Brunner Digital Blog

A few days ago, I was sitting next to a partner of ours who works on our client’s business. He and I share a lot of similarities, including our love of technology. We were comparing each other’s laptops (I was impressed by the incredibly tiny screen on his Vaio), and we mentioned how much we love having our computers, and hence access to the Internet, with us all the time. Our conversation turned to his daughter, now a graduate with a baccalaureate degree who is learning the fine art of creative on the Internet. As he showed me her latest work, we oohed and aahed over the messaging and simplicity of design. We both agreed that we loved seeing this type of thought on the Web.

Then he said a strange thing. He said that his daughter thought of him as an anomaly. Here was this very smart gentleman, in his forties, obviously understanding and grasping how the digital world works (and playing very well in it), and yet his daughter (who has developed psychologically alongside the Internet) thinks of him as a rare species because he does. I was taken aback a bit…for I am around the same age as this suggested dinosaur and yet I am going on year 13 of actually working in this industry. Am I an anomaly, too? Is it just the cool kids out of school who really get it?

I think there’s an inherent challenge here and I think it’s a flag for all of us on the agency and client side. Since some of us are adopters (i.e. immigrants) of this new technology and not first or second generation residents to this new language, we sometimes have to beat our chests and remind folks that we have been doing this for awhile. But here’s the danger. Just as my grandparents from Scandinavia wanted to wipe away the past and become known only as “Americans”, there is something to be said for the history and knowledge and, yes, perspective they brought with them. So we anomalies need to remember that our history, knowledge and perspective are good foundations for any type of work and thought that we bring to the table. It still all starts with an idea, an insight…and ideas, thankfully, don’t harbor any age prejudices.

Nor does the Internet. In fact, in a recent eMarketer study from February of this year, a summary noted that while the Internet population is definitely younger than the general pop, those aged 40+ still represent a large portion of the adult Internet user. They are well-educated and have slightly higher household incomes. Not a bad anomaly to be, in my opinion.