Does advertising have a socio-economic blind spot?

In an economy designed to benefit the wealthy it’s not on advertising to solve systemic growing inequalities, but brands can make a positive difference in how they communicate and behave.

The Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). Photo: Tourism NT

Advertising is getting better at representation, or at least we’re getting better at talking about it.

But while we’re patting ourselves on the back for ticking the box, we would do well to remember one of our biggest audiences.

They’re the fastest-growing audience in Australia that isn’t defined by colour or preference but inclusive of both … and no they’re not Millennials, they’re much, much bigger than that.

That audience is Australia’s working poor.

We don’t like to think of Australia as a country of classes. It’s a long-held attitude that Australia is a great egalitarian nation where social origin is far less important than other nations. All you need is hard work and a good attitude and as Scott Morrison has cheerfully reminded us, if you have a go, you get a go.

But for some people “having a go”, the reward is going backwards, not forwards.

Dom Hickey is chief strategy officer at Howatson + Company

Australia’s wealthy are getting wealthier, our property market reflects this and Morrison’s now defunct plan for first-home buyers to raid their super is symptomatic of a system that isn’t designed for the working class to succeed.

We’re a nation that’s been behaving like our pockets are endlessly deep and the future will never happen.

It’s a carrot for now and a giant poverty stick in retirement.

Why does this matter?

This matters because the advertising and marketing industry needs great human insights to connect – and that’s a challenge.

Almost every brand wants to target the picture of an aspirational Australia.

We write ads to target the healthiest and wealthiest customers, creating a middle-class fable that doesn’t exist.

We know that the advertising and media sectors are still largely white and well paid. If you’re sitting in an inner-city pub with a craft beer, making decisions about how the average person lives, you may be missing some perspective.

The face of poverty and financial struggles in Australia is so often represented as the sad schoolchild on a bus-side looking for donations.

In pop culture it’s represented as poverty porn in shows like Struggle Street, or comedies like the adventures of Shazza and Dazza in Housos.

It is this minimal representation that belittles a huge problem.

Advertising and media show little recognition of what people are doing to survive. It’s not an aspirational story but for many Australians it’s closer to home.

As an industry, we need to get better at bringing people into the conversation.

Value is becoming one of the most underused emotional currencies in a country where basic comforts are fast becoming out of reach.

UK supermarket giant Tesco is a brand that’s executed on this brilliantly. The iconic line “Every little helps” is more than an endline. It’s an empathetic, impossible to misunderstand example of creating emotional equity in value.

Companies are starting to deliver communications that are far more representative, but few are tackling socio-economic diversity. To become truly inclusive, we need to look beyond the visible aspects of diversity.

Australia’s rapidly rising cost of living is pushing a new generation towards the poverty line.

Over the past few decades, the demographic shape of Australia is changing.

In Australia, the bottom 60 per cent of households have just 17 per cent of wealth between them.

What does life look like for the next generation of Australians born into a country with significant inequality?

Apparently, the answer is not good. It’s a question captured with brutal simplicity in a new campaign for Monash University by VMLY & R Sydney.

The campaign film holds tight on a single shot of a swaddled sleeping baby while a soundscape of grim current day headlines plays in the background. It ends simply with the provocation, Is this the endangered generation?

In an economy designed to benefit the wealthy it’s not on advertising to solve systemic growing inequalities, but we can make a positive difference in how we communicate and behave.

We have the opportunity to re-engage a largely disenfranchised group by leaning in and behaving with empathy. If we choose not to, we may find it’s us that becomes invisible.

Dom Hickey is chief strategy officer at Howatson + Company.