Cultural Intelligence
Not Actual Size
Class of 2005
Five years ago we set out to ask what it meant to be middle class in Britain in 2005? Did it mean you earnt more than £30,000 but less than £200,000, shopped online at Waitrose and drove a Saab? Or was it a bit more complicated than that? Did it mean you read the Mail on Sunday and watched the Antiques Roadshow on Freeview? Or did it mean you called dinner ‘supper’ or lunch ‘dinner’ or supper ‘tea’?
Class of 2005 was a comprehensive guide to the new middle classes, covering all the sights, sounds and styles of contemporary Britain. It took readers on a journey among the revolutionary pensioners, conservative twenty-somethings, downwardly mobile aristos and preening proletarians of UK ‘05. Readers discovered that the old social stratifications were redundant and that EVERYONE was middle class. The guide included advice on how to name your kids for maximum social differentiation, what your choice of power tools said about you and a briefing on the social significance of pizza toppings.
Distributed to media and clients alike the guide created wall-to-wall media coverage and a genuine national debate as to what middle class really meant in 2005. Meanwhile a viral questionnaire which allowed you to work out which middle class you were for yourself notched up 200,000 hits in the space of a week. Following the success of Class of 2005, we’re currently working on updating it for 2010.