.
In fact, this commercial opened the door to other commercials in the snack category, so the actress was quite busy with lucrative work when she was already in her late 80s. That someone can continue to work in their profession even when past the standard age of retirement is a very good thing.
What is not a very good thing is the unconscious bias against older people that colors this commercial. They are not even themselves but stand-ins for the substandard "you" in the tagline "You're not you when you're hungry."
I get that it was played for humor and that it certainly resonated with the target market for the candy bar that experienced a surge in sales after this campaign. But success is not necessarily the reward for virtue or an absence of bias, as we see from the example of the Yorkie bar.
Back around the same period as theat Snickers campaign, the British Yorkie bar that put "It's not for girls" on its label with a female figure crossed out taking the play of the O in its name. Taking this so far that samples of the chocolate bar were only distributed to men and not given to women in 2002 did land the brand in trouble, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't finding the sexist messaging worked to increase sales to men. It must have worked if the company kept it going until 2011 despite the protests and even outright bans it incurred.
So we see that sexism is used as a marketing gimmick and can increase sales, and I'd say the same applies to ageism. Things are getting slightly better as marketers realize that older people -- particularly women -- are a viable market unto themselves.
What I'd like to see is a commercial in which older people are not just featured as the "you" that you don't wish to be but as the "you" that you aspire to be. It can be used to promote a rage of products and services related to building one's future through education, investment, health, etc with the tagline "You'll get there."
*Speaking of Barney Miller, Hal Linden, who played the title role is still alive and kicking and acting at 93 (AMV)!
