Walking Stick PR firm launched – a firm for an ageing country

A new PR agency called Walking Stick is launched today. It’s gap in the the market? The clue is in the name.

With British population projections repeatedly pointing towards an ageing population, Walking Stick is determinedly aimed at helping clients reach the over-50s in order to build brand love, accelerate digital transformation and enhance consumer loyalty.

“The industry is obsessed with millennials, yoof, Generation ABC or whatever the last jargon for ‘youngsters’ is. But lift your head out of the PR soup of cliches for a moment and you’ll notice the rest of the country is all worrying about our aging population and how we can afford the health and social care it needs. With our population getting older, it’s about time PR firms worried about older people instead,” explains founding Chief Executive Alfred Everett.

The plans to focus on the over-50s are reflected in how Walking Stick will be run. Although strict employment rules means the firm is not able to set a minimum age requirement for employees, all of the founders are aged over 50 and the offices are located in Penge, not Soho.

Inside the offices, the only coffees served in the office are black, white and with sugar. The usual large screen monitors displaying rolling news in high definition full colour are nowhere to be seen. Instead one cathode ray television sits in a corner, showing endless repeats of Father Brown, 1974 vintage.

In a small touch of modernity, the chalkboard in the reception area has written up on it, “Opening thought corridors for our clients… back to the 1960s”. Next to it is a framed photograph of the puppets from The Adventures of Twizzle.

“Thank goodness for the internet auction sites, else we’d never have been able to get that old TV. But otherwise the internet and mobile phones are banned in the office. Bakelite phone handsets, a large stack of telegram forms and a ready team of messengers are the order of the day,” explains Chief Operating Office Loof Lirpa.