Purpose Washing Pride
During June corporations fly the rainbow flag in support of the LGBTQ+ community. But, even before Pride Month began, marketers knew—or should have known—this year was going to be different.
Bud Light & Dylan Mulvaney — The Brouhaha Bellwether
In March, Bud Light collaborated with Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer. What started as a limited social media promotion turned into an all-guns-blazing attack on the brewery by conservatives (see this Kid Rock video if you don’t know what I’m talking about).
The confusion stemmed, in part, from Bud drinkers believing that a special can with Mulvaney’s face was going to grace the shelves of their local grocery store or bodega. It wasn’t. It was a promotional can made for her and her alone.
Personalized Bud Light can that conservatives believed would be on store shelves.
Dylan Mulvaney celebrating March Madness with Bud Light.
If that wasn’t enough to be a head’s up, the ACLU is tracking 491 bills attacking the LGBTQ community. While these are concentrated in 16 states, there is proposed legislation in almost every state. Bills getting the most press attention have been anti-trans bills and anti-drag bills, which started in Tennessee providing a template for more than a dozen other states to follow suit.
How come marketers are getting this so damn wrong?
Truly, I don’t know.
Cause marketing has been around since the 1970s. It started with Chrysler chairman, Lee Iaccoca, hawking for Amex in support of the Statue of Liberty Restoration. You might also remember P&G’s long-standing relationship with Special Olympics.
Over time the strategy name has changed (marketers now call this purpose marketing), but the action remains the same: connect a cause to a brand. In the 1980s companies pushed for economic efficiencies, and cause marketing moved out of public relations and into marketing departments. This change had an important effect—the focus was moved from the cause to the corporate bottom line. Plus, companies had the added benefit of being able to write the advertising off as a business expense. (See Compassion, Inc. for more of this history and the changing impact of cause marketing.)
By the 2000s as social institutions had less impact on our identities, brands moved in to fill the void. When brands became more important identity markers, consumers increasingly looked for brands to be embedded with values. Today, younger generations expect true commitment from brands, not performative allyship.
Given that marketers live with this knowledge daily and given the current political environment, there was no reason why brands weren’t prepared for the backlash.
Purpose vs Purpose Washing
True purpose has social impact. MAC cosmetics creates the VIVA GLAM lipstick every year and the sales of the item—all of it, not just the profits—go to HIV/AIDS charities. This campaign is on-going (commitment), all sales are donated (transparency), and more than $500 million was raised for gay and now women’s grantees (impact).
Purpose washing is when companies pretend to care about a cause but are only demonstrating that commitment to assuage customers and help their bottom line. This is why a company like Target didn’t succeed. Yes, they were the victims of coordinated attacks by right-wing groups. But their support for the LGBTQ community was paper thin. You can see this when you go to their DEI page and the only articles that appear are about Pride month.
Make it stand out
Target displaying Pride merchandise. The retailer pulled items from its shelves after attacks online and in stores.
The North Face
The North Face teamed up with drag queen, Pattie Gonia, to promote their Summer of Pride campaign.
The video was launched on Instagram, and it does everything Pride marketing should. It proudly presents the community. It is tongue-in-cheek which is fundamental to drag. It plays on the idea of being out—both in the gay sense and being outdoors.
The ad works for the brand and it promotes the community.
And, when right-wingers came after the campaign and Pattie Gonia, the company came out in full support of this initiative.
What brands should do
Brands working with the LGBTQ community can do the following:
If your company is a retail establishment, hire more security.
Give scripts to call centers so they know how to respond to angry callers
Have the PR team ready with a response. North Face did this beautifully.
If you work with a drag queen or trans person, work with your social media team to protect these influencers and artists.
No one has ever said that a company MUST participate in Pride. But, they can support the community without screaming about it.
Provide partner benefits
Give grants to LGBTQ causes without tying the funds to the sales of a product
Donate to political candidates that are LGBTQ- friendly.
After 50 years of cause marketing, brands have no excuse for being half-way about any social justice issue they support. It’s time to do better. Not just because it will be good for the brand, but because it will be good for all of us.