‘A massive opportunity’: Why are brands ignoring working-class consumers?

They might be a larger demographic than Gen Z and millennials, but brands seem to have a blind spot when it comes to working-class audiences.

They are the UK’s “largest yet often overlooked” demographic, according to Laura Burch founder of Work & Class, the creative comms agency established in 2024 to deliver impactful work that resonates with working-class audiences.

The agency’s research last year found over half (55%) of working-class people say the media doesn’t represent them, while 38% believe brand leaders are out of touch with their audience.

Work & Class works with the likes of Sky Arts, The Big Issue, Mountain Warehouse and IceLolly.com. While these brands instinctively “get it”, Burch explains many others rule out working-class audiences as being a “bit too niche”.

“There is nothing niche about it and what makes me laugh is that everyone’s obsessed with Gen Zs and millennials, particularly Gen Zs at the moment. But half of that audience is working class. So, you only want half of Gen Zs? You only want half of millennials? You only want ones you think have more disposable income?” she questions.

As Burch points out, working-class consumers are spending money every day, so why is their money seen as less valuable to brands?

You can see through a lot of the work that’s based on quotas and tick boxes, and people just doing it because they feel they need to.

Mark Hodge, McCain

“Brands are really missing a massive opportunity,” she argues.

“It’s not about exploitation. That’s the other thing people worry about. It’s not about force feeding people things they don’t need. It’s about being real about the fact people are living in this world and part of living in it means you spend in it. That’s what we have to do and also they are driving culture, driving trends.”

What is exploitative is when brands borrow from the vernacular, trends and style of working-class culture without adding to it, says Burch.

“It’s not exploitative actually speaking to an audience, understanding their values, understanding how they want to be spoken to and the kind of products they want, and then serving them those products,” she states.

“What’s exploitative is taking their culture and then using it to target a more aspirational audience, because you think that’s where the money is.”

New partnership brings 100 working class creatives into classrooms

As brands like Greggs, JD Sports, Aldi and Lidl demonstrate, having a value driven message doesn’t alienate middle class audiences. Furthermore, Burch contests the idea working-class consumers are hard to reach.

She cites University of Liverpool research from 2018, which found working-class audiences account for a higher proportion of social media users than any other demographic. She also notes Ofcom’s 2023 BBC Annual Report, which found working-class audiences watch over three hours of TV a day, versus middle class viewers at one hour 57 minutes.

“[Working-class audiences] are not hard to reach you just don’t know how to speak to them,” Burch argues. “You’re not trying. And if you are trying, you’re getting it wrong.”

True inclusion

One brand focused on getting it right is McCain, which has been on a decade-long journey to reflect the “joyful reality” of family mealtimes.

In 2014, the brand’s research found roughly 80% of the UK population didn’t recognise themselves in popular culture. To celebrate families in all their shapes and sizes, McCain decided to cast real people in vignettes of everyday life, focusing on shared moments of joy.

While over a decade ago it felt like a risk working with real people, vice-president of marketing Mark Hodge describes the move as rewarding. McCain’s work rejects a preoccupation with being “aspirational”, which Hodge argues often equates with being exclusive.

“There’s a lot of brands over the last 10 years that wouldn’t have even gone there and entertained it [working with real people], because it’s not aspirational enough. But you know what? It’s real,” he states.

Telling authentic stories of unvarnished family life was always a long-term play for McCain. Hodge believes the brand has benefitted from the “compound interest” of each iteration building on the concept, to the point McCain felt “connected with culture”. Rather than short-term fame, the goal was slow burn success.

“I always use the analogy of bonfires and fireworks. My view is we lit a bonfire 10 years ago and we’ve been feeding it for the past 10 years and keeping it burning brightly,” says Hodge.

“We’ve had the occasional firework along the way, but the problem with fireworks is they’re impressive immediately, but they get forgotten very quickly.”

[Working-class audiences] are not hard to reach you just don’t know how to speak to them. You’re not trying. And if you are trying, you’re getting it wrong.

Laura Burch, Work & Class

The strategy has paid off, delivering McCain the 2024 IPA Effectiveness Awards Grand Prix. In the award entry, agency Adam&EveDDB described the 10-year project as a rejection of the “narrow white middle-class world of idyllic houses and children dressed like minor royals”.

Over the decade since the shift in strategy, McCain’s ad awareness almost doubled to 14%. Consideration across all buyers increased 37%, while ‘good value for money’ perceptions rose 30%. Crucially, the brand notched up a 56% increase in sales value.

While this vision of unpolished family life is part of McCain’s “brand handwriting”, Hodge believes richer depictions of working-class audiences are needed across the industry.

“There’s a huge difference for me between being inclusive and authentic,” he states.

“You can see through a lot of the work that’s based on quotas and tick boxes, and people just doing it because they feel they need to, as opposed to building it into their creative development from the start and what the brand is about.”

Supporting families is in the brand’s DNA. Since 2023, McCain has invested £1.3m in the Community Shop in Eastfield, Scarborough where its head office is based. The shop sells surplus food donated by McCain and major retailers that would otherwise have gone to waste.

Revenue is invested into the local community, with members invited to courses on cookery, budgeting, interview and business skills. The on-site kitchen serves low-cost meals and free meals for children – 9,000 of the latter have been served to date.

Over the past two years McCain has donated around 2.8 million meals through Community Shop and its partner charity Fair Share. The business has also donated £2.3m to Family Fund via 150,000 grants for families raising disabled or seriously ill children on a low income.

In addition, three years ago McCain kicked off Streets Ahead, a partnership with street food company Kerb supporting people from disadvantaged backgrounds to set up hospitality businesses. So far, McCain has invested £200,000 into 26 street food startups.

Hodge explains everything the brand does is “infused” with this desire to celebrate family life and he wants anyone looking at McCain’s work to “feel something”.

“All the glitz and fireworks [in other brand’s work] are there, in my personal view, because there isn’t a strong idea there in the first place that’s really tapping into a human truth,” he adds.

A philosophy

Another brand firmly focused on celebrating British life is travel operator IceLolly.com. In the Instagram era of “glossy holidays” and “cleansed Dubai pool sides”, the brief to Work & Class was to celebrate the escapism of a package holiday.

With 33 million package holidays taken by Brits each year, the scale of the opportunity is huge, explains Ice Travel Group CMO Steve Seddon.

“People work hard and they want some escapism, it’s as simple as that. But there’s huge snobbery that exists in the industry that discourages people from writing content about these destinations [like Benidorm, the Costa del Sol],” he states.

“We love it here at Ice Lolly and we wanted to celebrate that. The marketing that we wanted to do is about holding a mirror up to how people are taking their holidays.”

The company took this idea further in February, introducing the first Brit Abroad Awards, celebrating the quirks and traditions of packaged holidays. Pitched as the “ultimate celebration of British holidaymakers”, categories included all-inclusive legends and holiday hackers.

Striking the right tone, especially on social media, is crucial as brands are quickly called out for faking it, says Seddon.

He believes some businesses have considered working-class consumers non-aspirational, a misconception exacerbated by a failure to hire talent from diverse backgrounds. As Seddon points out, marketers don’t have to be the customer, but they need to understand and care about them.

“I would have conversations with agencies over the years where they would present something and it would be so far wide of the mark,” he recalls.

“That could be related to appealing to a working-class consumer, or it could be a misunderstanding of travel and communicating a message as if you’re going on the Inca Trail.”

Change starts with employing people from diverse backgrounds and realising there is no shortcut to success, says Seddon. Consumer research is key, as is ensuring your work never feels tokenistic.

“There’s no point it being a token gesture, employing a kid to help with a campaign. It’s got to be a deep, meaningful, from the top strategy,” says Seddon.

For IceLolly.com, this single-minded focus on celebrating the package holiday in all its glory is a “philosophy, not a campaign”.

“Promoting our brands in the correct way, in a way that our customers think is funny and are able to laugh along with, is part of the brand ethos,” says Seddon.

Routes in

Burch’s motivation for founding Work & Class was the frustration she felt at rarely meeting people from her background throughout her 24 years in the industry.

Growing up on a West London council estate, she didn’t have access to anyone in professional roles or examples of what that kind of career could look like. Her route into the comms industry was accidental. She took a temp job with the BBC down the road in London’s White City, before applying for a permanent role in the press office.

“I had to keep my head down and felt lucky to be there, and like I was going to get found out any time,” Burch recalls.

“I never went to uni, so whenever people were talking about what unis they went to, what their dads did for a living, I just felt like I couldn’t get involved.”

A lack of working-class talent in marketing teams and within agencies means brands often fail to connect with audiences or get things tonally wrong. Research carried out by Work & Class found working-class consumers want greater representation in campaigns and on TV, avoiding stereotypes and negative portrayals.

Burch highlights the joy and trust in the kinds of communities she grew up in, which creates the opportunity for meaningful peer-to-peer recommendations.

There’s no point it being a token gesture, employing a kid to help with a campaign. It’s got to be a deep, meaningful, from the top strategy.

Steve Seddon, IceLolly.com

“There’s so much power in these communities. I’ve seen how strong they can be. I’ve seen how supportive they can be. I’ve seen what change can be made on the ground in little pockets,” she explains. “It’s just a shame brands and organisations aren’t tapping into it for a positive reason.”

Through her work with Common People – the community for working-class talent in the creative industries – Burch is leading on a project that will see 100 creatives from working-class backgrounds give talks to state school children in socio-economic cold spots across England and Wales over the academic year.

Widening the talent pool is crucial, says Burch, who urges brands to bring diverse talent into their teams and supplier base. Work & Class works with freelancers nationwide, 85% of whom are from working-class backgrounds. The agency posts jobs on the Creative Mentor Network, which is focused on underrepresented groups.

She also advises using sites like Creative Access, tapping into the Common People network and sharing entry level opportunities with the Job Centre. Removing educational requirements makes a big difference.

“You just need some common sense, you need to be proactive, you need to be hardworking. You may choose to study and understand the theory which is great, but for me the hands-on work has been by far the most valuable,” says Burch.

“Cutting out whole swathes of the population because they don’t have a degree, or even worse because they don’t come from a Russell Group University, doesn’t make any sense.”