058: Pride Campaigns – Round 2

Welcome to Will It Stick? podcast, where hosts Melissa and Alexis cover creative advertising campaigns, PR stunts, and marketing activations that brands of all shapes and sizes pull, and dive into the research and data to understand if it worked and of course … Will It Stick?

As we know from our recent episode, we’re coming into Pride month, which gives brands an opportunity to express their stance and support for the LGBTQ+ community. Advertising around pride. Just like when we talked about the brands and breast cancer awareness episode…this also brings about some obvious issues in how brands utilize Pride Month to sell products instead of actually doing anything that makes an impact.

So many brands are just creating a rainbow version of a product and not making any effort to donate funds or raise actual awareness…they are just jumping on the bandwagon.

According to a recent Forbes article by retail writer Katie Baron, the number of LGBTQ+ consumers predicted to hit 1 billion globally by 2050, with Gallup’s 2022 study revealing 7.1% of Americans already identify as such (57% of whom classify themselves as bisexual). Importantly, roughly 21% of all adult Gen Z Americans now identify as LGBTQ+, indicating a distinct shift towards a post-heteronormative society, or certainly more genreless future generations. Globally, it’s estimated that global LGBTQ+ spending is around 3.7 trillion annually (in the US it’s the fastest growing ‘minority’ segment at $1.4 trillion yearly) while 85% of LGBTQ+ Americans feel corporations should support LGBTQ+ equality, theoretically legitimizing brand involvement.

But, today I wanted to highlight some of the brands that have been early supporters of the LGBTQ+ community, and not just around PRIDE Month in June. These brands took a stance early before it was a bandwagon….and it was a risk. We talk about: United Colors of Benetton, Ikea, Ray Ban, Tiffany & Co and Unilever.