MarketingProfs

MediaBuyerPlanner: George Hayes, 54, a 30-year veteran of McCann Erickson’s media buying-and-planning operations, has sued his employer and its parent company, Interpublic Group of Cos., for age-discrimination, AdAge reports. According to the article, age discrimination could become a major issue as large agencies stride towards a digital world and fire longtime employees in the search of younger strategists and creatives who understand the digital media environment.
In papers filed in New York State Supreme Court earlier this month, Hayes alleges that, since arriving last fall, Universal McCann’s new worldwide CEO, Nick Brien, has “value[d] youth instead of experience and desired younger persons in place of older persons and acted upon his discriminatory preference by terminating older persons, because of their age.”
Hayes, an exec VP and one of Advertising Age’s Media Mavens in 2001, learned he was being dismissed on Dec. 13, 2005, with the reason being “that Hayes did not have ‘the skill set’ needed to remain employed by McCann-Erickson,” the lawsuit says.