I still remember the moment I realised I was becoming a dying breed. Sat in yet another brainstorm about "connecting with ordinary people," listening to someone who'd never set foot in a Wetherspoons earnestly explain what would resonate in places like the town I grew up in. I was one of the last working class creatives to breach the walls of Britain's advertising industry, mentored by a creative director who, like me, hadn't done the traditional university route. He saw something in my portfolio that transcended my lack of formal credentials. Today, he probably wouldn't even be in the position to make that call.
The creative industries love to talk about diversity. We pat ourselves on the back for gender representation, celebrate Pride with rainbow logos, and craft carefully worded statements about racial equality. Yet class – that distinctly British elephant in the room – remains largely unexamined. As Owen Jones powerfully articulated in "Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class," we've created a culture where working class identity is simultaneously erased and denigrated, turned into either a problem to be solved or a caricature to be mocked.
Here's a dirty little secret of our industry: with a few notable exceptions, the worst practitioners are often those who formally studied advertising or communications at university. The most innovative, dynamic work tends to come from those who either studied something completely unrelated – from anthropology to zoology – or bypassed university altogether. There's something about formally studying this field that seems to sand down the edges, replace instinct with orthodoxy, and substitute genuine insight with textbook answers. The best creatives I've worked with bring perspectives from unexpected places – the ex-painter who understands visual hierarchy better than any design graduate, the former factory worker whose understanding of human behaviour puts strategists to shame.
The irony is stark: we're an industry obsessed with "authenticity" and "reaching real people," yet we've systematically excluded those same people from our ranks. The path into creative careers has become a carefully curated obstacle course that favours the privileged. Unpaid internships – the traditional entry point – might as well have a sign reading "trust fund required." When your parents can't subsidise your London rent while you work for free, those vital first steps on the ladder remain perpetually out of reach.
This class ceiling isn't just unfair – it's actively damaging our work. As cultural theorist Stuart Hall noted, meaning is created through shared cultural contexts. When our creative departments are staffed entirely by people who think Greggs is an ironic treat rather than lunch, we lose the ability to genuinely connect with vast swathes of the population. The resulting work often swings between patronising and painfully out of touch.
The data backs this up. The Sutton Trust's research shows that 67% of British journalists and 64% of advertising executives come from professional/managerial backgrounds. In tech, despite its meritocratic pretensions, the pattern persists. A recent study found that 75% of the UK tech workforce comes from middle or upper-class backgrounds.
The industry's growing obsession with marketing degrees and communications qualifications has created a perverse form of credentialism that actively works against creative talent. We've replaced the portfolio with the degree certificate, gut instinct with marketing theory, and raw creativity with PowerPoint fluency. It's a system that rewards those who can afford to play the game, not those who might actually be best at the job.
This homogenisation has real consequences. When we talk about "normal people" in planning meetings, we're really talking about an abstraction – a demographic to be studied like some exotic species. The genuine lived experience of working class life – its frustrations, its joys, its distinctive cultural codes – gets filtered through layers of middle-class interpretation until it becomes unrecognisable.
The solution isn't simple, but it starts with acknowledging the problem. We need to recognise that class diversity is as crucial as any other form of representation. This means:
Ending unpaid internships entirely
Creating paid apprenticeship routes that don't require degrees
Actively recruiting from non-traditional backgrounds
Challenging the cultural assumptions that equate polish with talent
Valuing diverse educational backgrounds and life experience over industry-specific degrees
Most importantly, we need to understand that this isn't about charity or optics – it's about survival. In an era of growing class consciousness and social division, the creative industries can't afford to remain bastions of middle-class privilege. We need working class voices not just in focus groups, but in creative reviews, strategy meetings, and boardrooms.
As one of the last of my kind in this industry, I can't help but wonder what we're losing. Every time I hear another brainstorm about "connecting with ordinary people," I think about the voices that should be in that room but aren't. The wit, wisdom, and distinctive worldview of working class Britain isn't just missing from our offices – it's missing from our work.
It's time to acknowledge that while we've made progress on many aspects of diversity, we've allowed class to become our industry's blind spot. The British creative sector needs working class talent not despite their background, but because of it. We need their perspective, their experience, and their understanding of the communities we claim to speak to.
The alternative is an industry that becomes increasingly disconnected from the reality of British life, speaking in ever more refined tones to an ever-shrinking audience. We can do better. We must do better. But first, we need to admit that when it comes to class, our diversity initiatives have failed to even scratch the surface.
