Paloma JacomeWe all know pride season separates the professionals from the amateurs in marketing— only few are appropriately championing brand purpose in alignment with Pride. This year’s Pride season in particular we experienced what culture is calling a ‘quiet pride’ with brands practicing ‘pride-hushing'. Amongst the social justice buzz words, one isn’t addressed nearly enough in the marketing world and that is ‘queerbaiting’.
What is Queerbaiting?
So what is ‘queerbaiting’ exactly? According to the consensus that is Wikipedia, ‘queerbaiting’ is a “marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but do not depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ representation. The purpose of this method is to attract ("bait") a queer or straight ally audience with the suggestion or possibility of relationships or characters that appeal to them, while not alienating homophobic members of the audience or censors by actually portraying queer relationships.” Queerbaiting is essentially a marketing tactic that hints to the LGBTQ+ community but does not authentically represent queerness. As a marketing tactic, queerbaiting can be utilized to garner support or campaign involvement for brands, media productions, or political campaigns by appealing to the LGBTQ+ community and its allies, often without making a genuine commitment to representation or advocacy.
Queerbaiting in Context
Queerbaiting occurs in various contexts, including but not limited to:
- Television shows and movies: When characters are hinted at being LGBTQ+ without any explicit confirmation or development of that storyline.
- Advertising and marketing: When companies use LGBTQ+ imagery, symbols, or themes in their advertising campaigns without supporting the community or having any genuine connection to it.
- Music and celebrity culture: When artists or celebrities suggest they might be part of the LGBTQ+ community through ambiguous statements or behaviors to attract attention and support from LGBTQ+ fans.
- Social media and influencer content: When influencers or content creators use LGBTQ+ hashtags, participate in LGBTQ+ trends, or post suggestive content to attract followers from the community without any real representation or advocacy
- Product releases and branding: When brands release limited-edition products with rainbow colors or LGBTQ+ symbols during Pride Month without contributing to LGBTQ+ causes or supporting the community year-round.
- Political campaigns: When politicians or political groups make vague promises or statements in support of LGBTQ+ rights to gain votes or support without any intention of following through with concrete actions or policies.
Worst Examples of Brands Queerbaiting
Disney
It should be no surprise that Disney holds a special place for the LGBTQ+ community’s heart and it makes complete sense for Disney to merchandise pride but their execution is generic, quiet, and simply rainbow-washes already popular Disney characters. Disney carelessly misses the opportunity to speak to their queer fanbase by not featuring some of Disney’s favorite queer icons like Elsa or Ursula the Sea Witch. There’s literally entire directories available online of queer-coded Disney characters… so no excuse, Disney!
Budlight
This one just seems like an unsupervised brainstorming session. Not only does it not make sense as an acronym, it’s obvious Bud Light did not have a LGBTQ+ inclusive team to bring light to the fact that beer is not the most popular drink of choice in the community. Instead, Bud Light could have leveraged the hard seltzer trend that many beer brands are desperately attempting to diversify their product offerings with more fun, fruity flavor ranges.
Toyota
Historically, Toyota has a reputation for being a company that actively donates to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. Yet, Toyota’s corporate communications proudly celebrate Pride month, even going as far as contributing to sponsoring Pride celebrations. This inconsistency is exactly how a brand can be accused of queerbaiting.
Best Examples of Brands Aligning Purpose with Pride:
Skittles
When it comes to Pride, Skittles has mastered the rainbow. Every Pride month we see brands queerbait by rainbow-washing, but during the peak of brand activism in 2020, Skittles decided to go against the rainbow grain. Skittles gave the rainbow back to Pride because “only one rainbow matters during pride.” This brilliant Pride packaging not only combats rainbow-washing accusations through a meaningful message, but is also attention-grabbing by differentiating from the rainbow themed crowd in an unpredictably gray way for a brand with rainbow roots.
For this year’s Pride, Skittles has partnered up with GLAAD on their annual “Pride Pack” in which each purchase will donate $1 to the media organization to continue sharing stories from the LGBTQ+ community. To further support the community during Pride month, the Skittles website becomes a community building meetup point.
Absolut
For more than 40 years, Absolut has been an ally brand to the LGBTQ+ community. From being the first sponsor on Rupaul’s Drag Race to collaborating with iconic queer artists like Keith Haring and Andy Warhol in the 80’s, Absolut has been leading with Pride long before others. Over the decades, Absolut has come to an admirable point with how they align their brand purpose to Pride– articulating their contribution to helping build queer community in nightlife. Absolut’s finest example of brand activism is its ‘Out and Open’ campaign— an initiative that uses the power of storytelling to preserve LBGTQ+ bars, historically safe spaces for the queer community, that are constantly being threatened in the midst of political uncertainty. The storytellers are community members that orally share their experiences and with each listen, Absolut donates $1 to NGLCC, the business voice of the LGBTQ community, to help LGBTQ+-owned businesses like bars thrive— not die.
LEGO
Compared to the other brands in this list, LEGO does not have a longstanding history of being a Pride champion but they do deserve credit for their Everyone is Awesome LEGO set. By centering the progress Pride flag for the product, LEGO successfully shows their pride as a brand by promoting the true essence of Pride– inclusivity. Created by a queer employee in 2021 who wished they had a toy set like this growing up, the Everyone is Awesome set caused quite the controversy being a children’s toy. Yet despite the backlash, LEGO is proud to continue promoting the Pride-inspired product this Pride season.
MAC
Since being founded in the 80s, another veteran ally is MAC Cosmetics. During a time when the AIDS epidemic was tragically attacking the LGTBQ+ community, MAC’s co-founders launched the iconic Viva Glam campaign, which is recently celebrating 30 years of Viva Glam! Since its launch in 1994, the Viva Glam campaign has contributed over $500 million to serving people impacted by HIV/AIDs. For Pride this year, MAC has featured transgender pop star, Kim Petras, as the face for the lipstick that saves lives.
It’s a delicate balance as a brand to be proud on purpose. We all have a lot to learn from those that do activate their brand purpose and do it well during Pride month.
At Grounded, we’re experts at helping brands activate their purpose and accelerate their impact - find out more here!
Sources: https://www.fastcompany.com/91133393/why-microsoft-absolut-vodka-and-skittles-pride-activations-actually-worked https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/06/05/companies-blasted-for-supporting-pride-last-year-like-nike-and-target-appear-to-pull-back-in-2024/ https://www.retaildive.com/news/pride-month-marketing-turmoil/718530/ https://www.health.com/mind-body/lgbtq-health/queerbaiting https://bird1411.medium.com/how-companies-are-queerbaiting-and-only-practice-nominal-actisvism-10fd663709a2 https://mashable.com/article/brands-pride-2019 https://hypeinsight.com/when-good-intentions-go-wrong-brands-that-flopped-during-pride-month/ https://www.studioid.com/springboard/best-in-class/celebrating-pride-month-3-standout-brand-campaigns-of-2024/
