Age UK Launches Powerful Campaign to Encourage a Conversation About Ageing

Age UK are today launching its new brand strategy ‘Let’s change how we age’ with a powerful integrated campaign. Created by Neverland, the campaign will be running across TV, VOD, cinema, social, OOH and through influencer partnerships. Media for the campaign has been planned and bought by MG OMD. The campaign will focus on the need, in a rapidly ageing society, for a national conversation about age and looks to recruit people to join the charity’s mission.

The charity’s new brand strategy has been developed across the last year with Neverland who interviewed and worked with stakeholders from across the charity and its network.  Age UK wants to change how we age. The older population is growing, increasingly diverse and facing substantial inequalities. The Charity wants society to change so that all older people can live the lives they want, and that tomorrow’s generation of older people are able to arrive in later life better prepared for the challenges that ageing can bring. 

Leading the campaign is a film directed by Oscar winning director James March (director of The Theory of Everything and Man on Wire), which centres around the uncomfortable truth that, as a society, we value old paintings and antiques more than we value older people. Actor Richard Durden leads the spot by setting out the scale of the issue and the work that Age UK are doing to change this. The film ends with a rallying call urging the public to support their work and get behind - Let’s Change How We Age. The film was produced by Magna Studios.

The campaign will carry into out of home through three powerful posters using a combination of images shot by James Day, which show people viewing paintings of older people in a gallery, and AI generated paintings which show older people struggling with isolation, the health and social care system and financial challenges. Neverland’s creative and design team led the generation of the AI paintings.

As part of the national media buy for the OOH, Age UK’s media agency MG OMD have carefully selected posters sites in the proximity of museums across England to reinforce the powerful message. The posters will be seen near over 40 museums including the V&A Museum of Childhood, the Design Museum and Migration Museum in London, The Portico Library in Manchester, the Reading Museum, the Stevenage Museum and the Classic Boat Museum on the Isle of Wight.

The AI paintings at the heart of the OOH work will be used across social and as part of an influencer partnership with @thefineartcollective who are famous for their in-depth reviews of art. Through the partnership, the account will start reviewing the artworks before revealing that the works are not in fact famous portraits, but part of Age UK’s campaign.

Paul Farmer, Age UK CEO, said, “The aim of the campaign is to question where we, as a society and as individuals, often place value. Age UK believes that negative attitudes often hold many back from making the most of later life. We want this to change.  

“We cannot continue to ignore the fact that our population is ageing and ageing faster than the resources available for the support this requires. We need to face up to the reluctance of many to talk about, or prepare for, the implications of getting older. We quite simply have to change the way we think about age or risk being totally unprepared for the shape of our society and economy in a few years' time.

“This is why we are embarking on a new long-term strategy which looks at how to manage the challenge of supporting, valuing and including an ageing population, alongside encouraging everyone to look at what steps they can take to ensure they will lead their best possible later life.

“These changes need to happen now, before we find ourselves sleep-walking into becoming an older society that is increasingly poorly equipped to cope.”

Lola Neves, chief strategy officer at Neverland, said, “We all want to live but none of us want to age. ‘Let’s change how we age’ is such a simple line but is packed with depth and gives Age UK a clear and simple direction for everything they do as an organisation to drive real change in how we approach and view age in our society.”

To find out more about Age UK and how it can help as well as its new strategy and Let’s change how we age, please visit here.