For decades, socio-economic grouping such as ABC1 and C2DE have been a cornerstone of audience planning across the advertising and media industry. But in a world shaped by rising living costs, changing household structures, multiple income streams and increasingly complex financial realities, is occupation still the best way to understand audiences?

ReCLASSified is a major new industry initiative that challenges some of the advertising industry’s longest-held assumptions about how people live, spend and behave.

Developed in partnership with the IPA and supported by News UK, Global and ITV, ReCLASSified is the culmination of a two-year collaboration involving organisations from across advertising, media and research.

Where It Started

ReCLASSified first began in late 2024 following the publication of OMD UK’s fifth volume of the Real Britain Series, The Farce of Class. The Real Britain Series is OMD UK’s proprietary research and thought leadership programme, designed to challenge assumptions about the audiences marketers seek to understand and influence.  The Farce of Class explored social class, social mobility and socio-economic grouping.

Introducing ReCLASSified

The Farce of Class raised a fundamental question: is occupation still the best way to understand how people think, feel and behave?

To answer that question, OMD UK partnered with the IPA, with support from News UK, Global and ITV, to launch ReCLASSified. Led by Laura Rowe, Managing Partner, Marketing Intelligence & Inclusion at OMD UK, the initiative brought together more than 70 representatives from agencies, media owners, industry bodies and research organisations to explore whether a more contemporary audience framework was needed.

The research highlighted a simple but important reality: people with similar occupations can have vastly different financial experiences, while people from very different socio-economic backgrounds can often behave remarkably similarly.

To address this, ReCLASSified is built around two questions:

Can I spend?

The degree of financial freedom a person has.

Will I spend?

Their orientation towards spending, saving and consumption.

Combining these dimensions created six distinct audience groups that provide a richer understanding of how people navigate financial decisions.

The framework demonstrates that financial behaviour cannot be understood through a simple hierarchy of “wealthy” versus “less wealthy”. People’s relationship with money matters just as much as the resources available to them.

What we found

Drawing on a nationally representative study of more than 10,000 UK adults, the research explores the relationship between occupation, financial circumstances and consumer behaviour.

Among the headline findings:

• ReCLASSified was 20% more accurate than socio-economic grouping at identifying people able to afford a £10,000 purchase.
• Social grade explains 33% of differences in disposable income, but only 7% of consumer behaviours and attitudes.
• 32% of ABC1s and 33% of C2DEs say they prefer enjoying money now rather than prioritising future financial security.
• 62% of ABC1s and 61% of C2DEs actively limit their spending.
• 60% of mortgaged homeowners report feeling financially strained.

Together, these findings suggest that occupation alone is no longer a reliable indicator of spending potential, financial confidence or consumer behaviour.

Why this matters

Understanding spending potential remains fundamental to how marketers plan, target and evaluate campaigns.

As Britain continues to evolve, ReCLASSified proposes how the tools used by the industry to understand audiences should evolve too.

Click here to download the full report.

The full ReCLASSified report explores the methodology, findings and implications for advertisers, agencies, media owners and researchers.

Get involved

ReCLASSified is inviting agencies, advertisers, media owners and research partners to test, challenge and build on the framework using their own data and planning approaches.

We hope this project can spark an important industry conversation about how we understand modern Britain.

For further information, please contact:

Laura Rowe
Managing Partner, Marketing Intelligence & Inclusion, OMD UK
[email protected]

For PR enquiries, please contact:

Sarah Hockley
Director, Brand Marketing, Omnicom Media UK
[email protected]