Walt Disney is marketing two distinct Poohs, according to the Financial Review. The original line-drawn figure, carved on fine china and pricey kids' stationery, is sold in up-market stores; the plump cartoon-like Pooh in a red T-shirt and "goofy" smile is found on plastic key tags and cheap toys sold in supermarkets.
Apparently these are indications of a major overhaul in marketing strategies, away from the mass consumer market towards a strategy based on "certain brands" being "the brands of certain classes". The reason, according to the Financial Review, is that "the middle class is no longer growing. Instead it's the top and bottom ends that are swelling."
This decline of the middle classes has advertising firms alarmed at the erosion of their traditional mass market. The restaurant business in the US is bemoaning the fact that "the $4 meal is doing all right and the $50 meal is doing all right. The $20 meal is in trouble."
Underlying all this is a significant decline in the living standards of working people, experienced in all industrialised countries through the '80s and '90s. In the US the wealthiest fifth of the population's income has grown by 21% while the wages of the majority, the bottom 60%, decline or stagnate. Austerity policies-- wage "restraint", cutbacks in the social wage, job losses through restructuring -- have resulted in the rich getting richer and the rest getting poorer.
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