HSBC, a London-based bank and financial services company, has released a report from their Global Research Team identifying an emerging demographic for luxury brands: YUMMYS. Young Urban Males are: young, urban, and male. They are also, probably: straight, bankers, well-groomed, single, and rich. These are your Metrosexuals 2.0. Metrosexual is still a thing, you ask? Sure! Sometimes the lowest hanging fruit tastes the sweetest:
Business Insider obtained a copy of the HSBC report, diving deep to figure out the psychology of a Yummy. Consumers of premium and luxury goods are getting younger, you see, following the quickly changing fashion trends with aplomb and desiring to "display social status earlier on."
"For the rest, however, luxury goods are absolutely necessary for a mode of production which creates wealth for the non-producer and which therefore must provide that wealth in forms which permit its acquisition only by those who enjoy..."
Yummys are marrying later, freeing up that disposable income for all those Birkin bags, going all in towards the media's metrosexual-pushing agenda. Instead of "being in a minority, men who buy grooming products to boost self-esteem or feel more attractive are now in the majority." And it's not just beauty products and clothes, everything is up for grabs—"outdoor sporting goods," you say? But what about the hell yeah pimpin' player sick rides?
They like spending money on nice things. But what counts as a luxury good? HSBC will explain that for you, too.
Cartier, Omega, Coach, Burberry, DIOR...Swatch?
"...it is not what is made but how, and by what instruments of labour, that distinguished different economic epochs. The least important commodities of all for the technological comparison of different epochs are the articles of real luxury..."
But the real question is: Are you YUMMY? Does the image below speak to you? Is your favorite movie Boiler Room? Do you need to self-identify with non-existent demographics manufactured by marketing teams? Or are you just a Republican hipster?
(We're All Yummies At Heart, Getty)
Young, check. Urban, check. Male, check. Faceless, vague abstractions roaming spreadsheets and PowerPoints—check. If these people exist at all, they have existed before and will exist after the YUM. These men aren't so radically different from the bankers that have modeled themselves after Wall Street or the Blu-ray American Psycho or some forgettable Chuck Palahniuk character or the oil barons and railroad tycoons.
Understanding the prominent position advertising and marketing has taken in our economy (and increasingly the globe) is important for perceiving the essence of these market reports: they are artificial ideas for their own consumption. They have no bearing on you or I, even if we were YUMs, and exist solely to justify the continued existence of HSBC's Global Research Team.
What keeps them up at night on their high-thread count sheets besides the cooling sensation of after-hours Tea Tree Face Masks?
"...a large part of the annual product which is consumed as revenue and hence does not reenter production as its means, consists of the most tawdry products (use values) designed to gratify the most impoverished appetites and fancies. As far as the question of productive labour is concerned, however, the nature of these objects is quite immaterial…ordinary economic theory finds it impossible to utter a single sensible word on the barriers to the production of luxuries even from the standpoint of capitalism itself." - Karl Marx
Pay no mind to the luxury goods and kiddie couture. They are not meant for you. They are nothing but a distraction.
