MI6 will take you at any age.
Airlines will trust you more the longer you've flown.
Surgeons get handed the scalpel, not shown the door, the greyer they get.
Industries that deal in real judgement, where getting it wrong has real consequences, treat experience as an asset.
Advertising is the exception. Somewhere along the way it built an industry that quietly prices experience out rather than in.
Think about what this country actually hands over to the over-50s. Its national security. Its finances. Its healthcare. Its safety at thirty-five thousand feet.
Funny, how we'll let a fifty-something surgeon open our chests and have a poke around inside, or a fifty-something pilot fly us off to the Algarve through a white-knuckle storm, but somehow get cold sweats letting one near a pitch deck.
Remember Sully Sullenberger, the captain who landed a passenger plane on the frigid Hudson River?
He didn't save everyone on board because he'd just discovered a new format. He saved them because he'd flown for decades and knew, instinctively, what to do when instinct mattered most. Nobody in the tower asked if he fancied handing over to someone with a fresher LinkedIn profile or higher TikTok reach.
The moment called for judgement, and judgement is built over time.
In our industry, turning fifty can feel like a demotion nobody announces. You watch the briefs get younger. You watch the room get younger. Somewhere in there, brilliant, battle-tested people start trimming decades off their CV the way a Turkish plastic surgeon trims decades off a medical tourist on a cosmetic jolly. Like it's something to be embarrassed of. Quietly taking up less space in rooms they've actually helped build and earned the right to run.
I've earned my years. I've built brands and teams across three continents, and I stand by every one of them. Not as baggage, but as the reason I know what I'm doing when it matters most.
We have to stop apologising for our experience, and for having it in the first place. It's the industry that has to stop treating it as a liability.
