Untold Millions

Secret Truths About Marketing to Gay and Lesbian Consumers

Grant Lukenbill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317706007
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The first definitive book on researching gay and lesbian market behavior, Untold Millions: The Truth About Gay and Lesbian Consumers in America will help marketers, advertisers, and public relations managers learn how to successfully market and research products for gay and lesbian consumers. Author Grant Lukenbill, a leading consultant on the cultural and motivational aspects of gay and lesbian consumer behavior, provides you with important procedures, research, and guidelines that businesses today are following in order to develop successful marketing strategies to this growing target audience. From this updated and revised edition, you'll receive current methods, new data, and sure-fire strategies that will help your company break into this market segment, satisfy intended customers, and boost company sales.Providing you with statistics and data from the first market research study of its kind, the Yankelovich MONITOR's Gay and Lesbian Perspective, this book gives you suggestions on what things need to be done within your company before planning your marketing strategies. You'll benefit from ideas and suggestions in Untold Millions that will help you create consumer-driven market strategies to gays and lesbians, including:

• recognizing that there are families and relationships in society that are not heterosexual
• acknowledging age differences and the needs of particular generations
• attracting customers by circulating non-discriminatory hiring policies through press releases and company memos, installing domestic partner health care plans, and identifying cultural reference points to which gays and lesbians can relate
• remembering that many gays and lesbians may look at business with cynicism and doubt and may be quick to interpret actions as victimization
• referring to the Wall Street project before addressing gay- and lesbian-specific issues
• focusing on the areas of individuality, a need for association, and the need to alleviate stress
• reserving a post script in your direct marketing letter to remind consumers of your company's domestic partner benefits or if you support a particular gay/lesbian interest organizationUntold Millions contains advice on several other topics, such as corporate legal issues, public information trends and analysis, and changes in gay and lesbian communities to give familiarize you with your target audience. With Untold Millions, you'll be able to develop appealing marketing or advertising campaigns that will satisfy the highly profitable and emerging gay and lesbian consumer market.

Chapter 1

You Can Bank on It

Marketing has changed. Things are different now, and so are attitudes.

Today, lesbian role models speak for tennis shoe companies, computer manufacturers, and credit card companies. Gay rock stars speak out against unprotected sex. Parents and grandparents are carrying the message of tolerance and acceptance of gay youth to our nation’s schools, churches, and synagogues. Even President Clinton spoke at a televised gay and lesbian fund-raising dinner in Washington, hosted by the Human Rights Campaign.

At the New York ceremony of the 1998 Media Awards hosted by GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), celebrities such as Sigourney Weaver, k.d. lang, Mario Thomas, Phil Donahue, and Harvey Weinstein made presentations. They were followed by Tony Bennett, who sang “People” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The star-studded event was also sponsored by big corporate names such as Fannie Mae, AT&T, Sony, IBM, Wells Fargo, and America Online.

Sound acceptable?

Not long ago it sounded silly to many. At least that was the impression among certain Madison Avenue marketing leaders when I suggested in this book’s first edition that a “bullish, fast-moving train of economic momentum” was coming thunderously down the track, and that it meant “invigorating market opportunities for businesses and social institutions—both large and small, rural and urban.”¹

That was then. Things are clearer now. “Let Them Wed” demanded an Economist cover story complete with two grooms in tuxedos perched on top of a wedding cake.

“Gay Images, Once Kept Out, Are Out Big Time” proclaimed the headline of The New York Times Styles section shortly thereafter. And in the past twenty-four months, dozens of industry trade publications including Advertising Age, Marketing, Business Week, Demographics, and others have run similar articles confirming that what was once touted merely as trend, has since become commonplace.

Indeed, things are now crystal clear; the gay and lesbian cultural chic of the early 1990s was not a flash in the pan. It was the serious emergence of a new marketplace phenomenon—solid, multifaceted, and growth-oriented.

Today gay and lesbian consumerism has come to be acknowledged—even respected—for its impact on the commercial buying habits of heterosexuals. And though these changes are recent, plenty of gay and lesbian consumers saw the train coming long ago.

Indeed, for them, the signs were everywhere. Perhaps the first real glimpses occurred when heterosexual men’s erotic publications began playing up “lesbian sensitivity” in the 1970s. By the late 1980s ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) not only began getting national exposure, it became a defining catalyst for helping to draw serious, substantive attention to the nation’s drug research problems and looming health care crisis.

Those who were skeptical about ACT UP tactics tended to also be those most cynical about the emerging legitimacy of a national gay and lesbian market force. In retrospect, it seems that perhaps more than a few in the American business world were embarrassingly held hostage by Hollywood’s original version of who gay people were “supposed to be.”

Fortunately, much has changed. What is interesting, though, is that long before debates over same-sex marriage, Boy Scouts, Ellen, Will & Grace, or the reemergence of sexual orientation conversion therapy, there was always an economic motivation behind the depiction and positioning of unrealistic homosexual imagery in the commercial marketplace. Basically, it was because there was always a payoff—albeit at the expense of gay and lesbian people (the mass marketing of gay and lesbian stereotypes in television and film all through the twentieth century is well-documented).²

For instance, just after the beginning of the twentieth century during the early years of (what is now called) the mental health field, psychiatrists seized upon the opportunity to pontificate about the “sickness” of gay and lesbian people—even legitimizing their stature by making supposedly learned arguments about the dangers of their serving in the military.³ Of course, that problem is still with us, but the days of finding an automatic payoff at the expense of gays and lesbians have fallen behind us. With the exception of the Conservative Right’s disinforming manipulations, the demand for archaic stereotypes of lesbians and gay men as mental misfits, perverts, and moral deviants has evaporated as well. The days of an exclusively heterosexual model of commercial consumption in free enterprise are dead.

Today, a dynamic infusion of opportunity for American marketing continues to invade the entire commercial spectrum—one that is more historic than the appearance of gay male soap opera walk-on characters and more relevant than pictures of nude lesbians in straight male erotica: the power of the domestic gay and lesbian consumer dollar and all that it represents. This power can mean increased revenue for the business you own or work for. It can solidify a shrinking sales database in a company’s direct marketing efforts. It can prop up a brand’s sagging performance in highly competitive geographic areas. It can even bring credibility to a corporate image in need of one or make a company more attractive for prospective employees, partners and associates, lucrative government contracts—even mergers.

In some industries more than others, a sparkling presence has become all too apparent—one that even some gays and lesbians are completely surprised by. And it has grown right out of their own community: a gay and lesbian cultural and consumer revolution. This revolution is resulting in a seismic shift in popular culture. The effects are already proving to be unavoidable by every large corporation and company with a product to sell or an employee to hire. According to Stephanie Blackwood, a former associate publisher with The Advocate, the oldest national gay and lesbian news publication in America, “people [in business] who acknowledge the moral obligation to the gay community are the ones who will ultimately be regarded as the leaders.”

What is currently happening is a wholesale change in the spending patterns of millions of American consumers—gay and lesbian as well as heterosexual. And for some companies, their entire way of doing business will alter significantly as a direct result of gay and lesbian buying power and its indirect commercial influence on their existing customer base.

Sound far-fetched? Consider what’s been going on recently.

“Big Business Boosts Effort to Win Share of Gay Market” read The Wall Street Journal banner headline after a recent Gay and Lesbian Business Expo at the Jacob Javitz Convention Center in New York City “where half of the 225 exhibitors were mainstream companies, up from about one-third of a much smaller group last year said Steven Levenberg, show manager.”⁴

At American Airlines, Rick Cirillo, Director of Sales for the Gay and Lesbian Community, says “We [at American Airlines] are happy to be leaders in this area; we allow our gay and lesbian customers to obtain bereavement fares [reduced-fare flights in the event of the death of a domestic partner], and our frequent flyer miles can be used between gay and lesbian domestic partners” (a benefit still only available to married heterosexual couples on other airlines).

Rapid changes regarding gay and lesbian issues in the workplace as well as the marketplace are now apparent in most large telephone companies. According to Bob Baublitz, Market Manager of Ethnic & Premium Marketing & Sales, at Bell Atlantic, “to remain competitive, we have to attract the best and brightest people, we want to be open and acknowledging all our employees. And I think that when you look at gay and lesbian [business issues] from several perspectives, the first being national exposure, the second employee benefits, and the third community sponsorships, we [as a company] are in front.”

Indeed, many companies are now out in front, taking the lead, and positioning themselves for the future.

Gay and lesbian buying power is such a commercial and economic force that it is affecting regular decision making at Kodak, IBM, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hill and Knowlton Public Relations, American Express, Nike, Calvin Klein, Revlon, AT&T, Time Warner, Continental Airlines, Home Box Office, Merrill Lynch, and IKEA. These and other companies are now taking advantage of all the opportunities that exist when corporations pay better attention to sexual diversity in the workplace and in the consumer marketplace. And those companies that get out there first, without hesitation, stand to gain big.

Perhaps that’s why more and more marketers from Madison Avenue to Silicon Valley are discussing and negotiating these exciting new realms—from hospital corporations and health clubs in the South to the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles and American Marketing Association in New York City. In the recording industry strong niche sales among lesbian consumers can no longer be denied. According to author and New York radio personality Vicki Starr, one of the first out lesbians in American radio, “For years in the country music business there was this belief that women country music artists don’t sell. Well, now those people are realizing otherwise.”

The word is out with all the television networks, with QVC, Home Shopping Network, Miller Beer, the Republican Party, and the animated halls of Disney; it is impacting media buying for Naya, Evian, and Perrier; it is even stirring within the Catholic Church, affecting politics and rhetoric in the inner sanctums of the Vatican.

Changes in television are apparent in both cable and broadcast realms. “Home Box Office has been top-notch in every way in terms of policies; they are very understanding when it comes to benefits for gay and lesbian employees,” says Richard Mayora, account executive for HBO.

And according to Joe Decola, a producer with NBC News, “We are certainly covering more gay and lesbian news now than we were five years ago—in fact, dramatically more. And I would even say somewhat more than just three years ago. In the country overall, there’s a cultural change taking place, there are just more people out today—out in media and in the marketplace. That’s certainly the case at NBC News—and it all contributes to a growing sense of awareness.”

Awareness indeed. Senior-level marketing executives make the same comments at CNN, ABC, and MTV. Savvy business leaders everywhere now agree, gay and lesbian marketing segments are here to stay. And so is the competition for the brand loyalty, the cultural relationships, and of course, the profits.

According to former J. Walter Thompson partner and associate research director, Tony Incalcatera:

Gay and lesbian consumers have come to expect a lot of solicitation from American business. This is now requiring that really smart marketers—meaning cost-efficient and effective marketers—are going to have to start building and helping to transmit specifically focused messages that reach the greatest cross section of consumers as well as other minorities. Not always an easy thing to do. But if advertisers forgo sexual inclusivity, they are going to find themselves in an upstream battle and eventually facing overly diluted brand loyalty.

This book presents the first large-scale accounting of contemporary gay and lesbian consumer culture in America. It provides a fundamental program for understanding gay and lesbian consumers, who they are, and how they differ from the heterosexual mainstream.

It is about how businesses are becoming stronger, more ethical, and more profitable by acknowledging and appealing to an exciting new consumer who is eager to buy but quick to see through smoke and mirrors, hollow rhetoric, and misguided marketing. Untold millions of dollars in industry profits are now at stake for American businesses that position themselves to appeal to these highly specialized consumer market segments. By the turn of the century gross sales in products and services aimed directly at gay and lesbian consumers will be measured in the billions.

According to Steve Bolerjack, co-founder of the gay and lesbian marketing group at Hill and Knowlton Public Relations in New York City, “Businesses today would be wise to begin targeting the gay and lesbian community as a viable market that deserves consideration in the overall mix of business and market planning.”

This advice is also echoed by Michael Adams, senior editor for Successful Meetings, a trade magazine that follows American business meetings and incentive travel management: “People [in business] are shifting their attitudes. Diversity is now a big issue and the good news is that there are movements going on to include sexual orientation language and consciousness among meetings industry professionals.”

Commenting on a recent speaking engagement where he spoke on gay and lesbian issues for the International Association of Exhibit Managers, Adams said, “Giving that [kind of a speech] would have been unheard-of in the 1980s.” Yet it was in the early 1980s that gay and lesbian consumers were on the cutting edge of the information superhighway, already communicating over the Internet through soc.motss (Members of the Same Sex), one of the very first on-line bulletin board discussion groups.

Today, things are clearly different. As citizens, gay people know that businesses should be up to speed on sexual orientation issues in the workplace as a matter of moral policy as well as competitive strategy. Only the marketers heeding this call will successfully begin convincing gay and lesbian consumers why they should stay loyal to a company and its brands. The road map for how to do this is in your hands.

Recognize what is Changing

To begin to understand gay and lesbian consumers is to begin to understand how they have been economically closeted within a marketplace that has been, for the most part, heterosexually oriented for much of this century.

Only in the past twenty years (and especially during the past five) has a truly sophisticated sense of awareness about image and image messaging begun to emerge in marketing with regard to sexual identity. The boundaries continue to change as more companies learn how to push the envelope of commercial aesthetics and social tolerance in pursuit of wider market shares within their respective industries. This dynamic is true across the board: from fashion, advertising, film and television, and the science of direct marketing, to the positioning of beer brands, recorded music, and presidential election campaigns.

America is in a golden era of gay and lesbian visibility. Gay and lesbian Americans are no longer willing to exist within social closets; they are also no longer willing to conform to the confines of yesterday’s patriarchal-based marketing paradigms. Erin McHugh, an advertising creative director with Franklin Spier Agency in New York City, agrees, stating: “I think it’s fair to say that the history of advertising and marketing in general has been largely centered around heterosexual archetypes.”

That is what is changing. Today gay and lesbian people are out— not only as individuals—but as families, people of faith, teachers, celebrity entertainers, and youth activists. They are also becoming much more informed as consumers, as well as employees and investors. And they are learning to expect companies to communicate a sense of awareness and comprehensive understanding of who they are and who they are not.

These important developments require contemporary-minded marketing professionals—and corporate leaders in general—to begin to nurture the amplification of sexual identity within the landscape of commercial imagery. In other words, to allow a wider, more realistic range of America’s spiritual and emotional character to be explored in relationship to sexual orientation, personal identity, and how they relate to product marketing.

Ultimately, this requires business ...