‘Youth Creep’ : The Pepsi Generation: Gray Area

The television commercial concludes in what might seem customary fashion: “Pepsi. The choice of a new generation.” But something is different; the generation seen on the screen appears to be half a century older than the high school crowd Pepsi has championed for years.

In May, People magazine sets a record of sorts, making Bette Davis, 77, the oldest person ever featured on its cover. The previous age record had been set just a few weeks earlier by 56-year-old sex counselor Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

This summer, one of the top movie hits is “Cocoon,” a science-fiction tale set in a Florida retirement community. NBC, meanwhile, readies a new comedy for the fall entitled “The Golden Girls,” about three middle-age women and an elderly parent who live together in Miami.

Waning Devotion to Youth

Something has happened. After years of glorifying the young, popular culture is no longer synonymous with the youth culture. In advertising, television and other areas, Americans have shown a waning devotion to all that is young and a growing fascination for the possibilities of the old and middle-aged.

Part of the reason is money. People over 50 have plenty of it--more than popularly believed--and business has begun to pay more attention.

Another reason is the march of time. The postwar baby boom generation--and its crop of image-making publishers, advertising executives and television programmers--is getting older. So are the generation’s pop music stars, once a clear symbol of youth. Tina Turner, Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton are all over 40--and popular.

And part of the reason is behavior. Many people in their 40s and 50s now act in ways long associated with the very young, joining aerobics classes or pounding the running track, fogging the boundaries between youth and maturity in a phenomenon some call “youth creep.”

Blurring Boundaries

“Our concept of what a young generation does is dissolving before our eyes, because old people are doing what only young people were doing before,” observed Peter A. Morrison, a demographer at the Rand Corp., a research center in Santa Monica. “You can be chronologically old but physically young and chronologically young but physically breaking down. The boundaries between youth and old age are blurring.”

To be sure, American society is a long way from losing its infatuation with the young or its conviction in the money-making potential of a trend-setting youth culture. But many social researchers and executives in advertising, television and publishing contend that both the hang-ups about older people and the stereotypical portrayals are easing.

“As I go out speaking now I find there’s an awareness of what old people are really like,” said Lydia Bragger who at 81 is national media consultant to the Gray Panthers, an advocacy group for the elderly. “The stereotypes are not as oppressive.”

Some older people are considered among the nation’s most beautiful. When People magazine queried readers this spring on who was the “best-looking woman in America,” the winner was 42-year-old Linda Evans. Runners-up included Joan Collins, 52, and Elizabeth Taylor, 53. The first time People asked the question in 1979, the winner was Jaclyn Smith, then 32. In 1980, the winner was 23-year-old Bo Derek.

“When I came to People originally (seven years ago) there was a real reluctance to put stories about older people on the cover,” the magazine’s managing editor, Patricia Ryan, said of the recent features on Bette Davis and Ruth Westheimer. “I don’t really think about it anymore. We’ve found they sell fine.”

Pre-Baby Boomers

Last year, when NBC introduced “Highway to Heaven,” director Michael Landon had to convince executives that a retirement home setting for the first show would not alienate the coveted younger audience. “He said the kids would watch it, and he was right,” recalled Bill Kiley, a network spokesman.

Such a dispute might not have erupted in the 1950s and early ‘60s. In those days, before the baby boom generation was old enough to establish a cultural identity and captivate the media, television was hospitable to such middle-age stars as Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, Red Skelton and Milton Berle, noted David Poltrack, vice president of research for the CBS Broadcasting Group. But the climate became less tolerant of age when the youthful counterculture blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s.

During this period, older actors rarely played leading roles on television. Images of the elderly as poor or unhealthy were typified by such characters as Carol Burnett’s poignant but pathetic old working woman and Tim Conway’s portrayal of a shuffling geezer. As recently as 1979, Country Time Lemonade used the device of an old man’s deafness as an excuse to repeat the product’s name in a commercial.

Now, such extremely negative images of old age are gradually disappearing and being replaced by more favorable role models. The lemonade ads, for example, feature a grandfather sharing happy moments with children.

New Role Models

Richard H. Davis, a University of Southern California professor, said that traditionally “it is assumed in the media that if you are an older man you are quite likely to be the villain or the victim. If you’re a woman it’s even worse. But this is being reversed by such role models as Angela Lansbury in ‘Murder She Wrote’ and Joan Collins in ‘Dynasty.’ These are not young girls.”

Lansbury, 59, plays a crime solver who regularly vanquishes younger villains. Collins, 52, is a sex symbol on a show that glamorizes mature romance, such as that portrayed by Evans, 42, and John Forsythe, 67. Jane Wyman, 71, is a leading character on “Falcon Crest.” Other shows now feature wholesome inter-generational relationships, such as that of a father and his adult son on “Crazy Like a Fox” and a retired judge and former criminal on “Hardcastle & McCormick.”

“There’s definitely a trend to integrating older characters into regular series programming,” Poltrack said.

Television also seems increasingly willing to tackle the less pleasant issues of aging, such as in a recent CBS movie about Alzheimer’s disease, a common cause of senility.

Davis, who has consulted with the television networks about age issues, maintained of the Alzheimer’s special: “That wouldn’t have been made 15 years ago.”

Gains Are Questionable

Despite improvements, particularly in the image of middle age, television often remains a wasteland as far as depictions of older characters are concerned. George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the school’s analysis of 17,000 television characters on network programs between 1969 and 1978 showed that people over 65 appeared on the screen about one-fifth of their actual proportion in the population and were treated disrespectfully most of the time. Monitoring through 1983 revealed little change, he said.

“If you don’t count old movies, if you focus on programs in which older people play major roles, I think you’ll probably find a certain amount of sensitivity and sophistication that didn’t exist before,” Gerbner acknowledged. “ . . . But in terms of 17,000 characters, that does not make a ripple.”

Poltrack was more optimistic: “Now I think the youth culture concept is fading, not just because of population statistics, but because key decision makers and the baby boomers who work in advertising themselves are aging.”

CBS, which has the oldest audience of the three major networks, has a financial stake in Poltrack’s assessment. Many marketers aim for younger viewers, who are seen as setting up households, having children--and requiring lots of products. The less value companies place on older viewers, the less money CBS gets to charge for its commercial time.

Said Bud Rukeyser, a vice president at NBC, which claims the lead in the under-49 category of viewers: “What we know in 1985 is that advertisers like the 18 to 49 age group the most--and this is to our advantage.”

Second Thoughts

Companies have long assumed that people over 50 do not spend much money and, in any event, are not susceptible to advertising because their product loyalties are rigidly established. But this assumption is under scrutiny in light of recent estimates that the 50-plus market is worth from $500 billion to $800 billion. According to the Census Bureau, total income for those 50 and over in 1983 was $777 billion, 35% of all U.S. income.

Other trends have inspired second thoughts about focusing too rigidly on the younger generation. Between 1980 and 1984, for example, the school-age population actually declined in 40 states, the Census Bureau reported earlier this month.

“The Pepsi generation is getting smaller,” observed USC professor Davis.

So it is little surprise that Pepsi and other companies are defining that generation more broadly than they used to, incorporating older people into new commercials.

“It’s a little bit of a change for us,” said Mark Misercola, a spokesman for Pepsico, which markets Pepsi. “But there are no age constraints to the new generation. It’s more a state of mind than anything else.”

Advertisers hawking Ford Mustangs, cosmetics, airline tickets and other items have started to solicit older consumers with a jazzy vision of the golden years. “It (marketing to older consumers) is an area that’s being looked at with a fresh eye in a number of agencies,” said Cathy Pullis, a planning and research supervisor at Ogilvy & Mather, one of those agencies now reconsidering the potential of the older market.

It’s OK to Be 50

Ford Motor Co. recently took playful aim at more adventurous motorists with a two-page ad in Modern Maturity, published by the American Assn. of Retired Persons, showing a gleaming white Mustang LX convertible. The pitch: “Just when the kids had you all figured out.” In the same issue, Eastern Airlines tempted those older travelers “who aren’t content to travel just down memory lane.” Ultima II cosmetics now beckons older women with the assertion that “Sixty isn’t what it used to be.”

The magazine 50 Plus reports that its advertising revenues have risen from $1.5 million in 1983 to a projected $3 million this year.

“Why can’t youthful beauty, as enchanting as it is, and older beauty, as radiant as it is, exist side by side?” asks Rita Grisman, a vice president at Revlon, which owns the Ultima II line.

“It’s no longer unfashionable, embarrassing and uncool to be older,” declared Peter Schweitzer, a senior vice president at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. “It’s OK to be 50 and act 50. I think you’ll see more advertising which depicts the gray generation in an open, honest way.”

Such honest depictions are not limited to the advertising world. Both in television’s “The Golden Girls” and the movie “Cocoon,” characters cope with the issues of aging, generally without sentimentality.

In the opening episode of “The Golden Girls,” actress Betty White, who plays a widowed counselor, laments: “It’s not fair. We get married. We have kids. The kids grow up, and the husbands die. . . . We’re alone, and there are too many years left, and I don’t know what to do.”

To which a curmudgeonly house mate played by Estelle Getty responds: “Get a poodle.”

In an interview, White, who gave her age as “way over 50,” maintained that the show’s adult themes afford more dramatic possibilities than youthful themes do: “After four lines either you’re in bed or in a car crash,” she said. “You don’t get a chance to explore the problems of daily life.”

Lili Fini Zanuck, one of the producers of “Cocoon,” recalled that 20th Century Fox executives wanted to emphasize the younger characters at one point, in light of the fact that most moviegoers are under 30, a pressure the producers resisted. The “Cocoon” cast represents a cross-section of the elderly, ranging from a man (played by 77-year-old Don Ameche) who break-dances and performs somersaults off a diving board to a woman who is senile. The health and vitality of the others fall somewhere in between. Sexuality among older people is even dealt with, a rarity for the movies.

“A reason ‘Cocoon’ is so good is that we didn’t succumb to the pressure of demographics,” Zanuck said. “We chose to portray our older actors as we think older people are. We didn’t make them cute. They’re not corny. They’re true human beings.”

But if some take heart in such examples, nobody is suggesting that the culture’s pro-youth bias is suddenly vanishing.

Bias Toward Young Writers

Veteran television writers, for example, have complained that network executives often assume that young writers have fresher ideas, simply because the writers are younger. And the movie industry, even more than television, has demonstrated a seemingly bottomless appetite for such juvenile tales as “Police Academy” and “Porky’s” (with two sequels).

Speaking of the success of “Cocoon,” David A. Weitzner, president of marketing at 20th Century Fox Film Corp., remarked: “I don’t think you’re going to see ‘Son of Cocoon,’ but in a business that loves to imitate, maybe people will be a little more tolerant of putting out movies with adult themes.”

One factor influencing Hollywood will be how older people--and younger ones--respond to “Cocoon” at the box office. To this end, Rogers & Cowan, a public relations firm, has supplemented its routine publicity efforts with an unusual campaign aimed at seniors. The early indications have been favorable, if not definitive, said Ronni Chasen, a Rogers & Cowan vice president.

However successful the firm is in luring the older audience, older viewers can be counted on no more than younger ones to react predictably to what they see. What is insulting to one may be entertaining to another. Consider the popular ad campaign by Wendy’s with 82-year-old Clara Peller, arguably the senior superstar of advertising. In the commercials, the pugnacious Peller complains that a big bun is concealing a measly portion of her hamburger and demands to know: “Where’s the beef?”

Some of those interviewed saw the ad as a silly depiction of an older woman, while others perceived it as an affectionate portrait of a person refusing to be exploited.

“For the first time in the history of this country, I think you can be over 50 and glamorous,” said Bard Lindeman, editor of 50 Plus. “Are the media reflecting this? I think only by accident. We still get Clara Peller and that sort of thing.”

But Cliff Freeman, who wrote the ad for the Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample agency, defended his creation: “Here’s a person who doesn’t allow herself to be taken advantage of. I think it’s a very positive portrayal.”