Do the lower middle-class dream of the Rich?
Story #3
Last year Darlings was released on Netflix. Thus began an unusual chatter on LinkedIn-the reason- Alia Bhatt (what’s unusual?). It was related to a product placement or brand integration or call it whatever you want.
It was Alia’s character in the Darlings who used Kama Ayurveda’s hair oil.
A LinkedIn influencer in all his quest to search and bring forth something new put out a post listing all the brands that were shown or used in the movie.
Then the arguments followed.
Different viewpoints. Mainly two types- one said the brand is targeting people who can afford Netflix- so they are premium and hence they see the product being used by Alia and not Badru (the character’s name).
The second type- Badru lives in a chawl and is lower middle class — and cannot afford to pay. So a ghor aparadha committed by the brand to make it look cheap by showing Badru is using it. In fact, they went a step ahead saying the upper-class people will no longer buy because a chawl wali used it.
Story #2
When I was in 10th std, we went to get admissions for our newly opened night school. Which was finding kids from poor families
The person in charge took us to chawls. Naturally, that’s where he thought poor students were. We visited a few chawls- door to door. Banging and pitching the night school. When we assembled for lunch, the shocked professor said, “These people live in chawls, but they are living lavishly — tiles on floor and wall, sintex doors, big, fancy cupboards and colourful tv. I hardly have anything like this at my home in spite of staying in the building.”
You get the drift. Staying in a building was considered a class above people living in chawls followed by the things he noticed.
Story #1
I was born and brought up in the working-class (recently found this term for families lying in between the lower economic class and middle class). And the first washing machine came into our house as a second-hand and semi-automatic. That’s not the problem. The problem is washing powder- we used Wheel (very affordable) until then and now the chatter around us pointed towards having Aerial. We bought one. Very expensive for us. All this time I had seen Aerial at my relatives' place (middle & upper middle class) and on TV. The condition we practised- only use once a fortnight for special clothes. In the decision, Ariel vs Wheel; the latter was an easy pick.
The learning was that using Ariel for daily clothes meant good & clean clothes. It also meant this is how people with more money wash their clothes with. It’s what families like us aspired to use and live a way of life like that.
What’s the summary then? Pierre Bourdieu’s Two Dimensions of Social Theory
He makes an interesting point. That the usually accepted way is where people who have a lot of money spend on buying stuff that signals luxury, exclusivity and fame.
People below them try to emulate the same.
Thus goods that are being bought by the rich class become ‘aspirational’ by the lower class and they emulate.
So the market opportunity is to design “aspirational” offerings that tap into the cultural codes of luxury, exclusivity, and celebrity that convey perceptions of wealth.
Cometh Pierre Bourdieu. He says status consumption is not only the emulation of economic elites wrt luxury and fame but also the emulation of the cultural elites in pursuit of distinctive and sophisticated taste!
The Wheel washing powder ads kept hammering white clothes after washing; fragrance too. But the cultural sophistication of using Ariel for daily clothes and not just special ones as we did.
Or from story #2, people staying in chawls, it is not about not staying in a society building but having marble flooring, designer tiles on walls, sintex doors, colour tv at home was the adapted cultural sophistication.
Or, from story #1, Alia’s character uses an Rs. 450 / 50ml hair oil. It shouldn't come as a surprise that she had one- not just for the price but her desire to emulate a cultural sophistication of taking extra hair care even if it were expensive.
In his book Cultural Strategy, Douglas Holt presents the concept proposed by Pierre Bourdieu. It is an important cultural element to tap into building brands.
Take the case study of Starbucks. What are the desirable cultural codes for the middle class to emulate from the rich?
For Starbucks- to convey cultural sophistication, it was cosmopolitan and artisanal craft- coffee. (Interestingly, the author is sceptical of how so many experts end up attributing Starbucks success to only as a third home. There's much more to it)
Coffee until then was a commodity available cheaply to everyone. It was as mundane as it could get. What Starbucks offered is accessible sophistication with coffee. So cultural capital was created by upgrading the mundane. Coffee to sab peete hain? Par ameer coffee kaise peete hain? Starbucks mein jaake?
Now, read the excerpt below from the blog Marketing Across Borders based on Byron Sharp's Double Jeopardy law in marketing
One of the main consequences is that brands need reach. Small brands who want to grow need to recruit more light category buyers and in order to do so, they have to reach them. And this might gives some directions if you are going to trade reach vs. engagement.
Also, it clarifies why you should go for a ‘sophisticated’ mass (your entire category) instead of a hyper-targeted audience, unless you are planning a specific activation campaign which will give you some relief with quarterly sales pipeline, but will not help with long-term sustainable growth.
No matter what business you are in, it is always the light buyers (lots of them) who buy your brand and increase your share. The general assumption is that if you’re a brand meant for the upper-middle class & the upper class, then it’s strictly to show a very sophisticated home/habit by removing any scope for cultural aspiration. The desire can also be created by placing the brand/product in settings that gets a ‘woah, it’s expensive and they manage to afford it’.
This works two ways when looked at from Signalling in evolutionary biology terms. As pointed out by Geoffrey Miller in his book Spent that signalling works two ways- to buyers who afford ‘it’s so good that even they can afford’ and to existing buyers of the brand, ‘Ahh! they bought this- it’s so good that put in spite of financial challenges, they managed to afford it’. Both ways, it helps to increase the chances of them either buying it or retaining it.
Sources:
- Cultural Strategy by Doglous Holt
- Spent by Geoffrey Miller
