Chances are, if you're reading this you still have an opportunity to be nominated for the PRCA's next Young Professional of the Year award. The PRCA's latest PR and Communications Census states that PR is "an overwhelmingly young industry: the average industry practitioner is 29 years old". This significantly under-indexes the UK population as a whole, which has an average age of 40. Within 30 years, one in four people is expected to be aged 65 and over. A recent report by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has suggested that workers under the age of 30 may not get a pension until the age of 70.
As an industry we need to stop only championing the benefits, value and contribution of the under 30s (although this is important too), and increase our efforts to promote the benefits of age and experience. Age is an under-appreciated vector of diversity, and one that we should address if we want to be genuinely representative of the community we're trying to communicate with. For that reason, Darryl Sparey of Hotwire and Gareth Price of J. Walter Thompson London have launched a campaign to find the top 60 currently practicing PR and Marketing professionals aged over 60. They are currently crowd-sourcing contributions via Twitter using the hashtag #PR60Over60, and looking for contributions from across the industry. If you have a nomination, please tweet the nomination and reason why they’re nominated using #PR60Over60 and we'll aim to announce in the final list in the coming weeks.
If you’re interested in learning more about this campaign, you can read more here.