When the Buyer Is a ‘Free Soul’

You won’t hear any talk about marketing to gays and lesbians from the folks at Banana Republic. Instead, the San Mateo-based retailer is letting its new print ad campaign, called “free souls,” speak for itself.

Jeff Burghardt, a company spokesman, says corporate policy prohibits comment on the photos, which depict several same-sex couples hugging and sometimes groping each other. The ads appear in this month’s Vanity Fair, L.A. Style and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. Instead, Burghardt suggests, readers can draw their own conclusions.

But Rick Wallace of Overlooked Opinions, a Chicago-based research firm, says the ads are simply aimed at particularly affluent consumers.

“The average annual household income for gay men is $51,624; for lesbians it’s $42,755,” he says. That is 30% and 21% more, respectively, than the general heterosexual population. Furthermore, says Wallace, 79.3% of gays and lesbians make purchases based on gay media advertising.

That’s good news to Michael Goff, editor of Out, a new gay quarterly magazine selected by Banana Republic to carry a less-suggestive version of the ad. “It features a bunch of guys play fighting,” says Goff. “The response has been positive. Our readers find it extremely sexy.”