Are We Rich Yet? by Edwards Amy;

Author:Edwards, Amy;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 6892151
Publisher: University of California Press

BUY! BUY! BUY!

Of course, only a very small number of people ended up with a job as a trader on the stock exchange floor. In this sense the yuppie-trader remained something “other”—an unrealistic fantasy of an elite life unavailable to most. And yet the culture of the City and its traders was not niche. Retailers and marketing departments reinforced the cultural authority of the City in their attempts to curate and capitalize upon consumer demand for yuppie commodities.

In the case of Filofax, for example, the distribution activities of numerous companies extended the likely influence of its loose-leaf organizers. High-end fashion retailers including Mulberry began selling their own versions, while other competitors opened show rooms where staff would spend up to forty-five minutes helping clients to buy the perfectly tailored personal organizer.103 In 1986 the company Funfax Ltd. began selling a version of the Filofax targeted specifically at a youth market. Meanwhile, a whole range of service providers used Filofax’s executive appeal to drive sales for their own products. In a 1988 television commercial for its young person’s account, Barclays Bank presented new customers with a choice between two free gifts: either a “genuine Filofax or the sixteen-track music box tape, including the Blow Monkeys, Mel and Kim, and Swing Out Sister.”104 This framed the Filofax as a fashion accessory for a financially literate, style-conscious youth who might otherwise be interested in pop and rock music. The outcome of such efforts was that Filofaxes caught the attention of a more varied consuming public. As chairman of Filofax, David Collischon, noted in 1987, the personal organizer sold “in Wigan just as well as in Sloane Street.”105 Indeed, such was the Filofax’s cultural cachet that BBC flagship soap opera Eastenders ran a subplot that revolved around a lost Filofax, while popular children’s television program, Blue Peter, instructed viewers how to make one at home.106

Marketing executives for other companies, too, recognized that the ups and downs of stock markets and the antics of their inhabitants held an attraction that could be used to sell a seemingly endless array of products. Tellingly, a 1988 academic study of yuppie demographics in the United States commented that advertisers should target “those who think and act like yuppies even if they don’t meet the demographic definitions.”107 Many companies in Britain took exactly this approach. They rendered images of the yuppie-trader visible by scattering them across consumer society. In June 1987, a Famous Grouse advertisement sold its whiskey to customers by offering them a chance to win £25,000 in stocks and shares.108 Another listed prize in the promotional competition was free advice from a firm of Scottish stockbrokers. Just two days after the stock market crash in October that same year, Cadburys used the event to sell Boost bars with a copy that read, “Buy! Buy! Buy! Every stockbroker’s ego deserves a Boost.”109 In 1992 Waddingtons even announced that it was replacing the character of Reverend Green with a “City entrepreneur” in popular board game “Cluedo,” suggesting that the yuppie had become an instantly recognizable caricature in contemporary Britain.

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