UKG launches Age Friendly Vibes collab to challenge attitudes towards ageing
Age is just a number – but according to The Centre For Ageing Better ageism is considered to be the widest form of discrimination in Britain, with half of people aged over 50 in England saying they experienced age discrimination in the last year.
So, UK Greetings felt the timing was right to react, and has teamed up with pro-age advocate Jan Golden to create a statement collection of greeting cards which celebrates the positive aspects of ageing.
Sandi Parisi, UKG’s creative director and newly appointed D&I sponsor, explained: “In our extensive research to find pro-age creative voices, we kept coming back to the brilliant Jan Golden and Age Friendly Vibes. She has managed to champion and celebrate getting older without being preachy or patronising.”
Having been inspired three years ago at the age of 60 to create a line of age-positive cards, Jan is thrilled to be working with UKG, “It was a pleasure to work with Sandi and her team on this collaboration! I’m excited to see this range of clever, inspiring, and thought-provoking cards that celebrate age distributed in the UK.”
The collection launched at PG Live published under the Kindred brand, and is part of a wider D&I journey UKG has been taking to ensure its ranges are always relevant and reflecting modern values.
The decision to make a pro-age statement started with Canopy director Dr Hannah McDowall and Dave Martin, from the Centre For Policy On Ageing, approaching UKG’s product team to discuss age discrimination and how damaging it can be. Canopy then ran a workshop with the publisher’s creative and product-assorting teams to challenge age stereotyping, how greeting cards tend to depict ageing and how it just doesn’t need to be this way.
Sandi continued: “This led us to make some subtle but important changes to some of our existing cards, which now feel more fully celebratory, and perhaps a little less ageist, and to seek to make a clear pro-age statement that is truly uplifting, modern and true to life. This new collection addresses age in a clever and thoughtful way that resonates with people aged over 50.”
Canopy also shared its own research showing that 70% of older people wanted cards that celebrated getting older with positive messages, and the same number wanted designs that were funny or clever about ageing but not negative or stereotypical.
While 50% of those asked said they dislike cards depicting negative age stereotypes, one admitted: “They do sometimes make me laugh, actually,” adding, “laughing at things that are difficult is one way of dealing with them, but I don’t want to be defined by other people’s stereotypes of ageing.”
UKG’s insight manager Lois Holcroft explained that this aligns to expectations from all generations: “We all know that the UK has an ageing population; the 2021 Census revealed there were 10.4million over 65s in England alone, a 52% increase on the numbers from 20 years earlier. This means that older people are a powerful and growing voice. However, calling out age discrimination and bias also resonates with Gen Zs.”
Because of this, Lois believes the range has the potential to have a broader appeal: “There is a kindness about speech and communication that is coming through the younger generations – they don’t find it as funny to poke fun at others in that way. They’re much more likely to compliment and speak quite simply about how much they love their grandmas rather than take the mickey out of older people in their lives.
“So, although the collection is targeting the over 50s, I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if younger people really loved this range as well to send perhaps to older people in their lives.”
Consisting of 25 cards, the Age Friendly Vibes range is spread across standalone, adult age, life’s events, and love and family sends, all priced at code 60.
