This Is Getting Old ETRADE Super Bowl 2018 Commercial

Etrade takes ageism to an extreme, while Google fights ageism in advertising. Etrade plays to stereotypes, while Google invites the world to “Question your lens” about elders. Here, an analysis of how how Etrade hurts all of us.
Etrade’s Super Bowl commercial portrays working elders as ridiculous and embarrassing. How pathetic, Etrade shows us, for older adults to work in offices, airlines, hospitals and nightclubs. The commercial is a series of slapstick vignettes showing the comedy of elders in the workplace. Viewers are reminded that too few Americans have retirement savings.
The commercial is set to a tune Harry Belafonte made famous, the Banana Boat Song. Instead of singing “Daylight come and I want to go home,” Etrade’s choir sings “85 and I want to go home.”
Etrade tells you to be ashamed of working in your later years. Instead, go home and monitor your Etrade account balances.
More people who are 85 years old likely viewed this super bowl ad than people who are 25 years old, according to Nielsen. Yet ETrade portrays the elders as losers who work because they need the money.
For the “creatives” who produced Etrade’s ageist advertising, imagine how it plays when you replace the elders with women. Last century, many working women were viewed as losers who needed the money because they were (stigmatized) single mothers or married to husbands with embarrassingly modest incomes.
Would ETrade make jokes about women as pilots, surgeons or DJs who “have to” work outside the home, much less want to work?
If you want a reference point to know if a commercial, movie or joke is ageist, replace the elder with a woman or person of color.

[@hlittell]

When you get to be close to 85 (I am 7 years away) a video like this, which seems to convey the notion that being in the workforce is overwhelming, confusing, and can over power an older person is somewhat disheartening, especially when the message is for younger persons to invest in eTrade as a solution, meaning one can avoid the disasters and difficulties portrayed of the older persons in the video. Retirement savings are not going to solve the issues incidental to aging. I didn't find it funny, but rather feeding into the stereotypes.

[@izzyagdipa153]

Hi! I'm a nursing student, and I strongly agree with what you said. This is precisely why we, as students, learn about aging, and I hope people will understand how this was a genuinely heartbreaking Ads to portray.

[@maryloria2320]

So funny. That's why I have you so I don't have to work at 90