Our Story
About Our Founder, Monica Kulkarni
Deep into my MA in Advertising, I was preparing for the next step - working in the industry. Listening to leaders and their wisdom, I felt more and more despondent. How was I going to enter this world? Having worked in Higher Education and marketing for many years, I was used to seeing very few people who looked like me.
But I wasn’t prepared for no one sounding like me.
The more I looked, the more I found people who did look like me. Some women, some black, some brown. But most of them sounded so polished. I felt out of place.
So I dug a bit deeper. I found lots of campaigns and initiatives for BAME professionals and women in the advertising and media industry. But in comparison, hardly anything was being said about class or accent or region.
Having worked in Higher Ed student recruitment and widening participation for over 10 years, I was surprised that so little was being done in advertising and media to become more class diverse. I’d seen the investment, effort and collaboration required in HE to make progress and wondered what exactly was the situation for working class advertising and media professionals.
And so after chatting to colleagues as bewildered as me, together we set out to understand more in the spring of 2021.
Our Journey
To have a hope of making an impact on the industry, we needed to gain a new understanding about working class advertising and media professionals. The methods and techniques we used are divided into the 4 phases of our design expertise.
Audience and users
Two sides of the class ceiling
At the core of these methods is a real audience. They joined us on this journey in Phase 1 and Phase 4.
Five working class advertising and media professionals
The Creative Strategist
The Account Planner
The Strategist
The Planner
The Client
Five hiring managers
The Founder
The Creative
The Marketer
The Talent Manager
The People Manager