If during the month of June you haven’t seen a rainbow flag hanging in a store window or a brand logo painted in rainbow colors, then it’s safe to say you’ve probably been living under a rock. Brands are marketing to LGBTQ Americans and their allies now more than ever. Because of this, CivicScience looked into how these efforts from brands are resonating with consumers.
A June study of over 2,000 respondents found that while Americans are more likely to say that brands engaging in Pride Month makes no difference to them (42%), one-third actually say that they’re less likely to support brands that do this, and only a quarter support these efforts.
LGBTQ consumers are more than twice as likely to support these efforts, but there’s still a subset (20%) that’s against it.
Twenty-eight percent of consumers who are oppositional to pride-marketing feel this way because they believe brands are exploiting Pride Month to make more money. Another two-thirds of them don’t like it for other, perhaps more obvious reasons.
Interestingly, gender seems to be a stronger signifier than age for how people feel about this issue.
More specifically, women under 35 are the most supportive of pride-marketing, while men over 35 are the most oppositional. Men under 35 and women over 35 tend to be more neutral on the subject.
Generally speaking, it’s unclear whether or not a brand’s position on this issue could help or hurt its reputation. What we can say is that it’s strongly dependent on who the brand’s target consumer is… and if it happens to be women under 35, then pride-marketing is certainly going to resonate.
