Marketing’s class problem and the fundamentals: Your Marketing Week
At the end of every week, we look at the key stories, offering our view on what they mean for you and the industry. From exposing marketing’s short-sightedness when it comes to working-class audiences to underlining the importance of getting the basics right, it’s been a busy week. Here is my take.
Does marketing have a class problem?
Does marketing have a class problem?
According to the latest Office for National Statistics numbers, just over half of the UK population identify as working class. A large number of those are in a position to buy products and services from brands.
Yet the UK’s biggest socio-economic group is either invisible to many brands, or misunderstood. If they are seen, brand ads fall short with sledgehammer representation of honest folk living simple lives.
And it’s noticed. Agency Work & Class, which does as its name suggests, working with brands to deliver resonant marcoms to working-class audiences, found 55% of working-class people say the media doesn’t represent them, while a significant minority – 38% – believe brands are out of touch.
The article linked below explores some of the reasons why, but also how you can get it right. Brands including McCain and IceLolly.com demonstrate how you can be inclusive of working-class audiences, without excluding other socio-economic groups.
The merits of targeting consumers based on demographics are contested. But that doesn’t stop marketers doing it. Brands are in constant pursuit of Gen Z.
That might well be because of the demographic makeup of marketing teams and their agency partners. About 75% of marketers are under 45, according to the our latest Career & Salary Survey. The same survey found about 20% of marketers polled identified as working class, compared with 75% middle class. According to ONS figures more than 40% of the UK workforce is working class.
Not having the background doesn’t preclude you from being customer-orientated but having lived experience would help.
Underrepresentation is a product of many things. One is access to careers. Our survey has found for many years that most marketers have an under- or postgraduate degree. It’s a requirement of many large organisations taking on marketers.
Although marketers should be trained or qualified to do the job, there is no necessity for higher education. Brands are restricting themselves by fishing in a small and shrinking talent pool.
Apprenticeships, paid internships, innovative outreach are all means to recruit differently. More representatively.
Back to basics?
As I reach the end of my 10th year as Marketing Week editor, I am in reflection mode. And one thing that strikes me is that stories where marketers are restating the importance of, or the need to return to, fundamentals are more resonate than ever.
From the vantage point I’ve had, I have witnessed a decade of people espousing the need for reinvention, banging the drum for change and declaring how accepted theory and established practice are dead.
So much so that when someone states what should be apparent to everyone, it’s news.
This week we published the latest episode of The Marketing Week Podcast with two of the key architects behind our Brand of the Year winner Specsavers, CMO Peter Wright and global brand director Spencer McHugh. The latter introduced, to me at least, the idea of “common sensical marketing”. The practice of doing basic things, really well. “Sticking to the fundamentals and not over complicating things,” he explained.
Elsewhere, our ‘quotes of the year’ are full of marketing leaders saying what shouldn’t need saying but at the same time does, following a period where so-called contrarian, new thinking dominated.
From Carslberg CMO Yves Briantais’ restatement of a marketer’s purpose – “The ‘why’ in marketing is not to deliver communication, that’s a ‘what’. The why is growth”, to Kraft Heinz’s Todd Kaplan’s call for customer-, not industry-, first thinking – “Is winning in the room at Cannes the same as winning with consumers?”, smart marketers are standing out for saying smart things that are forever true but do, seemingly, need restating.
A Christmas Carrot
Another of our quotes of the year came from NatWest CMO Margaret Jobling: “There’s not many ads in my whole career, I would say, that have ever got wear out, ever.”
After a long period of seeming rejection of the virtues of consistency, there is growing acceptance that customers don’t get bored of creative as quick as marketers.
One exemplar of this is Aldi, and its Christmas ad star, Kevin the Carrot, returning in 2025 for its 10th year.
Aldi’s rise and rise in that 10 years is a result of many factors, but Kevin has played a part, helping to establish the retailer as a Christmas shop destination, and not just a make-do through the year.
The origin story, and its evolution and future is told by Jamie Peate from Aldi’s agency McCann in the article below. It’s a great story of consistency, and a respect for the audience. “I’m here to try and entertain people and hopefully if I can entertain you in the right way and you’ll pay me some attention, and I can link it to the product, then I’ve done my job as much as I can do my job.”
A pretty good assessment of the role of all advertising through the year, not just Christmas.
The week ahead
We will continue our review of 2025 next week, as well as starting to look forward at what the year ahead will hold.
