LinkedIn Under Fire For Ageist Ads: Fails To Take Timely Action And Uphold DEI Policy

By Sheila Callaham Mar 8, 2024,08:03am EST

LinkedIn members have been pushing back for months against the company’s release of two ageist ads that stereotype older people as unaware and uneducated in business and technology. The ads were released in November 2023, and members of the LinkedIn community have been calling for removal ever since, without success. LinkedIn’s lack of timely response clashes with the DEI policy, which vows to protect individuals and groups (including age) from content that attacks, denigrates, intimidates, dehumanizes, and incites.

The ads’ descriptions acknowledge that friends, parents and even partners don’t seem to understand what people do in their jobs. LinkedIn and their ad agency of choice, Maximum Effort (co-founded by Ryan Reynolds), didn’t focus on the collective. Instead, they targeted older parents and presented them as ignorant.

One ad shows an older woman talking about her son selling clouds. She sits in a chair in a dark, sparsely decorated living room with her silver hair pulled back. She speaks to the camera, looking over her glasses, which rest low on her nose. The conversation leaves her looking lost and bewildered.

The second ad features an older man looking forlorn at the dining room table. His brows gently furrow as he laments his inability to understand his daughter.

“I don’t know how this happened. She was speaking in complete sentences before she was 2, and now she just mumbles all these alphabets. I blame myself. I should have been around more,” he choked out with emotion.

When LinkedIn Ads, with almost 4.5M followers, released the cloud salesman ad featuring the woman, criticism of gendered ageism was swift and sharp.

“Don’t know why you have to perpetuate the myth that older women don’t understand technology. I’m a 60-year-old engineer and have put up with this crap my whole life. It is ridiculous to mock old women — you can do better.” Lisa Thierbach, principal system design engineer, Maxar Technologies, Ann Arbor, MI.

“It reinforces negative stereotypes about older adults. These same people face age discrimination in hiring every day. LinkedIn should be dispelling those stereotypes, not reinforcing them. Will you consider pulling the ad?” Maureen Ferreira, a digital marketing consultant in San Diego, CA.

“As an older engineer, I find these ads incredibly offensive.” Elaine May, senior engineering manager at Netlify, Beaverton, OR.

“This ad is so insultingly ageist. My father turned 81 yesterday. He knows exactly what cloud computing is – was a software engineer for his entire career, and he still consults. My mother was an elementary schoolteacher- she doesn’t understand cloud computing, but she could if I explained it to her – we all know it’s not a complex concept, so let’s stop patting ourselves on the back.” Jennifer Danvers, senior director of product management, Charlotte, NC.

“The ad with the woman is certainly worse,” said Lisa Balser, award-winning creative director, strategic brand coach, certified diversity executive. “It manages to be offensive at the intersection of age and gender for a double whammy. The interviewer’s tone is condescending and pandering. The woman is portrayed as frail and foolish. Her all-beige wardrobe is dull and sad and frumpy. The set and lighting are depressing. The script is hackneyed.”

Balser’s take on both campaigns was that they were neither creative nor inspiring and wouldn’t drive people to LinkedIn’s B2B site. “It’s memorable for all the wrong reasons,” she said.

Comments on the ads have since been turned off for the LinkedIn Ad post and the YouTube channel.

A Rallying Cry Ensues

Tens days after the ads’ release, Ashton Applewhite published a response on her blog, Yo, Is This Ageist? A globally-renowned age activist and author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, Applewhite wrote, “This utterly ageist campaign reinforces the insulting stereotype that olders are technologically ignorant. In fact, as multiple comments on LinkedIn attest, workers have to master a wide range of digital tools and technologies in order to be employable—and older people have been practicing and building those skills for decades.

Applewhite shamed LinkedIn for “portraying older people as inept and hostage to a generational disconnect. In fact, when someone doesn’t understand what someone else does for a living, it’s because they’re not interested or not trying hard enough—not because of an age difference,” she wrote.

Two months later, Janine Vanderburg, co-founder and senior strategist of Changing the Narrative, published an article on LinkedIn. She offered three reasons these ads were inappropriate and suggested appropriate next steps. In early February, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Vice President Jim Habrig defended the ad, writing, “The ad is part of a campaign designed to drive conversations about challenges facing B2B marketers…”

Sandy Zwyer is one LinkedIn user who reported the ad as inappropriate. The Toronto-based freelance writer and editorial support specialist stated she made several attempts to report the ads as inappropriate. After some difficulty, she finally received a response from LinkedIn support.

“Thank you for writing back regarding this, I was able to check this at the backend, please note that this video was to depect [sic] the understanding of the ad in laymen point of view, although Council acknowledged some viewers would find the ads to be distasteful, they considered viewers would likely interpret the ads as light-heartedly suggesting that the acronyms and technical jargon associated with certain IT jobs that did not exist until relatively recently may not be generally understood by the older generation. Council considered the ad did not suggest all older people would be unaware of these terms, or that they would be incapable of understanding technology generally. We therefore concluded the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence on the grounds of age. Have a great day ahead.”

This comment suggests that, at some level, LinkedIn realized it was denigrating older people but enjoyed the laughs so much that it decided to go with it. In his launch post, Keith Browning, the director of brand marketing said that filming “was definitely the most I’ve ever laughed during a shoot.”

Portraying a specific segment as stupid and laughing at them seems, once again, in violation of LinkedIn’s DEI policy. Would they have turned race or disability into a joke?

In the meantime, Vanderburg’s LinkedIn article continued to garner negative comments directed at LinkedIn.

“It’s a little gobsmacking how obviously ageist this LinkedIn Ad campaign is!” Natasha Ginnivan, research fellow with the UNSW School of Psychology and an associate investigator with the Ageing Futures Institute in Sydney, Australia.

“This is blatant ageism and only furthers societally accepted stigma against our older citizens. Take this down, be better, please show some respect.” Walter Robinson, Founder and Principal, GSD-x-WJR, Ontario, Canada.

“LinkedIn, HELLO—you’re ageist ads are HIGHLY OFFENSIVE. They should be pulled immediately!” Barbara Raynor, a strategic consultant in Denver, CO.

The Problem With Ageism

Ageism is commonly referred to as the last acceptable ism. It is so deeply embedded in our culture that many people (and companies) don’t understand how problematic it is.

A 2021 study on U.S. and U.K. age stereotypes from a media database of 1.1B words found that negative descriptions of older adults outnumber positive ones by six times. The findings underscored the need to increase public awareness of ageism and proactively tackle ageism by calling it out when we see it.

LinkedIn’s ads are prime examples of negative age stereotypes depicted in media. By reinforcing negative stereotypes, LinkedIn hurts older people’s chances for employment.

“Seeing this ad makes me understand why I’m not getting any traction with my resume because I’m perceived as old and ignorant despite my ability to do twice as much work as a younger person with a greater understanding of technology and marketing principles. Shame on LinkedIn ads for reinforcing a disturbing stereotype,” Julie Lary, from Coupeville, WA, wrote in LinkedIns Ads’ launch post.

“This is one of the leading causes keeping the 50+ segment out of the workforce. Coming from LinkedIn, that is quite surreal,” wrote Claudia Vaccarone, an international inclusion strategist and gender equality and diversity in media expert.

Mocking older people by making them seem technophobic is appalling.

“It is not normal in 2024 to mock so directly a category of people based on an identity characteristic. Using stereotyped characteristics for humour is one of the most extreme forms of othering in media–in which groups are shown as being fundamentally different from the audience,” Vaccarone continued. “Portraying the two elderly parents as dumb and incapable of keeping up with the times is not only exclusionary but also dehumanizing.”

Sorry, Not Sorry

Let’s recap. LinkedIn realizes the mistake. They’ve turned off comments so viewers can no longer call out the atrocity. Still, they refuse to pull the ad.

One of the most responsible actions a company can take is to admit a mistake and take immediate action to correct it.

For example, a 2017 ad by Dove generated a backlash. The ad depicted a black woman removing her shirt to reveal a white woman underneath, followed by another image of the white woman removing her shirt to reveal an Asian woman. Many interpreted the ad as implying that Dove soap could cleanse blackness to whiteness. Within a week, Dove had removed the ad and apologized, acknowledging it had missed the mark. Dove’s parent company, Unilever, also released a statement condemning the ad and reiterating their dedication to inclusion.

Despite the initial controversy, Dove’s swift and decisive response helped mitigate the damage to their brand reputation. Consumers expect and appreciate when companies own up to their mistakes. Dove’s proactive approach to rectifying the situation contributed to a relatively positive outcome.

LinkedIn has chosen a different path. When asked why these offensive, ageist ads continued to run, a LinkedIn spokesperson replied, “This ad didn’t meet our goal to create experiences where all professionals feel welcomed and valued, and we are working to replace the spot.”

Habrig also skirted the question with, “We understand that the ad may not have resonated with everyone and we are taking steps to replace it. Our goal is to make everyone feel welcomed and valued, and we take the feedback we’ve received very seriously.”

This dismissive lack of timely action implies that LinkedIn views the older segment on their platform as insignificant. It suggests that they don’t care about making everyone feel welcomed and valued at all.

Where’s the accountability, LinkedIn? No excuses. Remove the ageist ads now.

This article was originally published by Forbes.