Two years ago tomorrow, the Out Front Blog celebrated National Coming Out Day by coming out ourselves. Now, more than 470 blog posts later, we’re pleased to celebrate the thirteen Out Front Blog bloggers, dozens of Q&A interviews, hundreds of comments and tens of thousands of visitors that have been part of the past two years.
In celebrating our second anniversary, we thought it might be useful and appropriate to take a step back and look at why we’re doing this and why we think gay and lesbian communications outreach is important. But it’s not enough for us to share our own thoughts, so we asked some of our friends to share their views too. The combined thoughts of our bloggers and friends are listed below. If you’d like to add your own, please do so in the comments section – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for your interest and engagement in our little part of the blogosphere over the past two years – and here’s to you for making this conversation possible!
Ben, Steve, Peter, Ivette, Laura, Kim, Bryan and Michael
Question: Why is gay and lesbian communications outreach important?
Happy Anniversary to the entire FH Out Front blog team and keep up with the great posts! What people see and what people read has a tremendous impact on how we treat one another and decisions made in schools, churches, and in the government. As we share real stories of loving and committed gay couples and families with the media, it helps change people’s hearts and minds.
Neil Giuliano, President of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
Just as with any community, specific media that reach the LGBT community are an important tool in reaching the overall LGBT demographic in the United States. There are thousands of varieties of LGBT media, from traditional print to podcasts, radio, broadcast, blogs and web sites, so a sophisticated approach is necessary to make sure you are reaching all of those channels in an appropriate way. The LGBT community is as diverse as society as a whole, so you can’t take a cookie-cutter approach to this complicated demographic.
Tracy Baim, Publisher, Windy City Media Group
Businesses are often ahead of government in extending rights and benefits to GLBT Americans and they can help apply pressure to local, state and even federal officials to follow their progressive lead. The Out Front Blog is playing an important role in fostering and tracking business outreach to the gay market. Congratulations on your second anniversary!
Kevin Naff, Editor, Washington Blade
Gay and lesbian communications gives a voice to the community, increasing awareness and visibility in a positive, honest, and authentic way. It is through LGBT communications that we can truly affect the lives of our diverse community – from every gender, generation, ethnicity, religion, background.
Laura Nguyen, Out Front Blog
Speaking the same language within any group is essential for its members to be informed and remind us that we are not alone. The OutFront Blog provides insight, strategies, opportunities and knowledge that makes us proud to call ourselves LGBT.
Michael Lamb, CEO / Editor In Chief, Echelon Business Media Inc.
First and foremost, it publicly recognizes the validity, strength and worth of the gay and lesbian community.
Tanya Churchmuch, President & Publisher, girlports.com
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." These words by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. capture the necessity and power of the growing dialogue between the LGBT community, business and civic audiences, and the countless diverse groups of humanity throughout the world. These exchanges of thoughts, concerns and issues — at times controversial — matter. They matter now during our own lives and for our community’s brighter future. So let’s not be silent.
Bryan Blaise, Out Front Blog
In today’s world, communication outreach to the GLBT population is critical since timely response, calls to action, information and education, getting a read on what we all think and even a heads up on things that affect our well-being may be accomplished in this way. Back in the day, we had gay bars that served as community centers for information, and to help us find each other. Now, communication outreach helps us identify those things that make us connected and make us count as an ever growing population with the power to make change.
Joy Silver, President, RainbowVision Properties
To be effective in any sector, you need to know your audience, how to speak to them, and what will resonate best. The LGBT audience is no longer on the outside looking in — we are setting the agendas, driving consumer behavior, and surrounding corporate America with an important voice that needs to be heard — and needs to be directly addressed.
Michael Murphy, Out Front Blog
Someone else asked me recently if I thought gay-specific media/communications was still relevant and while I had to consider it a moment, my answer is a resounding YES! Even if we as a group achieve full integration into society, we do have a culture of sorts that requires nurturing and development. The best way to continue that development is via communications and media written for and by the community. Thanks for everything and happy anniversary!
Joe LaMuraglia, Publisher, gaywheels.com
It is important because it is tailor-made, and that is important because gay and lesbians value different things than the general population. If you speak to what is important to us, we respond through our commitment to you, and after all, isn’t that the goal in mind?
Ivette Lopez, Out Front Blog
Historically, the LGBT community has always relied on communications outreach to get our messages out there — either on the grass roots level, early on emphasizing visibility (“We’re Here, We’re Queer”) or heralding a the seminal call to action (“Silence = Death”) — but in every case serving as the vanguard of what is to come not only for our own, but to the mainstream world at large.
Josh Rosenzweig, Senior Vice President, Regent Media/here! Networks and co-host of here! with Josh and Sara
With this notion of culture, change in perception doesn’t happen overnight. If political action is the muscle behind change, then communications outreach is what pretties up the perception.
Nina Smith, Queercents
"LGBT" should be included in a corporate communications plan for many reasons, but primarily because it not only sends a signal of diversity and inclusiveness to the LGBT audiences, but it also reaches far beyond to our friends, families, employers and straight allies. Equally important, however, is the understanding that there is no one message that applies to all "LGBT;" our research indicates a wide variety of LGBT segments, each requiring direct messaging for maximum results.
Tom Roth, Founder, Community Marketing Inc.
LGBT consumers are savvy and loyal with an eye for marketing that is inclusive of their lives and acknowledges their unique needs. Especially in a down economy, companies cannot afford to overlook any segment that might be willing to do business with them.
Dana Rudolph, Publisher, Mombian: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms
Of more value than gay and lesbian communications outreach itself is the importance of ensuring that outreach is strategic and informed because effectively reaching our community is so much more than changing the pronouns in a media pitch letter. Our community is increasingly being recognized by communications professionals and still has so much untapped potential, beyond being an advertising target to being fully engaged in corporate dialogues that shape business agendas and marketing plans as well as company policies.
Steve Kauffman, Out Front Blog
The LGBTQ community is a highly influential group, and like any population subset, faces unique challenges. These challenges generate opportunities to implement powerful, targeted communications strategies as outreach to LGBTQ people. Creating social marketing campaigns that address issues that are of great concern to many LGBTQ people is a very effective communications tool that can and should be utilized when reaching out to our community. Social marketing campaigns can impact people on a deep and personal level that may intrigue them to change their behavior for the better. For example, The Trevor Project’s ‘I’m Glad I Failed’ social marketing campaign speaks to youth, and not only empowers them with a resource, but also calls on them to treat one another with respect and dignity. We sincerely hope to see more social marketing and overall communications efforts targeted at LGBTQ people as we work together to ensure our world is safe, accepting and inclusive for all people.
Charles Robbins, Executive Director/CEO, The Trevor Project
As consumers, the GLBT audience is highly aware and sensitive to businesses today. More than ever before. Smart brands know they must be highly niche focused to reach their consumer and the GLBT audience is part of that niche for many consumer brands. The intelligent marketers reach the gay and lesbian communities best by finding ways to engage the GLBT consumers on a personal, meaningful and, most important, authentic level. They realize this drives the important conversations that get the GLBT consumers talking and engaging with their brand. Whether businesses are engaging online through blogs or are demonstrating their GLBT support through employee partner benefits programs, they know the GLBT audience is listening and talking!
Kim West, Out Front Blog
Congratulations to the team! I’m proud to be an alum, and now a reader, of the Out Front Blog. Visibility of LGBT issues, companies, and people can and does drive positive discussion about our community. As LGBT communications professionals continue to achieve results for companies, more will understand the importance and value of reaching out to the LGBT community. Awareness and support from Corporate America will lead to awareness and support from the public and, in turn, our elected officials.
Rich Ferraro, Director of Public Relations, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
If we don’t speak, we don’t exist. If we don’t exist, we don’t matter. Gay and lesbian communications outreach is, quite literally, all about our value and worth as equal citizens in society. It’s no accident that we launched this blog on National Coming Out Day: as Out Front Blog alumnus Jon Garbo first said “if you’re not out front, where are you?”
Ben Finzel, Out Front Blog
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Hi Ben… as you know, I’ve been knee deep in client work here at Fleishman-Hillard but I wanted to take a moment to contribute my quote as well.
Peter
“When I first started studying acting many years ago, one of the most simple yet profound things I realized is that words matter… exact words matter. For example, acceptance and tolerance are two different words with two different meanings. For me, LGBT communications is critical to our identities and to our souls. Society is is built upon the connections we have with others. Words are the tools that we use to develop those connections. We must keep communicating our perspectives so that, eventually, the exact words that we believe represent us are used by the largest segment of society possible. What we think does not define us to others; what we do and say defines us to others.”
Peter Klaus