white paper
SUMMARY Brand managers were not convinced that their gay and lesbian niche marketing efforts were paying off – either financially or societally.
The guts to
insert an unambiguou sly gay ad into an unambiguou sly straight publication, is, in some respects, the canary in the coalmine.
The second exciting development is the unlikely launch of a purpose designed LGBTQA store brand by Canadian telecom company
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The Death of LGBT (LGBTTIQQ2SA*) Marketing is Fabulously Exaggerated
I
n the wake of the recent economic downtown (recession) serious questions were asked about the future of gay marketing. Clearly as brands and marketers tightened their belts, the first item to receive the chop, was the LGBT segment “experiment.” The big question is, will these small niche-segment endeavors be revived at the end of the troubles, or will they simply disappear into the black hole of “been there, done that”?
T
his was not an abstract discussion. Brand managers were not convinced that their gay and lesbian niche marketing efforts were paying off – either financially or societally. What had been a very low cost, easy to reach, identifiable segment had dispersed into the greater (and more welcoming) society. Gaybourhoods are morphing into gentrified, expensive hoods for thirty something trendoids; a reliable, focused, print media landscape all but melted into the fragmented and unpredictable online world; and, the final blow, children of the new millenium hardly see a difference between straight and gay. However, we are beginning to see a stirring of an entirely different, and quite frankly much more laudable manifestation of inclusiveness in marketing. It was obvious all along that to the degree that
marketers were not prepared to adapt their product or service to fit uniquely and relevantly into the existential lifestyle of gay and lesbian people, they would inevitably fail. In the last week I have seen two entirely different organizations address these issues in courageous, but strategically intelligent ways.
T
he first is a gay ad for Harrahs New Orleans. The ad itself, which is attached, is a dismal piece of creative – no idea, no art direction, no nothing! In fact, creatively, the ad is typical of brands that were not quite convinced that connecting to LGBT consumers would be worth the cost of a well designed ad (i.e. most advertisers in the pre-recession era). But it’s not the ad that’s important – it’s where the ad appeared: the December
* Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer/Questioning, 2 Spirited, Allies