Big Companies Are Openly Courting Gay Consumers
Corporate America may just have well have sent its own telegram to Jerry Falwell after he recently mobilized his troops to protest the “gay-friendly” ad run by Anheuser-Busch in a regional gay publication. It would have said: Buzz off.
The Fortune 500 are courting the gay consumer as never before, underscored by the provocative Bud Lite ad featuring two muscular male arms firmly holding hands, along with the slogan, “Be Yourself.” Sponsorship dollars flowing into Gay Pride festivals have increased and ad campaigns--some of which appear in mainstream venues--are featuring gay consumers.
Advertising in the gay media is the fastest-growing niche in publishing, posting a 20% jump in 1998 while ad revenue in other targeted media--save for black media--had single-digit growth. Ad dollars in the gay press have more than doubled in the last five years, moving to $120 million in 1998 from $53 million in 1994.
Los Angeles’ Gay Pride event is emblematic of the growth in corporate support. Now in its 29th year, the festival a decade ago attracted only one corporate sponsor--Anheuser-Busch. This year, the festival broke the $1-million mark in corporate sponsorship, up from $150,000 five years ago.
Advertisers are attracted to gay consumers’ sizable disposable incomes--averaging $57,100 for men and $53,600 for women, compared with slightly more than $30,000 for the average U.S. household. And, advertisers say, gay consumers are extremely loyal. Bud Lite and Absolut vodka, which started advertising to gays in the 1970s, have strong brand recognition in the gay community.
“Gay friends have said to me, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done,” says Marty Marston, spokesman for Ikea, which made history in 1994 with the first prime-time television spot featuring a gay couple shopping for furniture. “We see the allegiance of the gay community.”
Dockers, the all-American brand owned by Levi-Strauss, began advertising in the largest-circulation national gay publication, Out magazine, a year ago. Last November, it saluted 10 xceptional gay men and lesbians in a 12-page magazine insert in Out--an ad that not only spoke directly to gay consumers but intently made a statement about diversity.
“It was our way, as a major brand, to acknowledge gay men and women as really productive human beings, says Mark Malinowski, Dockers’ senior marketing specialist.
Good will or bottom line, corporations are getting on board the gay bandwagon, which they briefly abandoned during the peak of the AIDS crisis in the mid ‘80s.
“Almost every company backed away,” says Scott Matter of Mulryan-Nash Advertising, a New York agency specializing in the gay market. “What we’ve seen in the ‘90s, especially in the last four to five years, is that a lot of major corporations and industries you wouldn’t really expect have begun to realize the validity of the gay market.”
Among the companies advertising directly to gay consumers are American Express, IBM, General Motors, Subaru, Johnson & Johnson, United Airlines, Seagram, Bank of America, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Gap, Levi-Strauss, Alamo Rent-A-Car, Samsung, Universal Studios and MTV.
Clearing the way for the recent burst of gay advertising is the failure of protests against corporations that acknowledge gays. William Waybourn, a Washington-based consultant, cited the Southern Baptists’ unsuccessful 1997 boycott of Walt Disney Co. for its “gay-friendly” policies as a catalyst.
“Their failure to maintain the boycott sent a strong signal to other companies that you can market to the gay community and not worry about a backlash, says Waybourn, whose Washington-based company, Windows Communications, helps companies such as AOL, Aetna and United Airlines reach gay consumers.
In the last year or two, say industry experts, a notable shift has occurred: More and more ads are openly gay when even in gay publications the message had previously been implicit.
A Hartford Insurance print ad, for example, features three sets of cars. “The Hartford offers auto insurance discounts to gay couples,” reads the caption under two blue cars, facing nose to nose. And under the two pink cars: “We also offer discounts to lesbian couples.” And in a takeoff of the famous “Seinfeld” riff, adds: “Heck, we even offer discounts to heterosexual couples (not that there’s anything wrong with that).”
Diesel jeans featured gay bodybuilders Bob Paris and Rod Jackson locked in an intense kiss aboard a military vessel, sailors in the background, which ran in Details magazine. An American Express Financial Services ad featured lesbians in an embrace on a cruise ship.
“Diversity is very important to us, and it’s a priority for us at American Express to reach out to many different communities. One of our focuses has been with the gay and lesbian market,” says Jean Tambornino, the senior public relations consultant for American Express Financial Advisors.
Perhaps more significantly, some ads are appearing in mainstream venues. Levi ran a series of candid “lifestyle” TV spots on MTV and Comedy Central featuring real teenagers talking autobiographically about their life. The gay teen describes an “oops” moment when he inadvertently lets slip to his father that he’s gay.
The recognized trailblazer in gay advertising, Seagram’s Absolut, took their gay-friendly ads to mainstream publications, such as Entertainment Weekly, Mather says. The tagline was ‘Absolut pride,’ and featured an outline of the bottle with the rainbow flag, the widely accepted symbol of gay pride.
The brouhaha about the Anheuser-Busch ad began on the Internet. After the ad appeared in the April 21 edition of EXP, a small biweekly gay magazine in St. Louis, waves of e-mail circulated among gays, urging them to contact Anheuser-Busch to show support. Falwell then enlisted his supporters via e-mail also to contact the company in protest. Within days, the St. Louis-based beer company was forced to set up a toll-free numbers to accommodate pro and con calls.
Anheuser-Busch almost immediately declined news interviews but issued an unequivocal statement supporting its nondiscriminatory ad policy. “It’s surprising to us that one print ad placed in select gay-oriented magazines has attracted attention,” noted the brief release. “Today’s consumer is not one of a specific gender, race, geography or orientation. We appreciate and respect the views of all our customers.”
Waybourn called the Bud Lite ad a “brilliant marketing stroke” and predicted more and more ads will be out of the closet.
“For a long time there was ‘gay window’ advertising. An ad would feature two men and a woman and the gay community looked in and saw a gay couple” where mainstream consumers did not, Waybourn says. “The latest trend is to advertise directly to the market, with images that reach into the market, and advertisers are not paying a penalty for it.”
