For years, marketing has been engineered to orbit around the highest earners, the top 10% of households responsible for nearly half of consumer spending. This gravitational pull toward affluent consumers shaped everything from media plans to product architectures, drawing brands into a cycle where premium audiences became synonymous with “high value.” The move is based on a logic hard to argue: people with higher disposable income generate faster returns, stabilize quarterly performance, and align neatly with performance-driven metrics. Yet as the industry doubles down on efficiency and AI-driven precision, an uncomfortable truth has emerged. By building strategies around the top of the income pyramid, brands are increasingly missing the full breadth of the market and the most resilient opportunities within it.

The Hidden Cost of a Top-Heavy Strategy

Marketing’s fixation on premium segments may deliver near-term results, but it carries a long-term penalty, the invisibility for the majority of consumers. When everyday brands present “value” lines as an afterthought or position premium tiers as the default, they are defining who belongs at the center of their story. Over time, this messaging shapes identity and aspiration, subtly reinforcing the notion that certain consumers are worth designing for and others are worth tolerating.

This approach narrows relevance and erodes cultural resonance. It also obscures the true spending power of the remaining 90%, whose purchases, loyalty, and network effects collectively shape entire categories. In that sense, ignoring them is a strategic miscalculation.

The Data Divide That Shrinks Markets

AI was supposed to eliminate blind spots, offering precision tailored to each individual. Instead, it often magnifies them. Skewed datasets, overweighted with affluent, urban, and digitally active individuals, train algorithms to chase the same high-income profiles again and again. The result is a self-fulfilling loop where affluent consumers generate more data, receive more personalized messaging, convert more often, and thus appear to be the “smartest” audience to pursue.

Meanwhile, entire communities are underrepresented or misrepresented in the models. When training data excludes consumers who spend, pay, or browse differently, brands end up optimizing themselves out of relevance. They overspend on audiences already saturated with options while leaving value segments untouched, not because those segments lack potential, but because the datasets never learned to see them.

DEI Retreats Just as Inclusion Becomes a Growth Lever

In recent months, companies have scaled back DEI programs under political pressure, legal risk, or economic uncertainty. Yet this retreat has collided with another trend, as inclusive marketing is proving to be a measurable driver of trust, recommendations, loyalty, and conversion. Consumers, especially younger ones, reward brands that reflect their realities and acknowledge their identities. They stay longer, speak louder, and bring others with them. In a marketplace governed by attention scarcity and rising acquisition costs, that behavioral lift is surely a competitive advantage.

This is why industry bodies are now reframing inclusion not as ideology but as infrastructure. The ANA’s SeeAll Marketing Alliance is a clear signal that the next phase of growth requires broader representation, more equitable data inputs, and a commitment to reaching consumers across income, race, ability, and geography. The question is no longer whether inclusion fits into marketing, but whether marketing can remain effective without it.

Brands That Bridge the Gap Win Bigger

Some companies already understand that aspiration and access need not compete. Dove built a multibillion-dollar franchise by centering real representation, offering accessible price points alongside premium lines, and grounding beauty in self-esteem rather than exclusivity. GAP, once a fading giant, is regaining cultural traction by celebrating diversity in casting, elevating everyday consumers, and reinforcing its identity as a brand for many, not few. These brands are broadening the table and growing the market.

Their strategies reveal an important truth that when brands expand who they design for, who they speak to, and who they show, they multiply their value. Inclusion becomes a growth engine rather than a cost center.

Profit in a Broader Marketplace

In conclusion, inclusive marketing is about recognizing that growth no longer lives in narrow segments. As consumer expectations shift and data tools mature, the advantage lies in designing for the full spectrum. That means auditing datasets for representation, recalibrating models to avoid bias, expanding product portfolios without a coding hierarchy, and treating inclusive storytelling as brand building, not box-checking.

The wealthiest 10% will continue to influence markets, but the future belongs to brands that grow demand rather than concentrate it. Inclusive marketing pays off because it builds resilience, relevance, and reach. It transforms visibility into loyalty and access into aspiration. In a world defined by fragmentation, the brands that win will be those that choose to see everyone.