Welcome friends to Eliza Filby’s Newsletter. Stick around and you’ll find all my latest insights, essays and research into generational evolution how we can understand the world of our parents, ourselves and the future world of our kids.
This week’s edition:
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In this week’s issue:
Is the Age of Authenticity over?
Why healthcare in the workplace is the future of work (and healthcare)
Will a stamp duty holiday for Boomers solve the housing crisis in the UK?
For a long time brand experts, even generational experts like myself, have been harping on about how Gen Z is ushering in a new age of authenticity. It was the antidote to their airbrushed, fake news, filtered upbringing. Look, we said, these kids even had an app called Be Real, specifically designed to counter the wave of overly-posed uploaded images. It was on TikTok, though, where this counter-cultural effort best played out, and evolved. The video platform offered a new age of authenticity in contrast to the prevalence of hyper-curated online content that was so common amongst previous generations on Facebook and Instagram. TikTok allowed users to express themselves in more unfiltered and genuine ways, without the pressure of portraying a polished or idealised image. The rise of authenticity heralded the ‘de-influencer’ trend and the emergence of micro influencers, free from the contractual constraints of major brand partnerships, and put a big fat question mark over the influencer economy; its fakery, its money, its dark influence - especially on our mental health. Thank you Gen Z, we all thought.
But we may have reached saturation point. Firstly, brands and agencies (as they are paid to do) caught on. You will see that advertising is now awash with authentic people, authentic aesthetics, authentic lives - because they know that it sells (just as perfection and unreality once did). Imperfection is now the perfect messaging. Relatable content is more potent than aspirational ideals. Nowhere was this more evident than in one the cornerstones of the ad industry: female beauty.
Post MeToo and post pandemic, women of all ages embraced trainers and rejected the towering high heels. We liberated ourselves from the contorted feminine silhouette, preferring baggy jumpers and elasticated waist bands. We confronted the male gaze head on with a hard stare. And we were prepared to perform the most authentic and rebellious act of all: to age without shame. When Judi Dench graced the cover of Vogue in May 2020, she was (at 85) the oldest person to have taken that spot but she was in solid company along with Jane Fonda, Miriam Margolyes and the ‘90s supermodels who all soon featured. This was rightly too about a recognition and celebration of difference. Difference - be it in age, beauty standard, shape or ethnicity - became a core element of ad campaigns and cover shoots. We looked back at the 1990s, even the 2010s, with a validated sense of superiority - confident that progress has been made.
But I wonder if authenticity culture has passed its peak? Let me be clear, I’m not talking about representation - that is only to be celebrated and extended. But I do wonder whether the push towards authenticity has become so monetised as to make it culturally valueless.
For this point, it is worth returning to the place where this phenomenon began - TikTok, and specifically, the rise of TikTok shop. For those that do not know or have not experienced the onslaught of TikTok shop, it is relentless. Go on TikTok today and you will still find the cute intergenerational dancing, GRWM videos with teenagers doing their make up from their bedrooms, or face-to-camera rants and comedic skits that made the platform so alluring back in 2020, but these creators are now increasingly drowned out by the platform’s desire to monetise its content and its users. ‘Whoooahhh guys, you have to check out this rosemary oil for hair loss,’…… or ‘I can’t believe I got 25 colourful pens for £2.99’, or ‘I’m OBSESSED with these stretched shorts that come in five different colours!!!’.
For all the talk of authenticity, TikTok, the touchpoint of youth culture, has become one relentless QVC. The fact that some of these goods are counterfeit and few are likely to boast an ethical supply chain only adds to the sense of confusion.
The point is though, that harnessing authenticity to sell crap is for the most part TikTok’s explicit plan. Even though TikTok shop has reportedly lost more than $500 million in the US this year, its push towards in-app shopping is where its Amazonian ambitions lie. It has shut down external links and is attempting to own the full customer journey (not unlike it does in China) from advertising to purchase. That’s important as it looks to build an Amazon-like platform that consists of three main elements—media, advertising, and commerce.
The difference with Instagram is that the barrier to entry for creators is deliberately low and the incentives are high. Creators qualify as eligible to sell on TikTok Shop if they have more than 5000 followers and are over 18. For those navigating the cost of living crisis, TikTok shop is an attractive proposition. Payments are also dished out to creators if they reach certain posting, sales, or livestream goals; the potential to earn £150 if they generate just 10 orders. That’s in addition to affiliate commissions, between 10-20%.
In this world, are they savvy ‘creators’ or TikTok sales assistants? Either way the authenticity point is diminished as you become a cog in the ByteDance machine and the platform’s ambition to commercialise the addictive nature of the technology. Finally, this new form of supposedly authentic direct-to-consumers advertising raises big questions for the traditional advertising industry. And the more that the ad industry and creators engage with this new form of retail, the less authentic any of it will be.
The Reading Room
There are now almost one million more workers aged 65 and above in the UK labour market than there were at the beginning of the century. New data analysis from the Centre for Ageing Better reveals that more than ten per cent are now working past their 65th birthday. This is only set to increase as is the social inequality divide when it comes to retirement. There is an important point here too, with how businesses will need to keep their older workers healthy. In the UK, and other countries I suspect, government incentives to help companies keep workers healthy for longer and thus in work for longer will be the future of healthcare delivery. In an ageing society, we cannot afford not to.
Sir Nigel Wilson, soon to be retired head of Legal and General, argued in The Mail recently that the only way to sort out the housing crisis in the UK is to give Boomers a stamp duty holiday. Sir Nigel says “moving is expensive and being forced to pay stamp duty to buy a new home for retirement only adds to the barriers that keep older people in properties that are no longer suitable.” The theory goes that the Treasury could exempt from stamp duty anyone selling up and (specifically) moving into a retirement community. Sir Nigel claims that “when people downsize, they typically release cash that can be used to support family members such as grandchildren, and help the next generation on to the housing ladder.”
Will lawyers embrace tech that reduces their billable hours? Whereas many professional services firms are leaning into AI as a way to increase productivity, law firms have a different relationship with the tech. There are a number of reasons for this, not least the fact that lawyers are highly trained (and often highly remunerated) and relying on AI to replace or enhance human skill and judgement is risky business, potentially posing huge questions over liability. However, the tech is emerging as the BBC reports: “Luminance is preparing to launch a fully automated contract negotiation tool called Luminance Autopilot.…The Luminance system is built on a large language model which is also the foundation of popular text generation tool ChatGPT. The major difference is that Luminance's tools have been trained using more than 150 million legal documents, instead of public internet content. Luminance users create knowledge banks containing their signed documents, so that the software can learn what contract terms the company usually agrees to.”
Book Update
Progress continues, and while I bash away at the final chapters I am allowing myself to become distracted with cover designs. However, I continue to unearth fascinating stories that will help me illustrate the strange evolution of the family in the 21st century. Take this recent headline, for example: “Italian woman wins court case to evict her two sons, aged 40 and 42.” Plenty of parents may joke about kicking their grown-up children out of the nest, but in Italy - where 70 per cent of under 34 year olds still live at home - the issue is causing major social and political debate. The ‘big babies’ (as this cohort is known) are increasingly pushing back against their parents’ desire to have the home to themselves, and sometimes these disputes end up in court. Ironically, while some Italian parents struggle to get their kids to leave home, in the UK and elsewhere we’re seeing the rise in the number of multigenerational households as the reality of caring responsibilities kick in - and this is an issue intimately bound up in the inheritance debate.
That’s it for this week, thanks for reading.
Eliza