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The use of images of older people in the British advertising media has been under-researched to date. Further, previous research in any country has tended to examine such images from an a priori framework of general impressions and stereotypes of older people. This study addresses these issues with British consumers' (n = 106) impressions, trait ascriptions, and similarity-between-images ratings of a representative sample of U.K. magazine advertisements featuring older characters. After a series of sorting task laboratory sessions, multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analyses revealed four clearly defined groups representing types of portrayals. These types emerged from the advertisements and from the views of the consumers themselves. These emergent groupings are: (1) Frail and Vulnerable, (2) Happy and Affluent, (3) Mentors, (4) Active and Leisure-oriented older adults. These groupings seem to be a logical context-appropriate derivation from previous findings on generally held stereotypes of older persons. It is argued that the groupings have the potential to contribute to a reliable typology of advertising portrayals of older people, with potential heuristic leverage in social scientific research of intergenerational communication, lifespan concerns, and the aging process.

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The media, including advertising, is an important source of information about health and ageing. Furthermore, advertising makes certain discourses, vocabularies and imagery available as resources for age and health identity formation for older adults. The aim of this study was to investigate qualitatively the prominent themes relating to health and ageing that emerged from a sub-corpus of 140 British magazine advertisements depicting older adults. We focus on how these depictions construct health identity in older age through their underlying discourses. The six main themes included solutions to health problems; maintenance or regaining of independence and quality of life; managing risks; staying younger, healthy and active; taking pride in appearance; and discourses of responsibility and choice. The most prominent underlying discourse was the possibility, necessity and desirability to take positive action to maintain health and well-being in older age. We relate these findings to current societal discourses of active ageing and anti-ageing.