The Politics of Commerce

Hello and welcome to the Out Front Blog. This blog is dedicated to the idea that gay and lesbian communications and marketing is important, relevant and appropriate. We believe outreach to our
community is not just a good idea, but a significant, and positive, contributor to social change. This blog will focus on the issues related to gay and lesbian public relations and marketing communications and the challenges associated with communicating by, for, with and to our community.

Why is outreach to our community so important? Over the coming weeks, months and years, I’ll have a lot to say on why businesses and organizations should focus on this community and why outreach to us is significant. To start, however, I want to focus on the LGBT community and address the question from that perspective.

So why should LGBT people care about gay and lesbian marketing and
communications? If you’re focused on achieving political or social
equality, marketing and communications may seem like “nice to haves”
that don’t really impact what you’re doing. If you’re an advocate or
politically engaged activist, you may be wondering why gay people are
blogging on seemingly “trivial” issues when more pressing, politically
relevant issues should take precedence.

You should care about gay and lesbian marketing and communications
for one simple reason: because it presents one of the biggest
opportunities to positively affect the future of the LGBT community.
Public opinion changes as society evolves. Society evolves as it
considers different people with new outlooks and varied points of view.
Public relations and marketing communications change how people see us
(or even that they see us at all) and that leads to social change.

And while lots of really interesting folks (see our Recommended
Sites and Recommended Bloggers sections) are already blogging on
politics and policy, there are fewer voices examining the business of
communications and what that means to our community. I call it the
“politics of commerce:” the impact of communications on policy and
issues that affect all of our lives. Here are a few examples:

• Check out the convention and visitors bureaus of many major cities (including Washington, D.C.,
  where I live) and you’ll find gay tourism programs: gay travel and
  tourism promotion helps make the case for the value of the gay dollar;
  this in turn can help sway politicians to oppose gay marriage bans and
  other divisive issues because they understand that such intolerant
  views could cost them local tax revenue from tourism.
• Read the HRC report
  on the number of companies actively recruiting and retaining LGBT
  people: corporate recognition of the value of gay employees helps
  companies recruit and retain the best people thereby demonstrating the
  positive impact of gay people in the terms that everyone can understand
  – dollars and cents. This enhanced understanding can lead politicians
  to support employment non-discrimination policies that protect gay and
  lesbian people.
• Look at the many ways in which people like Carson Kressley (Pepsi) and Ted Allen
  (Robert Mondavi) are serving as spokespersons for “non-gay” products:
  use of gay and lesbian images or people in consumer communication
  campaigns helps straight people see us as a legitimate, non-threatening
  part of society – we are people too. This in turn can help politicians,
  judges, police and others see that horrendous crimes such as gay
  bashings are not “just boys being boys” or some minor problem that
  doesn’t require their attention, but a legitimate threat to society
  that must be addressed with the full force of law.

So, see what I mean? Communications, image, outreach: it all really matters.

This is one of the few times we’ll talk about politics on this blog.
Even though politics is my background, there are lots of other folks
opining on everything from the margin of victory in a local city
council race to the future of gay issues in the national political
parties. This blog has everything to do with business and nothing to do
with politics. Looking forward, we’ll talk about the world at large and
the impact of business decisions and societal impacts on our community,
but we’re not going to offer up our perspective on elections, which
political party is best for the LGBT community, or why this or that
politician should or shouldn’t come out.

Okay, okay, we agree that there’s a lot more to life than the
almighty dollar. But let’s be realists for a moment: money has
everything to do with power and influence. Its time we learned how to
leverage it to our advantage.

We’re committed to talking about communications issues in a new voice with new ideas and we hope you’ll join us. Send us your
thoughts. Tell us what you think about different PR or advertising
campaigns, different messages and different ways of reaching people. We
look forward to hearing from you.

Share | October 11th, 2006 9 Comments »
Tags: Advertising · Corporate Engagement · Introduction to the Blog · Travel and Tourism