Pride 2024 — How Marketers Can Balance Risk, Reward and Responsibility
June 18, 2024
By Jason Keehn
Pride marketing is looking a lot different in 2024. Last year's backlash blunders (Target, Bud Light), skepticism about the ROI of diversity-based decision-making and vocal shareholders demanding caution on cultural topics (Dell, Levi's, Mondelez) have created a chilling effect.
What's behind this shift, and how can marketers navigate risk, reward and responsibility? From the perspective of this 40-something, George-Michael generation, "Will & Grace" gay, here's what I see has happened and some principles for brands to consider:
Queer market share has gone mainstream
What was once niche marketing to our community has become mainstream. Statistics around Gen Z's and millennials' sexual orientation and nonbinary identities are in the double digits. Add their kids and loved ones under a collective psychographic segment that expects meaningful allyship, and you've got a huge target audience.
Queer culture also has garnered broad appeal; ''RuPaul's Drag Race" is consistently one of the top-rated shows on cable TV. Marketers aren't earmarking an ad for Out magazine anymore; they are asking if their mainstream campaigns should include gender-nonconforming casting and same-sex couples to relate to a wider spectrum of sub-segments in their audience.
This changes the role of Pride Month marketing from a commercial proposition to a social or even moral one.
The binary reaction to nonbinary
Our collective awakening to the trans community has sparked vocal discomfort from some Americans and passionate defense from others. Pride Month, in turn, has become a minefield for brand marketers.
Acceptance is assumed; allyship is meaningful
Rainbows once signaled a much-needed welcome sign to the queer community. Today this is table stakes for a brand. Allyship is what matters and that includes sharing stories, acknowledging injustice and not second-guessing your support.
Employees now require marketing too
Investment in positive employee-brand relationships is now good financial hygiene, i.e. employee lifetime value producing profits from low turnover and high productivity. A brand's decision to either show up or 'shut up during hot-button cultural events can affect this.
How can marketers navigate risk, reward and responsibility?
Be comfortable in your purpose-led skin
Articulating or embracing your brand purpose is always the first step. A proper brand purpose connects the core reason your brand exists in the world to what it offers to its consumers and stakeholders.
Purpose is not social impact and DE&I alone, but rather the higher-order ethos that embodies your commercial orientation as much as your social and environmental commitments. If this purpose is clear, specific and inspiring, the approach to any cultural topic lies in the over lap of your brand purpose values and the values and meaning that give life to the cultural moment at hand.
Project your purpose through the consumer funnel
A particular symptom of larger brands that have multiple agencies is struggling to authentically exercise their purpose down the full consumer funnel. Agencies focused on influencer or retail marketing, for example, are often more tactically oriented, as opposed to brand stewards, and while a brief for Pride Month can easily garner a broad spectrum of ideas, they may be off the mark in terms of brand values. This is where Bud Light got into trouble.
Gay is not one-size-fits-all
Not all gay men love rainbows, Barry's Bootcamp and vodka sodas. Just as not all women love pink and not all Black people vote for Biden. Unintended stereotypes can fail to meaningfully connect or come back later as problems.
What's common among our community is the desire for respect and civility for who we are, without anyone telling us what we can be or who we can love. That's where allyship should begin. Lifestyle brands promoting "love" as a creative theme for Pride are getting this right.
Borrow others' equity
Few brands have the authority to talk about Pride as cultural commentators. Brands are better off forging meaningful partnerships with nonprofits, influencers and artists that both align with their brand's purpose and can authentically carry the weight of representing the audience and topic.
Let the community do the talking through the lens of your brand instead. Be the platform, not the point.
Preserve your own equity
Remember that your brand equities-logo, packaging, tagline-are not something to casually play with for promotional activations. Splashing rainbows behind your logo on social channels, merging your tagline with Pride vernacular and re-skinning your on-shelf presence for a month can feel performative and shallow to the LGBTQIA+ community, while also feeling heavy-handed to your audience at large.
Keep products to parties and parades
Pride merch that enables us to have a good time and look fabulous doing it is appreciated and in demand. We enjoy the rainbow socks, cheeky T-shirts, erotic pastries and themed cocktail kits, which can generate legitimate revenue for brands while building occasion-based emotional connections to purchasing and consumption. But Pride chocolate bars? Pride pens? Pride Band-Aids?
We don't need rainbow stuff in our hands at all times just because it's June. It cheapens the moment for us and cheapens your brand at the same time. Pride-themed merchandise works best serving one of two need states: self-expression or hospitality and entertaining. In short, keep it fun and festive.
The queer community is nothing if not dynamic, and what catches our attention today will evolve with nuance tomorrow. Ultimately, what's critical for marketers is a clear brand purpose and the know-how to extend its values into cultural conversations. This perspective can guide any marketer to balance showing up as an ally with staying in their lane as a brand. Marketing to the LGBTQIA+c ommunity is both the right thing to do and good for business.