Selling the ‘Elixir of Life’: Images of the elderly in an Olivio advertising campaign

This paper explores images of older people in advertising in a UK context. It is a case-study of a specific advertising campaign (Olivio/Bertolli margarine) which depicted older people as central characters over a seven year period. We examine what images of older people are employed, whether they are positive or negative and how they fit with current societal stereotypes of elders. Further, through a broadly semiotic and visual semantic perspective, we look at what messages about old age the visual and the textual elements of the advertisements transmit and how the messages evolve through the campaign. We identify four distinct phases of the campaign and show how older people appear in decreasingly traditional roles, being shown as increasingly adventurous individuals. The campaign seems to be breaking new ground for images of elders and is an example of how stereotypes identified in the ageing and communication literature are used for commercial effects.