It pays to be privileged. This is the insight that sits at the heart of Creature’s Class Polish campaign which underlines the fact that those from working-class backgrounds earn on average £6,000 less a year than their middle-class counterparts.

There is very little that separates people from working-class and middle-class backgrounds, yet time and time again employers seem to value ‘polish’ over performance. The absurdity of this classism is highlighted in Creature’s Class Polish campaign for the Department of Opportunities which aims to shine a light on this inequality and encourage employers and the UK government to measure, report and close the Class Pay Gap.

The inspiration for the campaign struck when Creature Creative, Adi Hussain, was watching the BBC documentary ‘How To Break Into The Elite’. “People spoke about how recruiters would often have employers ask them to bring someone with a bit more polish” says Hussain, “it’s something the Social Mobility Commission have all heard time and time again. And this idea of ‘polish’ is something that really stuck with us.”

Based on the idea that the only difference between working-class and middle-class workers is polish, the team created an integrated campaign for a fictional product “Class Polish” to highlight the very real yet ridiculous idea that it has any correlation with ability. 

“It’s such a ridiculous sentiment that polish is the only difference between earning £6,000 extra or not, we thought if that’s the only difference then let’s make Class Polish.” says John Osborne, Associate Creative Director, Creature. 

Tackling tough topics with humour

At the heart of the campaign is an evocative film starring comedian Fern Brady, in which the comedian presents ‘Class Polish’ as a brand new product in an old-fashioned throwback style ad. Halfway through the ad the polish wears off and Brady’s accent slips from RP to her own Scottish accent, inciting panic in the viewers as her middle-class mask gives way. With another lick of Class Polish, Brady regains her middle-class persona Stepford-Wives-style in a humorous yet sinister fashion. 

“If you type social mobility into Youtube you’re inundated with debates and hour-long discussions which is why moving toward humour was important.” explained Hussain, “If you’re able to make a difficult conversation easier to start, it makes it a whole lot easier to understand, empathise and actually start to try and do something about it.”

The film was based on extensive research including the Government’s own analysis of around 300,000 Civil Servants. This analysis highlighted how staff who were promoted were likely to have been privileged; have the right accent or "received pronunciation", an emotionally detached and understated manner, and an "intellectual approach" to culture and politics. By using comedian Fern Brady and the fictional absurd product, the team at Creature were able to bring to life this shocking insight through personification using comedy in a punchy, engaging manner. 

“Usually things like classism hide in euphemisms, its rare that people outrightly say things” explained Osborne, “‘polish’ is used to hide a manner of sins and also sounds quite British, quite polite; it seems fine on the surface but what it stands for is actually quite insidious.”

Osborne continues that while initially humorous, the creative has many layers; “It’s not as simple as humour, its absurdity and unnerving-ness. You’re taken on an emotional journey, it’s not what it seems at first glance…. Because it’s delivered in such a peppy, polite way, you don’t immediately register how grotesque what’s actually being said is and the implications of that.” 

The film hooks in the audience with humour and proceeds to leave them with questions, in a concept that Dan Cullen-Shute, CEO at Creature describes as “a trojan horse of humour that leaves you distinctly unsettled.” Audiences are left to go away wondering if they too have been a victim of class prejudice or if they have witnessed such before. 

Getting to the heart of the issue

“Our strategy was to engage and enrage,” says Orborne. The film in combination with the shocking £6,000 statistic means that “audiences are left flummoxed and angry”. 

Hussain stresses that the issue of social mobility is broad and therefore there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The creative process saw the team juggle with the complexity of the subject and ultimately have to simplify the issue into this conceptual idea of polish, using accent as a representation of class. Yet, this idea of polish actually embodies a much broader range of class discrimination. 

“Classism is a horrific thing that hides in plain sight; it can be a range of things from education and schooling discrimination to judging people on table manners or how they dress” explained Cullen-Shute, “For this campaign, we chose accent as the totem for this entire challenge but it’s not just about accent it’s far deeper than that. One of the hardest parts of the creative process is what you have to leave behind.”

“There was a lot of debate about what form this should take; if it should be modern or a throwback,” Osborne added, but for such an old-fashioned idea, the old-fashioned tone was decided upon. 

Getting people to care

As the world emerges from the pandemic; culturally, politically and financially times remain difficult. Conversations the industry was having ten years ago around ‘compassion fatigue’ are even more relevant today. And Cullen-Shute cites that one of the biggest challenges for this brief was in this idea of negativity fatigue, and “finding clever ways to push through in a world where people, especially the people that care the most, are already pretty tired of hearing how bad things are”.

For the audience, the team wanted to provide a sort of value exchange within this campaign. Giving audiences an entertaining, thought-provoking product and film, rather than an ask, demand or negative contraction like ‘Do Not’.  

“Charity ads can often default to serious and sentimental, but people don’t necessarily engage with that.” said Osborne, “When there’s a serious issue a lot of people will feel you have to be serious. It’s just not true, no one is serious all the time and we need to have the ability to laugh at how absurd things can get.”

The issue is complicated and “complicated is the enemy of advertising”, says Osborne. The only way to fully engage people in the topic and encourage discourse was to entertain which is why humour was the tool. 

In amongst the humour, there is a relatability to film and an insight that audiences know to be true. To be British is to know the illustrious amount of accents that the country boasts and in turn the stereotypes associated with each different one. While absurd, Class Polish is not unheard of, and the familiarity of the skit makes for a particularly engaging, powerful campaign.

The issue of classism is so embedded into British culture that “when the £6000 stat is presented it’s almost expected,” says Hussain ”because of this we couldn’t just slap the issue in people’s faces and hope they care, we had to be more subtle.”

Collaboration and the Creative Collective 

The team took great care over the product, filling each bottle with baby oil and glitter. The level of detail within each element of the ad is a testament to the passion of the creatives on the project.

“What made the project so special is that it was a cause close to us all. It meant that everything that we achieved as a team was effectively done out of people's passion for the subject.” reflected Osborne, “We had so much fun making this on every level from the bottle to the product to the posters which in a way are shorthands of the film.” 

From the clients to Creature creatives to strategists and beyond to Mad Cow and Wavemaker, everyone worked together seamlessly. With people passionate, collaboration was easy for the teams and egos were parked at the door in favour of creating the campaign. 

Cullen-Shute noted that Adi in particular, a creative from Creature’s In The Wild Scheme, helped add a fresh perspective to the project and was a force of positive friction; questioning the status quo and making Cullen-Shute reflect on processes by simply asking “why”. This led to Cullen-Shute challenging processes still in place ‘“just because that’s the way we’ve always done things.”

When creative minds come together to tackle an issue they care strongly about, the passion is evident in the work and the attention to detail. Creativity has the power to make a real difference and influence societal change. Those that see this campaign are left asking questions and will go on to reflect on the impact of classism in their own lives and on those around them.

Whilst the advertising industry is also in the midst of a talent crisis, Cullen-Shute says that the changing nature of the workplace should create more opportunities. With people able to work remotely, the industry need not be so London centric and there are ways that people from all across the UK, from a variety of backgrounds can work in advertising.

Cullen-Shute explains that ”At Creature, we want to leave the industry better than we found it, and we firmly believe that tackling social mobility is at the heart of that. The Class Pay Gap is real, it’s incredibly damaging, and it needs to be closed. We’re proud to be part of a campaign to help do just that.”