Advertisers openly hailed the “ Dream Market” of urban, well-educated, double-income gay and lesbian couples. It was the 1990s which saw a genuine turnaround. The emergence of AIDS in the 1980s helped to rein in commercial attitudes towards the LGBT community and it wasn’t until the second half of the decade that the first few mainstream brands – Absolut Vodka’s campaign in The Advocate, for example – started cautiously appearing in gay magazines alongside the community organisations and businesses. Even widely discussed (and criticised) survey data kick started a narrative of the “pink dollar” and an affluent and untapped marketing demographic failed to spark a rush.
Maybe because of the political (and sometimes sexual nature) of many publications, major advertisers were cautious to advertise in the gay press. However, in the early days, advertising in LGBT media was largely restricted to LGBT organisations, and LGBT-owned businesses directly targeting the community.Ī vodka tonic for LGBT. Rise of the pink dollarĪlthough the world’s first gay magazine, Der Eigene, was published in Germany in 1892, it wasn’t until the late 1950s and beyond that more prominent gay media began to emerge as laws outlawing homosexual activities were softened. It is, nevertheless, fairly simple to establish that the relationship between the “community” and “mainstream marketers” has not always been an easy one. It remains notoriously difficult to define who makes up the “LGBT community”, and particularly what identifying as LGBT means in terms of lifestyle, political goals and choice of partners or a mix of all of the above.
In today’s marketing, at least for some, even queer products for a straight audience have become mainstream – used to sell anything from fast food to credit cards, clothing to eReaders – but it’s not clear whether this is a real “win win” for the market and the LGBT community. Long gone are the days where marketers may have only coyly targeted the LGBT community. With the gay pride season coming to a close, here is a question: have you withdrawn money from a multi-coloured gAyTM this summer? Or have you even tucked into your Burger King Pride Whopper? And if you have, are you aware that it might just be the latest stage in an awkward history of corporate “pink washing”?Ĭelebrating LGBT rights is a fashionable topic in marketing land.