Grace Creative LA

Our zoom cameras are off and our laptops are closed until 2025. We hope everyone has a happy, healthy, and peaceful festive season. We'll see you next year! xo Grace Creative Photo credit: noodlesthepooch

Funny thing about getting older, your eyesight starts getting weaker but your ability to see through people's bullshit gets much better. Not to brag, but you don’t get to be as advanced as we are at Grace Creative LA without enhanced vision. Years of laser focus on what authentically makes a brand stand out, zeroing in on what truly matters to the consumer, spotting trends and fresh ways to make creative magic, and of course, nailing key insights based on research, data, and intuition, have equipped our multi-generational team with the gift of foresight and the advantage of years of hindsight. Thank you to our friends at Caddis for supplying us with the awesome eyewear!

Thank you to this multi-talented, multi-generational, multi-cultural Grace Creative LA Team! As we like to say, nobody here is named Grace but it's what we bring to the job in confidence, cool heads, and a bullet-proof sense of humor earned over decades in big-agency advertising. At our holiday lunch today, a stranger came over and remarked on the good time we were having and said, "I want to work there too!" #workculture

As is the point of exit interviews, Bonnie Hammer, 74, lays it all out there in her chat with The Hollywood Reporter. As is not often the case with exit interview, she does so with grace, humor, humility and candor. Hammer reflects on her long career in the corporate world of broadcast, highlighting the double standard that men and women face in the workplace when it comes to age. Her experience of getting older at work was one of gradual invisibility. The older women get, they less and less relevant they become. Hammer reflects that for men, age is "never part of the story." She's often shocked when she remembers her age, but explains she doesn't feel as though she's 74. What we read here is the societal ageism that so many of us have internalized. The number gives a knee-jerk reaction, that is so vastly different the reality of what it looks and feels like to live in 74 year old skin. While much in this interview could be read as discouraging, we are invigorated by it. Bonnie Hammer is one of the most powerful people in media, PERIOD. Here, she uses her platform to call out ageism, and shines a light on what is so often a quiet, subtle inequity. Like Hammer, we are focused on advocating for changes that hold space for people of any age to thrive. We are waiting with bated breath to see what Bonnie Hammer's next chapter holds. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/g2cDY3fd

What Michael Clinton said 👇 ! Age diversity is good for business and great for brands.

The US economy loses $1.8 billion in working time every year due to menopause symptoms from some of the most productive and important people on the payroll and in our lives. Yet only 9% of the NIH's budget has been allocated to women's health research. Yesterday, Joe and Jill Biden continued to take leaps forward along the path to de-mystifying women's health at the first-ever White House Conference on Women's Health Research. Last year, they launched The Women’s Health Research (WHR) Initiative, which has already invested $1 billion to fund the inconceivable inequity in medical research. Women's healthcare isn't just about ensuring the wellbeing of our bodies, it is about guaranteeing the success of our nation. #womenshealth #whitehouse #WHRconference

What would happen if the medical community actually looked at individual symptoms such as anxiety, depression, irritability, insomnia, brain fog, etc. holistically rather than a game of medical whack-a-mole? For centuries, women's symptoms of anxiety, depression, and irritability have been written off as as mental illness at best, witchcraft at worst. The word "hysterical" comes to mind. While we had hoped that the medical community had turned a corner, this eye-opening segment from the Drew Barrymore Show featuring Lisa Ling demonstrates that we're not quite out of the woods. The scientific community understands so little about how women's bodies work it's actually hysterical (see what we did there? No? We'll show ourselves out...) It's time to shake of the stigma that comes with normal, natural, and healthy hormonal shifts and demand that doctors treat menopausal symptoms collectively. #menopauseawareness

I started Grace Creative LA at age 58 with a mission of changing what age looks like in advertising and marketing. So if you ask me, age is not a barrier but a distinct advantage in growing a business. And everyone on the team of any age benefits. As Sheila Lirio Marcelo, founder of Care.com explains here, "We’ve spent decades navigating careers, families, and crises—learning empathy, patience, and resilience along the way. In business, these qualities are superpowers. We don’t just delegate; we nurture. We don’t just solve problems; we identify deeper human needs. We don’t just mentor; we sponsor. Emotional intelligence, a skill that can’t be quantified but is vital, sets us apart." The idea that 50 is too old to lead new ventures is a stale idea that needs to be debunked. Who agrees? Eleanor Mills Mika Brzezinski Cindy Gallop Jill Angelo Abby Levy Jane Evans 💥Jules Brooke Katie Fogarty Barbara Brooks 🎙Sally Mueller Debra Hotaling Stephanie O'Dell Jenny McCabe Ainsley TeGrotenhuis Manjit Devgun Lilly Yeatman

Ding Ding Ding! Billie Jean King has really hit the nail on the head in her conversation with Julia Louis Dreyfus about ageism and sexism in commercial representation. King notes that most older athletes who are held up as role models in the commercial space are almost exclusively men. Female athletes seem to age out at a much younger age. Even when women athletes are represented in marketing efforts, their reach is capped at being good role models for women rather than good role models period. At Grace Creative we don't just believe, we know that the 50+ consumer wants to see their demographic fairly represented in advertising. It's time to make sure that powerhouse female athletes endure as household names as they hit midlife and beyond. Link to the full podcast episode here: https://lnkd.in/g3kaCh4p

We were so excited to be among the leaders redefining age at the ROAR Forward Summit last week in NYC. You could feel the incredible momentum around the New Longevity as all sides from technology, financial, employment, health and wellness, city government, and marketing, were all brought together into the same conversation thanks to Michael Clinton. Grace Creative Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Susan Lee Colby, spoke about our mission of changing what age looks like through advertising and marketing on a panel about "How Images Empower the New 50+ Consumer." ✏️ Some takeaways on Image and Marketing: ✔️ From Ali Goldstein: L’Oreal Paris for the win in showing the world that they truly “get” mid-life women with their inclusive “Worth It” campaign and Age-Perfect work vs. Anti-aging. Likely because it is run by a mid-life woman! ✔️ From QVC’s Annette Dunleavy on The Age of Possibility: Women 50+ are not slowing down - they’re more confident and adventurous than ever and believe anything is possible. ✔️ From Grace Creative’s Susan Lee Colby: There’s a danger of putting the age-old pressure on women 50+ by celebrating them for looking good for their age in media and advertising. ✔️ Or as NYC Commissioner on Aging Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez put it, “Women want to be celebrated for our accomplishments, not how we look.” ✏️ On Medicine and technology: ✔️ When building products for older people, include older people on the teams doing the work. You’ll see it pay off in the results. - Mark Lachs ✔️ Doctors are trained to save lives NOT extend lives. Make a plan for what you want your life to look like when you’re 80 or 100. Talk to your doctor about how you can invest in your lifestyle now to reverse engineer to get to that plan. What gets put into writing gets done. - David Luu, MD ✔️ Most people don’t get their hearing checked after grade school hearing tests. Hearing loss can lead to withdrawal and then depression and then cognitive decline. Dont wait. It’s so easy to fix. - Carol McIntyre ✔️ Old age isn’t the problem. Old ideas (about old age) are! - Peter K. ✏️ On Work and Purpose: ✔️ Make sure you know your superpowers so that when you’re thinking about your next thing, your superpowers align with that - Stephen Gregory Barr, MBA, JM ✔️ From Mika Brzezinski, Founder of Know your Value and Forbes 50 over 50: Knowing your Value is about purpose but it’s also about finding happiness. 🎉 And finally, parting words from Julianna Margulies in a conversation with Gayle King: “The best part about being in this chapter of life is that I get to miss the party. The party is me and it’s freeing!” #ROARforward #LongevityEconomy #NewLongevity