Guido: It’s amazing to see how the globalized social media impact the decisions of companies and their reputation. When the news hit Germany first most of the headlines...
Hlengiwe Buthelezi: We would like to create a relationship with other LGBT organisation as much as possible in order to learn more things. KZN LGBT Recreation is still a rawling...
Erin Grohs: Thanks, Michael – much appreciated. Happy Pride!
Yesterday, Google joined Cisco, Kimpton Hotels and the Gates Foundation in increasing pay to gays and lesbians to make up for the approximately $1,000 difference gay couples pay in domestic partnership taxes in comparison to their heterosexual counterparts.
So… what does this mean? Is this the case study we share with our employers to do the same or to our oppressors to validate our “marriages?” Do we just hang this up on our wall of accomplishments and hope that others follow suit? Just what does it mean that Google has returned one of the best results to its employees?
It means that talented gay and lesbian individuals power one of the most common household names, that the keywords you typed into the Google search bar has been routed to find your #1 response by someone who could be queer. Google is outing itself as a company with approximately 700 gay and lesbian employees and validating their equal rights as citizens of this country. It raises the profile of gays and lesbian in the workforce.
What can these companies do to keep the momentum?
They should continue to promote their policy by seeking opportunities so speak with gay and lesbian media (and general media as well) on the important decision to vouch for progress for the gay and lesbian community. This will create additional loyalty and showcase them as thought-leaders in diversity issues.
They can keep the momentum by encouraging partners and vendors to do the same. Yes, this sounds a bit like advocacy work – which is far off each company’s agenda in terms of gay and lesbian issues – but I am willing to bet each of these company’s LGBT employee groups would be willing to start this conversation.
What would you advise? What would you like to see? All comments are welcome!
Happy Monday, all! Apologies for being MIA on the blog of late– it's been one of those months where vacation took me away from my responsibilities on here. Rest assured, I am back!
The Tony Awards were last night. You know the Tony Awards– the annual theater award show where random presenters with no connection to Broadway (read: this year, some New York Jets player and Raquel Welch) give "Best of" awards to high-profile shows and actors and often overlook some lesser-known, but well-deserving productions. This year's festivities were hosted by Sean Hayes. You know Sean Hayes, of "Will & Grace" and Newsweek fame. He and "Promises, Promises" co-star Kristin Chenoweth had some fun at Newsweek's expense at the beginning of the show– as the photo shows here.
What I love about the Tony Awards is that for three hours, television audiences are exposed to different works of art. While this year spent too much time on Green Day and the cast of "Glee," there was still ample opportunity to soak in some fantastic performances and more importantly, truly heartfelt acceptance speeches by winners. And from what I can observe, the Broadway community is all about acceptance. Several of the winners last night acknowledged their partner, and many of the performers participate each year in the "Broadway Cares" project to help fund HIV research and education. It's certainly the gayest of our award shows, but I love that CBS commits each year to bringing the Tonys to the rest of the world, regardless of ratings. Not everyone can afford a pilgrimage to the Great White Way, but sitting down with your family and watching a performance of "La Cage aux Folles" is the next best thing.
From a marketing perspective, I would have loved to see more of corporate America recognize the majority demographic viewing the show last night and tweak the advertisements to appeal to this specific community. Think about the Super Bowl. Many companies create ad campaigns that incorporate both the game and the viewing audience (remember how Betty White reclaimed her fame this Super Bowl?). How great would it have been last night for advertisers to incorporate the show and the LGBT community in the spots that aired. Granted, there may have been some as I forwarded the first half on DVR, but I hope that we see more LGBT campaigns during the Tony broadcasts in the future.
Speaking of marketing, we're taking our "ButtOut Ohio" project to Columbus Pride this weekend to share the campaign with the LGBT community. I plan on taking some photos at the event and will share my thoughts next week about how companies are using Pride as an opportunity to engage with us.
Have a great week.
(Photo courtesy of Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
And we're back today with the second half of our conversation with Unicorn Booty's Nick Vivion about his business, the LGBT consumer and social media. And speaking of leveraging digital and social media for the gays, take a look at the video at the end of this post and a recent write-up on how Nick and his partner Kevin are using social media to help uncover the reason behind YouTube's selective removal of their video today.
5. Besides Unicorn Booty, what are your thoughts on how businesses should communicate with and engage with LGBT consumers? Is digital and social media the best channel?
Unicorn Booty is of course the only way to reach LGBT consumers.
Of course that's not true! I am platform agnostic – just use what works. What works for us is all digital and social media. Why pay $50,000 for a full-page ad in the Advocate when you can create an interactive experience that really engages your target audience for a fraction of the price? The majority of other media – print and television – are over-priced and not as effective. People keep doing them because that's the status quo, but you really can't measure the impact of a print ad beyond circulation. The exciting (and very scary!) thing about digital/social media is that you can measure everything! You know how long someone spent on the site, where they want, if they bought anything. You know what they think of your brand. It's all right there, and you can't hide from it. That makes advertising much harder, because rather than just doing a "media buy" and crossing your fingers, you actually have to deliver results.
The funny thing about this tension between traditional and new media is that many businesses are still stuck in a sales mentality. Will it drive sales? Will it boost my revenue? This is a dangerous mentality to have, because social media is about less tangible relationship marketing. There are 1.37 billion influence impressions online every day (Forrester). It's not just about sales, it's being a part of a whole new world where priorities have shifted from your desire to sell to your customer's desire to be engaged. You are not always going to be able to measure the sales impact of your social media efforts, but you CAN measure engagement, which lays out the path to increased brand awareness, affinity and authenticity as you meet consumers on their terms.
6. What challenges have you experienced or seen other businesses face when communicating with the LGBT market?
As I mentioned earlier, the LGBT market is diverse. You cannot create one campaign "for the gays" and expect it to resonate community-wide. That's dangerous territory, and if you haven't ever marketed to the LGBT community before get some help! If you offend the community, it has a very long-term memory. So go slow, think twice and ask someone who knows what their doing!
For us, our biggest challenge is distilling our message down to its core so that it resonates with the widest swath of the LGBT community as possible. We really do want to appeal to the community as a whole. For us to succeed in our mission to strengthen our community through supporting gay-friendly businesses, we need to have as many people as possible on-board. Once we reach the tipping point, it becomes increasingly impossible for businesses to have an anti-gay agenda. $825 billion is a lot of money: A bailout-sized chunk of cash ready to be put behind equality-minded businesses. Communicating this vision is the most challenging thing facing us right now, because it applies to both our interactions with consumers and the companies that we are contacting about being featured on our site. We need the consumers to come back every day to check out the day's partner, and we need the companies to see the value in the market. Both sides have an interest in seeing those gay dollars at work: Consumers want to see them being used positively in the community, and businesses want to see them being spent on their products. UB is in charge of bringing this vision to both stakeholders.
7. Tell us more about your social responsibility component. Is this a crucial element for businesses engaging with LGBT consumers? How should a business communicate that or its advocacy efforts?
We give 10% of our net proceeds to a different community-chosen non-profit every quarter. This quarter it's Seattle's Lifelong AIDS Alliance. My experience with the Mormons during No on 8 drove this decision, because I saw first-hand what can be accomplished when an entire community gives 10% of their income. People with anti-gay agendas are already giving 10% to organizations that exist to reduce our status in the world, so if we don't also give 10% then they will win, every time. So we call our 10% commitment our "gay tithe," and are hoping to popularize the concept as we lead by example. 10% of $825 billion is $8.25 billion. To put that into perspective, that is enough money to put every single LGBT person in the USA through private college. If you consider what could be done with a simple 10% commitment, it's astounding.
With a community that has experienced long-term discrimination, and who is still not enjoying full equality, a socially responsible component can be a vital component to engaging LGBT consumers. It gives you another marketing tool, but it also demonstrates that you understand the challenges still facing the community. It sends a clear message that you empathize and are committed to doing something about it. It also differentiates you from any competition and places you more firmly in the community. Communicating your commitment to advocacy or a particular non-profit should be secondary to your main value proposition. You do not want to be seen as giving to a non-profit only for the good-will and self-interest of your company. You must come at it from the heart, and mention it in a tasteful but obvious way. You don't want to hide it, but you don't want it to be your primary selling point either. It should be an added benefit, something that makes the consumer choose you over your competition when faced with a decision. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't leverage the hell out of it on the back-end: Contact stakeholders, befriend members of the organization you have partnered with, use your commitment to the organization to recruit evangelists, ask the organization if you can participate in any events they have going on. For example, we will be MCing at a Lifelong AIDS Alliance rooftop benefit next week – a great opportunity for visibility that works even better due to our 10% commitment to that organization. We want to demonstrate that new entrepreneurs can build a successful and sustainable business while still giving 10%. It's not necessarily a gay thing, but a human being thing. We all have to be part of the solution, regardless of what we do for a living.
It has been more than 40 years since the Stonewall Riots, the definitive rallying point for the modern gay rights movement. A few years after the riots, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world, and in 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. On June 2, 2000, President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month” with June being chosen to remember the Stonewall riots.
As I’m sure you know, Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, or Pride, is intended to recognize the impact of the LGBT community on the world, with cities all over the world hosting parades, events, memorials and festivals.
This June marks the second time that President Obama has publicly designated this as LGBT Pride month, and the first time since former President Clinton did so in 2000.
More recently, we’ve seen the U.S. House of Representatives, along with the Senate Armed Services Committee, push forward the decision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. While the bill effectively repealing DADT still needs to pass the Senate, it’s a great step forward to end an antiquated, discriminatory and frankly, financially irresponsible policy. For a refresher on the financial implications of DADT, check out former Out Front blogger Caitlin Russell’s great article.
So my fellow allies and LGBT friends, let’s look to these as more reasons to have Pride this month. As we recognize and celebrate the great strides the LGBT community has made, let us not forget the amount of work left to be done on the journey to equality. We can’t stop striving, through our words and our actions, for the LGBT community to be afforded the same rights and responsibilities given to our straight counterparts.
As we move into the balmy days of June, I’d like to suggest that you take a moment to read some of the great Out Front coverage of the past (here AND here), and be sure to tune in this month for more updates and thoughts on Pride 2010.
Two months ago, I wrote about how cross-border interaction, namely the EuroPride, helps to accelerate the development of human and LGBT rights in certain countries. Today’s post deals with how reactionary thinking from the outside affects the public discourse of a society.
My last entry was about pedophilia and how we need to draw the line between it and some people’s erroneous correlations to male homosexuality. In Germany, a public discussion about this has been more or less absent despite several recently revealed cases of pedophilia.
Now this has changed and media does indeed report and discuss the issue. This is mostly due to the statements of the “secretary of state” of the Vatican, Cardinal Bertone. While visiting Chile, he claimed that there are many scientific findings supporting the thesis that homosexuality and pedophilia are indeed linked. Now I do not want to go into this issue again. My point is a different one this time.
The first German-speaking media to pick up Bertone’s statements were websites run by religious and conservative fundamentalists. From there Bertone’s statement spread to the mainstream. Now the interesting aspect is that many of these blogs are written in German but are located abroad. The blog kreuz.net is a premium example for a blog that is set up in the United States and operates from there for a German audience.
Why do they do that? It is mainly because these blogs face a problem with their legality. By all means, Germany is a liberal country with a far reaching freedom of speech, but as a reaction to our history we have established quite strict rules as to how far this right can go before it hurts democracy and the protection of minorities which is an integral part of democracy to our understanding. So in order to escape prosecution for defamation these blogs have moved to countries where they are protected by law, in particular the United States.
Lately, they have become quite successful with influencing the German discourse from time to time. They import ideas which are then discussed by mainstream media. You may argue that sooner or later the German media would have picked up the statement by Bertone anyway. You are probably right.
But the difference is that now you have a visible outlet in German language which argues against LGBT rights and people are directed to this outlet by the German mainstream media referencing it. So what should or could be done.
Obviously, we cannot restrict the Internet to an extent where we block sites we as a society do not appreciate. Apart from the inherent legal and technical problems, I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of banning ideas or the organization they are represented by from the public domain. I believe in openly engaging with these people and let arguments speak for themselves. I know that at some point certain behavior becomes unbearable for a society and the state has to act. But it is hard to draw the line and it is no easy thing to do.
Thus, we only really have one way to deal with these sites — openly engaging with these sites and using their websites as a platform for our arguments. Interestingly enough, the vast majority of comments on kreuz.net are now posted by opponents of their thoughts and stance. This is certainly a proof point that this strategy can be successful.
So a society might actually benefit from the “invasion of ideas,” even if they are reactionary. This is for the simple reason that a society which is used to liberal Human and LGBT rights sometimes forget the value of its achievements. Provocation from the outside is thus an ideal stimulus for a discussion and a reassurance that human rights and equality values are a good thing worth fighting for.
From this point of view, I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to kreuz.net and similar websites! Thank you for reminding us all that we came a long way and that it is worth defending our achievements.
What do you think? Would you like to join me in saying thank you?
The Out Front blog aims to stimulate thoughtful discussion about the communications issues that affect the LGBT community. Authored by members of Fleishman-Hillard’s Out Front team, the blog addresses the challenges and vast opportunities associated with marketing to and communicating with this growing audience. Areas of discussion include media coverage, advertising, entertainment and multicultural communications.
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Out Front was launched in 2006, continuing the agency’s tradition as a communications pioneer within the gay and lesbian community. Over the years, the blog has been home to some of the industry’s most respected bloggers, all of whom have covered “the full spectrum of LGBT communications” with unparalleled insight.
The views expressed here represent the individual opinions of the bloggers and do not necessarily represent the views of Fleishman-Hillard or its clients.
Yesterday, Google joined Cisco, Kimpton Hotels and the Gates Foundation in increasing pay to gays and lesbians to make up for the approximately $1,000 difference gay couples pay in domestic partnership taxes in comparison to their heterosexual counterparts. 
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