Abstract:

As consumption has become a major aspect that characterizes the life of people currently aged 55 and older, fervent public and academic debates have been raised around the accurate portrayal of seniors in advertising. While most of the previous quantitative and qualitative research highlighted the inappropriate ways of representing elders and the unsuitable framing of advertising claims, little research has been done so far to understand which are seniors’ expectations regarding their portrayal in current advertising campaigns. Based on in-depth interviews with Romanian adults of the 55+ generation, this paper investigates how seniors understand ageing with respect to the manner in which they have been depicted in nowadays advertising and what are the detailed features of the offensive or inoffensive advertising campaigns targeting them. The findings revealed that participants that lost their status during ageing favor the use of chronological rather than cognitive images of their age. Additionally, the running of the natural surroundings in advertising were found as empowering for both the young and the older adults of our research.

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