Representing Fifty Shades Of Gay In The LGBTQ+ Marketplace – Forbes

The LGBTQ+ market is currently the fastest-growing consumer market in the U.S. and is on target to grow by millions in the U.S. in the next few years as GenZennials and Millennials identify as LGBTQ+ in more significant numbers than previous generations. Kantar Consulting and Hornet.com labeled the LGBTQ+ community, which includes the young queer people and identity-fluid individuals previously unseen and not catered to by marketers, “the $1 trillion blindspot.” Even though the buying power of LGBTQ+ people in 2016 totaled $1 trillion—which is on par with African-American and Hispanic consumers in America—ad revenue targeted at LGBTQ+ consumers remains only a fraction of the totals seen by other minority groups. Despite this market growth, according to a recent GLAAD study in collaboration with Procter & Gamble, a meager 1.8% of all advertising on mainstream media in 2020 represented LGBTQ+ people.

Despite the optics, given recent gains in social acceptance of LGBTQ+ lives, this lack of visibility may be less about bias and exclusion and more about inexperience, uncertainty, and risk aversion. Authentic representation of LGBTQ+ identities is a complex challenge for marketers. According to GLAAD’s Visibility Project, 78% of advertisers and 31% of agency executives agree that achieving adequate representation is a challenge due to “nuances” in the LGBTQ+ community. Representation across gender and sexual identity within the advertising industry is so outside the realm of consciousness that those numbers are impossible to find. This lack of representation within the advertising and brand-building industries points to a troubling culture gap between LGBTQ+ consumers and the marketers who are tasked with empathizing with their pain points and solving their problems. Marketers are aware that they do not have the cultural expertise to effectively target this consumer population and believe that it’s better to stay out of the game than to play it poorly. Within the ranks of the advertising industry, 81% of executives and 41% of agency leaders believe inauthentic depictions of LGBTQ+ consumers carry a stronger risk of a backlash than no representation at all. Brands will have a particularly large price to pay if LGBTQ+ consumers see them as “rainbow-washing” or “virtue-signaling”—slapping rainbows on corporate logos and making statements supportive of the LGBTQ+ community without taking any real action—which often occurs during this LGBTQ+ Pride month of June. Young LGBTQ consumers, especially, are not afraid to loudly call out brands on social media for “co-opting Pride” for profit.

Given the lack of expertise and representation that exists within the advertising industry, it is not surprising that 66% of LGBTQ+ individuals said they do not see their lifestyle represented in advertising, and 51% say they wish they could see more advertising with families like theirs (Horbelt, 2018). 

In this first of a series of articles designed to provide marketers with insight into the complex LGBTQ+ consumer population, let’s begin by identifying what every marketer must know to avoid reductionism, negligence, or misrepresentation that have marred many previous efforts to tap the $1T Blindspot. 

• The LGBTQ+ population is growing rapidly. An estimated 5.6% of Americans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, according to a new Gallup report. That’s up from 4.5% in 2017, the last year polling on the issue was conducted by the organization. 
• The LGBTQ+ population is not one consumer market. The “diverse by design” membership of the LGBTQ+ community, that evolved through decades of the LGBTQ+ social movement to maximize power and influence, defies the segmentation principles underlying its designation as a singular “LGBTQ+ market.” At its simplest demographic levels, the LGBTQ+ population includes individuals who vary based on sex/gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Designating the entire LGBTQ+ population as a market segment assumes that every member of the segment possesses a common set of preferences and behaviors. Despite the proclamations of eager LGBTQ+ agencies, there is no singular LGBTQ+ “market.”
• Representing one letter does not represent all LGBTQ+. Since the dawn of the politically-motivated “Dream Market” in the 1990s, white, affluent, gay males could expect to see themselves in gay print magazines and online portals, in national ad campaigns in these media, and, increasingly, in mainstream media, particularly television and news media, while advertisers left the rest of the LGBTQ+ population, including all people of color, out in the cold. The Ls, Bs, Ts, and Qs were expected to see themselves represented by advertising to white gay males and be thankful for the visibility. Alternately, marketers were unapologetically pursuing the gay male dollar and had little regard for the rest. However, as societal stigmatism continues to erode, and as political battles for civil rights become less definitive of the LGBTQ population, individuals within the LGBTQ population have distinct identities that they now expect marketers to authentically represent.
• Clarify advocacy and representation In recent years, some advertisers have shifted away from “representing” all LGBTQ+ consumers with images of gay males towards advertising that highlights the struggles of transgender individuals. This is necessary visibility and social change work as 2020 saw at least 37 transgender and gender non-conforming people violently killed, more than any other year since HRC began tracking this data in 2013 (Roberts 2020). However, while companies that take a stand for social justice will be appreciated by LGBTQ+ individuals, this advertising may not be considered personally representative by the vast majority of LGBTQ+ individuals. Marketers must clarify the strategic objectives of their advertising with a clear understanding of how advocacy and representation require distinct activation.
• Queer women (LBQ) are the largest population but continue to be neglected. For decades, the advertising industry has neglected female members of the LGBTQ+ population with a bias towards gay males; this even though females are more likely than males to identify as LGBTQ+. In the recent Gallup Poll, women are 30% more likely than men to identify as LGBTQ+ (6.4% to 4.9%), and over 70% are more likely to say they are bisexual (4.3% to 2.5%). Within the marketplace, lesbians remain one of the least well-represented consumers in advertising. Despite the fact that a greater number of lesbian couples have children than do gay men, gay men actually tend to be more frequently portrayed with families compared to lesbian couples.
• Generational differences in LGBTQ+ identity are real. While the vast majority of Gen-X (76%) and Baby Boomers (84%) are only attracted to the opposite sex, Gen-Z (52%) shows an almost even split between those who are attracted exclusively to the opposite sex and those who are not. Increasing numbers of people per successive generation identify as LGBTQ+, including a high 31% of Centennials, compared to only 8% of Boomers in the 2021 Gallup poll. According to a recent Ipsos report, Among the progressing generations, more LGBTQ+ people are choosing to identify as “fluid” rather than “non-fluid” (meaning gay or lesbian) as members of Gen-Z are far more likely than previous generations to be plurisexual or attracted to more than one sex. Forty-six percent of Gen-Z and 34% of Millennials express attraction to both sexes or identify as plurisexual, embracing identities of sexual fluidity that create a stark contrast to the 14 – 22% of older generations who do likewise. As with their sexual identities, young people are moving away from a binary representation of gender, a significant shift from previous generations. Gen-Z and Millennials also have far less binary ideas of gender than older generations and expect this to be replicated in the marketplace. According to Fusion magazine’s Massive Millennial Poll, 50% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 agreed with the statement “Gender is a spectrum, and some people fall outside conventional categories.” Younger generations appear more likely to identify in terminology that falls outside those previously traditional binaries and weave together their sexual and gender identities in a manner that is distinct from previous generations. Gen-X, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation developed their identities in an environment of societal stigmatism that limited identity exploration and expression.
• Gender flexing isn’t new While an increasing number of younger LGBTQ+ Americans are living out loud in the fluid and dynamic space between all of these constructs, in reality, LGBTQ+ people have always tended to gender flex. Early research in the field dating back to Freud’s Inversion Theory in 1910 described gay men and lesbians as “sexual inverts”—implying that homosexuality was in some sense the reversal of “normal” sex. Research in the 1990s provided a more nuanced perspective on the intersectionality of sexual identity and gender identity. Gay males and lesbians tend to hold no less of their own-sex traits than do heterosexuals. As such, rather than Freud’s binary notion of “gender-bending,” researchers found that LGBTQ+ people tend to “gender flex.” While gay men tend to be more feminine than heterosexual men, they are no less masculine than them; similarly, while lesbians tend to be more masculine than heterosexual women, they are no less feminine. Hence, while Gen-Z and Millennials tend to use labels that proclaim the fluidity of their gender identity, Gen-X and Baby Boomers primarily label themselves “gay” or “lesbian” and “man” or “woman” but gender flex in practice. Most likely, older generations express their gender through clothing, mannerisms, personal style, and other means of codification rather than by adopting a specific gender and sexuality identification and label.

To be LGBTQ+ is to embrace diversity, reject social constructs, and face adversity with resilience. To represent this authentically, marketers will need to commit to doing the work involved in understanding the complexity of fluid but labeled identities within the new LGBTQ+ marketplace while honoring the sensibilities of older generations of LGBTQ+ consumers. They will need to question the patriarchal lens that has driven the first four decades of the “Dream Market,” recognize that it is not a market but a population with a range of segmentation possibilities, and understand that visibility without authentic representation isn’t good enough.  

To truly represent and resonate with LGBTQ+ consumers, advertisers have to fight, walk, or dance (#can’tcancelpride) in the shoes of all LGBTQ+ consumers rather than just chasing the pot of gold at the end of the gay male or, more recently, binary rainbow.