Outpriced, overlooked, or outdated? In adland, age is not just a number

New Delhi: Marketing and advertising are increasingly being driven by trends, tech, and attention. The industry, marinated in “what’s next,” seems to be quickly dismissing the experience of what came before. 

Ageism, long regarded as a hidden bias in Indian advertising and marketing, is now being felt with greater force. While the conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has grown louder on gender, race, and representation, age remains a glaring omission. 

While it may not always be visible on the surface, conversations with several professionals across advertising and marketing reveal that the industry's obsession with youth is more than just strategic. It’s structural.

Youth vs wisdom?

Piali Dasgupta Surendran, Brand Advisor at Private Consulting, who previously led brand and marketing functions across startups and brands, warned that the industry's fixation with Gen Z has led to deeper systemic exclusion.

Dasgupta highlighted how startups, in particular, are replacing traditional CMO roles with fragmented functions like head of brand or head of growth, reporting directly to founders. “The average age on a startup floor is 25. If you’re 40, you’ll likely be considered too old, too expensive, or both,” she said.

She outlined multi-layered consequences of ageism:

• People impact: “Professionals in their 40s are being made to feel irrelevant, even though they bring maturity, strategic thinking, and brand custodianship skills that cannot be developed in just five to seven years.”
  

• Business impact: “Marketing is increasingly being reduced to performance-led, viral-chasing, short-term tactics, missing out on long-term brand building, which requires experience and depth.”
  

• Cultural impact: “We're becoming a shallow, homogeneous culture by designing brands, hiring practices, and campaigns exclusively for the young. If you’re not building for Gen X or Baby Boomers, you're alienating high-spending cohorts.”

Whose fault line is it, anyway?

Karthi Kumar Marshan, former CMO at Kotak Mahindra Bank, believes that the age bias in advertising has deepened over the past decade, coinciding with the rise of India’s unicorn culture. 

“When young entrepreneurs who are willing to go to crazy lengths for outrageous valuations are inordinately celebrated, it's almost inevitable that those seen as long in the tooth, over the hill, et al would be demonised,” he said. 

For Marshan, the deeper issue is not generational - it’s structural. “The real dinosaur in the room is actually the agency business model itself. 

It has very little to do with changing consumer realities, because universal truths about consumers are like tectonic plates...sure they shift, but over such long time horizons, that we can't easily tell,” Marshan said. 

According to Marshan, agencies are losing their relevance in a connected world where “publishers do not really need them in the mix, and clients are seeing lesser and lesser value come from them.” 

When asked if the older professionals were priced out or aged out, Marshan replied, “Price is certainly the most relevant issue. Prima donna creatives commanded a hefty premium when margins were lavish. With today's wafer-thin margins, agencies have little choice but to swap out for younger talent in a bid to save every buck possible.” 

Ageism by economics

This sentiment was echoed by Saurabh Parmar, Fractional Chief Marketing & Growth Officer, who also believes that ageism has structural roots. “Advertising has not made real money in years. Remove Google and Facebook from the equation, ad revenue growth has been abysmal.” 

This financial constraint, he explained, has led agencies to default to younger, more affordable hires. 

Consolidating his thoughts, Parmar said, “I don't think youth-led storytelling or short campaigns are anywhere near responsible because the entire point of advertising is to understand behaviours or trends of people across demographics and psychographics. 

As marketers, our fundamental job is to empathise, and that's a fundamental quality that any decent marketer should possess. And the truth is, good marketers are losing jobs.” 

Aditya Kayalakal, Vice President - Marketing, Jupiter, too, pointed to the economic logic driving the shift. “Multiple industries, particularly services, are replacing experienced, higher-cost professionals with younger, lower-cost ones.” 

He also observed that while few professionals over 45 remain in agency and brand teams unless they are part of top management, even those senior roles are shrinking. “As you climb higher, the number of roles decreases, competition increases, and experienced professionals end up with fewer and fewer options,”  he said.

The result, he noted, is a thinning of the talent pipeline at both ends - junior professionals without mentorship and senior professionals without opportunity.

Ready, set, relevance!

Pranay Swarup, co-founder and CEO, Superstuff.ai, an AI-powered platform that connects brands with marketers, agencies, and freelancers, conferred that ageism is a silent bias which is rarely talked about but is deeply embedded. 

He highlighted that the experienced professionals are bearing the brunt of an unspoken assumption: ‘If you're not natively fluent in the now, you're behind.’

This, according to Swarup, puts the seasoned professionals at a disadvantage unless they actively reskill and reframe their value and positioning.  

Swarup said that while younger consumers dominate attention on platforms, some of the most timeless storytelling still comes from experience. “What’s missing is a bridge between youthful energy and strategic depth,” he said.

He argued that older professionals are being both ‘priced out’ and ‘aged out’. Compensation is still pegged to tenure, not impact, he explained, and there’s a perception that senior talent can’t keep up with AI and automation. “But that’s a false binary. Some of the most effective professionals today are those who’ve reskilled and reframed their value,” said Swarup. 

Looking forward, Swarup stated, “The industry doesn’t need to choose between experience and innovation. The best results come when senior talent reinvents themselves and works alongside next-gen thinkers.” 

He added, “The big creative and marketer hiring mantra to keep in mind is that: Relevance trumps résumé. In today’s AI-driven marketing world, it’s not about how many years you’ve worked - it’s about how recently and well you’ve adapted.” 

Retire or recalibrate?

Interestingly, not all believe ageism is the core problem. 

Ashish Bhasin, Founder, Bhasin Consulting Group, offered a more contrarian and nuanced take. 

“In India, especially - more than even other parts of APAC - most icons, CEOs, managing directors, and veteran creative heads are well past 55, many even in their 70s. If ageism were truly an issue, this wouldn’t be the case. 

If anything, I believe it’s the reverse. We need to clear the way for younger people to take on more responsibility. When you give them that chance, they shine,” Bhasin said. 

He also looked at the talent inflow with a critical lens. “There used to be a time when agencies would recruit from IIMs just like clients did. One manager might go to Hindustan Unilever, and another would go to Lintas. It was equal-quality talent on both sides.

But over the years, agencies stopped going to IIMs. They couldn’t even afford B- or C-grade management institutes. Eventually, they started going to top undergraduate colleges like St. Stephen's, but even there, they struggled to attract the best. The quality of talent inflow has deteriorated rapidly,” said Bhasin. 

Elaborating on recalibration, Bhasin suggested that the ecosystem needs to make more money so that it can hire better talent and pay fairly, regardless of age. “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Salaries should reflect what the best in the industry earn,” he said. 

Bhasin acknowledged, however, that leadership must better reflect the young demographic of the workforce. “The average age in agencies is around 27. Yet leadership is often more than twice that. This mismatch is not sustainable in a digital-first industry.”

He called for a recalibration, not a rejection, of senior roles. “Experienced professionals should move into mentorship and long-term strategic roles. But we also need to empower younger talent with more responsibility,” said Bhasin. 

To survive, Bhasin argued, everyone, regardless of age, must constantly update their skill sets. “Your age doesn’t matter if you’re not bringing new value to the table. This is a brutally fast-moving business. Even if you’re two years in, you’ll be outdated unless you evolve.”

What does survival look like?

Across conversations, one thing was clear - there is no single definition of success for senior talent in today’s marketing ecosystem. But there is a shared belief that staying visible, curious and relevant is key.

Drafting a survival guide, here’s what the industry experts had to say: 

Marshan: 

1. Eavesdrop at the sabzi mandi, the coffee shop and the barber shop. All the time. Curiosity is our oxygen.

2. Treat today as the start of your second 30-year career. Be prepared to be a rookie at something that you can be the master of in a decade or so. 

3. Say no to work more often than you say yes. What you reject shapes not just who you are, but also how valuable you are.

Bhasin: 

1. Keep your skills updated in your domain. Everything is changing fast.

2. Develop strong leadership and general management skills. These will always be relevant.

3. Ask yourself every day: What value am I adding?
   

Swarup: 

1. Stay current, loudly. Don't let your past define you - lead with what you’ve done in the last 2-3 years, especially in AI, digital, or content innovation. 

2. Productise your expertise. Package your experience into tangible offers - consulting, mentorship, fractional leadership, and audits. Make it easy for others to understand and buy your value. 

3. Build your brand, not just your resume. Thought leadership, content, and niche specialisation -  today, visibility drives opportunity. A sharp personal brand and portfolio can unlock more than a CV ever could.

Parmar: 

One key takeaway: Upskill.

No matter how much we discuss inclusivity or structural change, hiring decisions are often driven by business realities—and the truth is, a 52-year-old professional typically costs far more than a 22-year-old.

AI is bringing a paradigm shift to advertising and PR. This shift is not a threat, but an opportunity. Unfortunately, many in the industry—across age groups—are limiting themselves to using AI tools like ChatGPT for copywriting, Gamma for decks, or basic image generation.

But AI is much more than that. The goal should be to upskill to a level where you become irreplaceable.

Looking ahead, as India’s workforce continues to grow younger, the marketing industry is at a crossroads. The opportunity lies not in choosing between young and old but in creating systems where both can thrive.

Because in an industry that trades on insight, imagination and empathy, age should never be a liability.