The Hidden Class Barriers To Getting Into Advertising
The class barriers in advertising are rarely stated. Ask almost anyone in an Indian agency how they got in and the story will involve a person. Someone knew someone, passed a portfolio along, made a call. The stories are warm and usually true, and they describe a hiring system that runs substantially on who you already know.
That is the barrier. It does not announce itself as one, because nobody experiences a friendly introduction as exclusion.
Where the class barriers actually sit
It happens well before an interview. It happens in who can afford an unpaid or barely paid first year, which in practice means who has family in the city or family willing to subsidise one.
It happens in portfolio schools, which are good and expensive. It happens in the English fluency a creative department treats as a proxy for thinking. And it happens in the simple fact that a referral requires knowing somebody to refer you, which is inherited rather than earned.
No door is closed. The requirement is that you can afford to stand near it for a year, unpaid, while somebody notices.
Why the intake matters more than the policy
Most agencies now have a diversity position. Very few have changed the economics of entry, which is where the selection actually occurs, so the policy operates on a pool that has already been filtered.
The IPA Agency Census 2025, covering UK agencies, records under-25 headcount down 19.2% year on year. A shrinking intake makes this worse rather than better: when there are fewer entry roles, informal routes carry a larger share of them.
What would actually move it
Paying interns properly, recruiting outside the three cities and two schools, and judging a portfolio on thinking rather than on the production values that money buys.
None of that is a campaign. It is procurement, budget lines and where a recruiter spends a Tuesday, which is why it is discussed less than it is agreed with.
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