Tag Archives: upper-middle class

I found on YouTube  a 1956 GM promotional film “Design for dreaming” aimed for the upper-middle class as well as upper class. This film shows us how manufacturers were targeting and selling to only that specific target market. This promotional film is amazing, almost futuristic with specific goal to sell “dream life” to females that can afford it. I was surprised how technologically advanced the “dream kitchen” was in the film. The movie starts with a  white female all dolled up singing around about how she wants to get a break like all men do as she enters this “dream kitchen” and she is about to bake cake. She begins to sing about how she has never  seen a  kitchen like this one and gets into the details by showing how easy is to press different buttons and everything gets done for you. After she finished putting ingredients in the different futuristic appliances she leaves the kitchen and sings “Tic Tock Tic Tock, free to have fun around the clock”. This shows us how manufacturers were focused onto not only selling appliances but the benefits that came with this kitchen such as: free time for leisure activities.

The lady leaves the kitchen and changes her clothes a few times in outfits for tennis, golf and swimming.  The point is to show that, while her cake is baking she has time to do all these activities, after she comes back home her cake is magically ready. I found this film unrealistic even for our times, although maybe it is real in upper classes but I doubt that. In conclusion, this film proves that in 1950’s manufacturers were mainly concerned with female consumers that had enough disposable income, specifically white upper-middle class. I believe, this film is a perfect example of everything we have read in the class about the consumers of the postwar era and the target market before the influence of newly emerged “middle-class” that changed the way manufacturers segmented target audience.