Madison Avenue Declares 'Mass Affluence' Over

“Mass affluence,” as a new white paper from Ad Age, the advertising industry’s top trade journal, has just declared [1], “is over.”

By Sam Pizzigati

Created 05/30/2011 - 5:03pm

The American middle class, concludes a new study from the ad industry’s top trade journal, has essentially become irrelevant. In a deeply unequal America, if you’re over 35 and your income hasn’t yet topped $200,000 a year, you don’t matter.

The chain-smoking ad agency account execs of Mad Men, the hit cable TV series set in the early 1960s, all want to be rich some day. But these execs, professionally, couldn’t care less about the rich. They spend their nine-to-fives marketing to average Americans, not rich ones.

Mad Men’s real-life ad agency brethren, 50 years ago, behaved the exact same way — for an eminently common-sense reason: In mid-20th century America, the entire U.S. economy revolved around middle class households. The vast bulk of U.S. income sat in middle class pockets.