So you’re five years away from Social Security. In the agency’s creative department—where you’ve spent most of your career—your chair suddenly feels lumpy. The copywriters working around you remind you of your kids.
Every other day you tell yourself that even though you’re still kind of having fun, it’s time to go home and write a book or volunteer in the soup kitchen. On the other hand, you feel too young to fade away. If you didn’t look in the mirror, you’d never know.
The trouble is you’ve been feeling the stench coming in from the sea for quite a while. Do they have their eye on you or is it a touch of paranoia? At lunch with those hot young creatives, for example, even though you appreciate how much they respect your opinion about the new beer commercial you’re all working on, you know your storyboard will never pass the creative director’s muster. Why is it so hard to think like a 25-year-old? Actually, it isn’t so hard. But maybe, coming from you, it has an authenticity problem.
You wonder if you should wear Old Navy jeans and a T-shirt to the office? Should you say "cool" a lot and speak really cool techie talk?
Will the final denouement come at your next important client meeting, when sitting around the conference room table is a collection of sharp product managers who look at you and wonder why you’re still here?
The truth is, your perception isn’t totally accurate. Part of what’s going on is going on in your own head. And yet, sadly, you’re not totally wrong. It’s very tough to be a Boy Scout at 60.
You try to comfort yourself by remembering that Bill Bernbach was up there. David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, too. Except they grew into legends. And you’re just a really good copywriter with a low profile. And you’re 60.
These days, to be an "American Idol," your age digits have to start with 2, or a low 3. It is the way of the world. And that’s a fact. In the good old days, you could flaunt a 4 or even a 5.
Youth appears to be the one thing we all have at one time or another, and it’s especially lucky if you have it and you’re in the creative arts. Music, movies, modeling, media, and Madison Avenue. When we make our mark as a "yout," to quote Joe Pesci, it can carry through for a long, long time. Vis-à-vis Mick Jagger and Mike Wallace and Marilyn Monroe—who started in her teens and even, posthumously, is still a big, big star.
The thing is, it’s tricky to make a huge dent in the culture even if you’ve been writing ads seriously and successfully for most of your life. And when you’re suddenly older than you ever intended to be and are no longer thought of as a child genius, it probably is time to move over and make room for your son or daughter. Of course, if you open an agency, you can all work together until your kids start looking at you funny.
It is the way of the world.
Bill Bernbach once said, "It’s not what you say that stirs people. It’s the way that you say it." Perhaps you have to ask yourself how your way is doing.
Is all this unfair? Probably. When an agency CEO has an additional six titles after his/her name and he/she is only 50, it’s tricky to walk into his/her office without an appointment. Somehow the youts get away with it.
The unbridled fact of life is you definitely, instinctively know it when the moment comes to pack up the old laptop and the Andy Warhol repro that’s on your wall.
It’s time for the goodbye party at the pub where you’ve been hanging out for the last 30 years.
It’s time to bequeath the plant to the next 12-year old writer/ director/producer who’s going to get your office with a new chair.
It’s time to tell everybody how much you’re going to miss them, and thank them for saying how much they’ll miss you.
It’s time to thank your CEO for the nice severance package. Some of which will pay for your cruise before you look around for freelance when you come back.
It’s time to … wait one minute here. You know what? It’s time to tell yourself that people your age change their lives every day. Doctors become TV stars. Bankers climb mountains. Dentists write novels. Housewives build companies. Grandmas do stand-up comedy.
It’s time to tell yourself all your "what ifs" can turn into "why nots?"
It’s time to tell your spouse that you’ve decided to model yourself after an account executive in the agency who trashed his last 10-pound marketing plan and became an actor. Usually playing a hood.
It’s time to tell yourself it would be great if you lived to be a hundred and could see what happened to all the youts who took your place.
Stay well.
