About us
A creative communications agency for the real world, powered predominantly by working class people and built to connect brands with audiences the industry too often overlooks.
Work
our duAl ambition is to
1
Be the go-to creative comms agency for brands that want to unlock the value of people and communities too often overlooked and underestimated.
2
increase representation of working class people in comms, making the industry more reflective of the society we live in.
Why we need Work & Class
Around half of the UK population identifies as working class, yet just 16% of people in creative careers do.
When the people making the work come from a much narrower slice of society than the people seeing it, we end up with blind spots that impact the work. Audiences get overlooked, misunderstood or reduced to stereotypes.
At Work & Class, our team comes from the communities the industry too often misses. Combined with our community insight model, The Sounding Board, that lived experience gives us a different perspective on how real people live, think, spend, behave and shape culture, helping our clients create work that connects beyond the industry bubble.
When the people making the work come from a much narrower slice of society than the people seeing it, we end up with blind spots that impact the work. Audiences get overlooked, misunderstood or reduced to stereotypes.
At Work & Class, our team comes from the communities the industry too often misses. Combined with our community insight model, The Sounding Board, that lived experience gives us a different perspective on how real people live, think, spend, behave and shape culture, helping our clients create work that connects beyond the industry bubble.
The problem in numbers:
- The number of PR practitioners who attended fee paying schools is three times that of the national average – 21% vs 7%.
- 41% of PRs have parents with university degrees whereas only 21% received income support or free school meals during their time at school.
- There is an 18.2% socio-economic pay gap in the marketing industry.
- 44% of people say they want to see greater socio-economic inclusion in campaigns.
- 41% of people from ‘lower’ social grades think media representations of people like them are "stereotyped" and "caricatured" by brands.
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How we define Working Class
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Working class is generally defined by factors including having limited access to wealth, your parent’s education and employment (or lack of), and few connections to people with influence and power. It is that and so much more.
Being working class isn’t something we grow out of, even if we succeed in a ‘professional’ career or our financial standing significantly changes. The experience of growing up working class means being part of a cultural fabric that feeds our values, opinions, attitudes, tastes and behaviours. It determines what opportunities we can access, which environments we feel comfortable in, and those that can feel alienating. We can’t just shake this off any more than we can shake off gender identity, race, disability or sexuality.
And why would we even want to when there’s so much richness in working class culture?
At Work & Class, we’re proud of our working-class roots. They shape how we see the world, the questions we ask and the work we make. And they help us show brands what they gain when they look beyond the usual voices, experiences and assumptions.