Pride month; worthy celebration or PR moment?

[Robyn]

I recently learned that June has been designated as pride month in the United States. While there have been other months and days designated to different sub-topics in the LGBT+ community, I have noticed an increase in disgust against companies and organizations acknowledging the month via temporary logo or other brand identifying modification to include a variant of the rainbow or other LGBT+ symbolism. This disgust is often suggesting that the motivation behind this movement (from businesses and some organizations) is money or publicity, rather than a genuine interest in supporting the community and fighting for their rights.

www.wired.com/story/lgbtq-pride-consumerism/

While certainly each major US and worldwide holiday is observed by most corporations for the purpose of appropriate product advertisement (costumes and decorations for Halloween, Christmas trees for Christmas, valentine cards for Valentines Day, etc), these more personal holidays, observances and celebrations seem to be reacted to more negatively. Such as Memorial Day, recently celebrated by the United States, I've seen often critiqued by many on social media as an excuse to promote retail sales and BBQ grilling. Likewise, I am noting a favorable amount of people addressing their concern about legitimate company support for LGBT+ pride.

Do you feel that companies take too much advantage of these months for profit and PR points? Do you appreciate the month of June being observed as Pride month? Do you live in a non US/Western country that does not promote these ideas or has them implemented and thus no need to force demands for more equality?

Those who knew my younger self ten years ago may have remembered suffering from my well meaning but ignorant pleads against homosexuality and pride as a threat to religion or even the public. Ten plus years have passed, and I have found myself actually identifying in the community, ironically. Now with a new perspective of the struggles these LGBT+ people experience, i am grateful for changes in the law to allow gay marriage and defend discrimination in the school, work and some religious worship. I now smile when i see friends share encouraging and supporting messages of hope for those who identify against the traditional standard gender/sexual identity spectrum.

I also do believe that some companies likely take advantage of this month to suggest they support the community, even for the PR points. In 2019 we are seeing more rights given, less bigotry tolerated and any good business would be mindful to stay up with the globally accepted standards when appropriate. With that said, I do wish that we could see more genuine support rather than just a monthly contribution. I notice this with some companies on Earth Day / the month of April. They claim commitment to preserving our earth and environment, yet often are not making actually changes to their production lines, factories or front end stores. Regardless, I hope that these trends can influence companies for good further down the road.

[Artemis]

It depends on how you look at it I suppose. On one hand, businesses getting in on the Pride movement reflects a change in the times, where being LGBT is so much more accepted that companies will actually advertise to you and are willing to take the hit from anti-LGBT people. They see that as an acceptable trade-off. On the other hand, if you're actually part of the LGBT community, it kind of sucks to feel like a commodity that companies only care about now that it's deemed "safe" to market to. Many companies still struggle with fair and equal treatment of their own LGBT employees but don't hesitate to create marketing campaigns to get some more money.

This isn't a big shock in the end; capitalism's gonna capitalism, and I'm not sure I expect big companies to take moral stances. They'll do what they think is profitable, and if you're an optimist, the fact that marketing to the LGBT community is seen as profitable means we've made progress. And part of marketing is making your company seem personable and cool. Just look at Wendy's Twitter account. But I think we'd do well to remember that in the end these are still big companies who are in it for the money, not people looking out for your interests.

(Some exceptions do exist, and some companies donate proceeds of sales to organizations, etc, etc. But mostly, see above.)

[Søren]

I do think for some companies they are just using it to promote themselves, others you do get impression they care about the cause though. On tv (what I seen in UK) there seems to be a spike in showing LGBT+ families, some company making more a point of it where others just show them without drawing any attention to it at all and have done months before Pride. Its nice to not be too cynical about them, more the ones that just seem to do it for Pride month like being nice to different people is a once a year thing.