Engaging A Booming LGBTQ+ Consumer Landscape

LGBTQ+ Pride month is a big deal for brands, possibly even a deal-breaker considering the groundswell of LGBTQ+ consumers. According to GAY TIMES analysis (using a combination IPSOS and UN Population data) it’s a group 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.

Add to that (conservative) estimates suggesting global LGBTQ+ spending hovers at 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 it’s also a period rippling with contention, having snowballed into a so-called retail calendar event rife with historic missteps, leaving plenty conflicted as to exactly how to show up. Here, Tag Warner, CEO of GAY TIMES – a magazine and now media group with a powerful brand advisory arm nourished by a soaring social media presence and a 4.5m unique monthly readership (it’s mushroomed twentyfold since he joined in 2019) – reveals key brand strategies for LGBTQ+ Pride month and beyond.

Give Back to the Community

According to Warner, indiscriminate use of the rainbow – the most potent symbol of Pride and the “community’s collective intellectual property” – without a solid accompanying campaign presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the month in giving back to (not squeezing) the LGBTQ+ community.

He cites American candy giant Skittles’ work as one the best (comeback) examples to date. Redressing a 2016-initiated brilliantly subversive but also highly divisive campaign where it fully decolored its famous rainbow-colored packaging to honor the ‘most important rainbow’ (controversial because some perceived the all-white design as promoting the racist white pride movement) for 2021 it partnered with GAY TIMES and LGBTQ+ helpline Switchboard to colorize black-and-white archive photos from Pride celebrations of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Breathing technicolor life into the advertising images, its support of community archivists helped perpetuate a critical shared legacy, enshrining the movement’s roots for younger generations. “This project has been so powerful that all Skittles marketing is now rooted in LGBTQ+ support; everything else falls off that. What started as a Pride activation is now a year-round manifesto.”

Initiate Intersections, Create Cultural Bridges

Acknowledging the LGBTQ+ community’s varied intersections, and in doing so dismantling tired stereotypes, will also be key to mobilizing lasting engagement.

Warner references GAY TIMES’ ‘platforming’ initiative with Apple
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Music where it identified early-stage LGBTQ+ artists to co-curate Queer & Now Apple playlists – circumventing the platform’s algorithms that were stunting their visibility. The program, launched 2019 but still running, has amplified “queer voices” including singer-songwriters Rina Sawayama and Arlo Parks. “Every genre of music or creativity has a LGBTQ+ intersection. People thought that LGBTQ+ music was just pop. Consistent support has meant many of these artists have graduated from Apple’s Elevate section to Up Next, creating an extensive cross-cultural bridge.”

In a similar yet singular project Amazon
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Music is currently pursuing an intersectional push seeking to alter country music’s “long-held identity as music by and for white audiences” via an original documentary, For Love & Country directed by Black American director Joshua Kissi.

Warner also cites a 2021 Pride ‘brand library’ by beauty brand Aesop where shelves in three US stores were cleared to accommodate LGBTQI+ literature ­– heavily spotlighting BIPOC and transgender authors. Visitors, customers or not, were invited to take a book (for free) with Aesop stating: “Literature has a unique power to unite, liberate and empower – to raise awareness and foster empathy as well as compassion.”

Support Small Town Fans, Flex Sector Expectations

The tendency for brands to approach Pride as a purely party-focused celebration often overlooks outlying audiences struggling to find or shape their LGBTQ+ identity or networks.

Servicing this, last year GAY TIMES partnered with Reebok on the Your Hometown campaign, centering the stories of LGBTQ+ teenagers in Northern British cities. Documentary shorts, stills and quotes featured across Gay Times’ portfolio, on Reebok and (footwear retailer) Schuh’s social media platforms, and activations in Schuh flagships.

Reebok reveals it performed 150% better than similar retail campaigns, engaging 2.2m Brits (the original hope was closer to the 850,000 mark). “This was successful because it not only emphasised geographically diverse narratives, but also, via skateboarding and cycling, broadened the definition of sporting reach,” says Warner.

Raw Truths: More Nuanced Narratives

Warner also highlighted brands’ latent addiction to stereotype-perpetuating ‘feelgoodism’, like coming out stories with a wholly unifying and/or reconciliatory tone (“of course it’s vital to show these positive stories but they often ignore the whole picture”).

Some brands have started tackling this by foregrounding difficult lived experiences, such as H&M’s image-recognition scanner app for LGBTQ+ Pride 2021 revealing real-life, video-diary style stories (on detecting a rainbow pattern) from both celebs and brand employees; neither stated their job, levelling the message. In one an H&M visual manager recounts walking in on his father abusing his mother for raising a gay son, then confronting him.

“There has been the sense that the LGBTQ+ community is the place to just have a good time and I think a lot of people, for want of being accepted, simply reflected that back. But there’s a need to not ignore the complex, more toxic stuff, which makes practical, relatable guidance or narratives key.”

Go Back to Scratch, Beyond Adaptive Marketing

For most brands, says Warner, the initial approach is to adapt existing marketing campaigns for LGBTQ+ audiences – a ‘mainstream’ first stance that ultimately denies their identities, concerns, and triggers.

Redressing this, he reveals that his team are currently in discussion with British fitness brand Gymshark regarding redefining activewear from the ground up. “Sport is a fascinating place because statistically LGBTQ+ people tend to be more unfit – fuelled by the way professional sports is a very heteronormative terrain; consider the environment that exists that means there are currently no openly Gay professional footballers in the UK, and what that means to LGBTQ+ consumers.”

Banking too, is ripe for an update (as an industry with services predominantly grounded in heterosexual family-centered lifestyles) and mental health, another space in where LGBTQ+ behaviors tend to differ; GAY TIMES is also in early discussions about a project with Anglo-American mindfulness app, Headspace.

Recontextualize Iconic Campaigns

The arguable exception to the non-adaptive rule is the revamp of iconic campaigns that formerly felt out-of-sync with LGBTQ+ identities, overhauling pop culture’s perceived limitations.

Calvin Klein’s 2020 reboot of its 2014 #mycalvin’s campaign (an unsubtle call for selfie-lovers conceived to celebrate an infinite spectrum of self-expression) is a prime example. The 2020 campaign, shot by Ryan McGinley, renowned for his joyfully hedonistic bent on youth subcultures, featured a host of superstar LGBTQ+ activists, including US actor Tommy Dorfman and Asian-American deaf transgender YouTuber and artist Chella Man. Telegraphing year-round commitment, additional imagery was released way after Pride month.

For 2021 it was reinterpreted again as #ProudInMyCalvins featuring artists including record producers Arca and Honey Dijon celebrating defining moments in the queer and trans journey, followed by GAY TIMES own story-sharing via its newly formed GT133 group of TikTok-based content creators (a micro collective who respond to topical stories at speed). Evolving the brands’ androgynous 90’s imagery for unisex scent CK One (androgynous yet certainly conceived for a straight gaze) it’s widely been received as a non-tokenistic celebration of individuality.

Warner recalls the triumphant sense of reclamation: “There was a real sense of excitement with this campaign, based on the notion that the original [2014] series was about ‘straight and attractive’ and ‘now it’s being applied to us.”

Satisfy with Self-Labelling

Another key direction for all to watch is self-labelling – a core battleground in the fundamental fight to be seen (“self-identification is the key to happiness”).

“Adding labels may seem counterintuitive when discussing oppressed communities but it’s important to a lot of LGBTQ+ people precisely because this is what they’ve not been allowed to do,” says Warner. “It’s something that will increasingly resonate with all consumers, but the LGBTQ+ community will lead because they’ve always had to do it. The permission for a label to be changed will also soar, for everyone.” Warner reveals that GAY TIMES is currently discussing a partnership regarding this focus with Hinge, a dating app anchored in finding love rather than hook-ups.

GAY TIMES Future? A Cultural Platform for the ‘Non-Default’

A very different creature to the pre-Warner era where the audience was dominated by white, gay, fortysomething men (it now boasts an equal gender split and a broad trans-generational mix, from tweens to those in their 60s and 70s) Warner reveals GAY TIMES is planning to build on its transition from pure publisher-into-brand builder by becoming a full “cultural platform covering information, products and services.”

It will, Warner says, “be the interface and cultural bridge for anyone looking to understand, support and/or work with the LGBTQ+ community and, moving forward, anyone considered ‘non-default’. It’s about helping people to really live their best lives by continuing to move us from reportage to the more active mantle we’ve taken up, becoming part of the conversation, even influencing it.”