ILoveGay.NET

by Alfred Verhoeven

Diverse or woke?

It seems clear now that diversity is now almost mandatory in your marketing plan or media mix – it is contemporary, socially responsible and also good for your company culture and your bottom line (pun intended). In my PhD research I developed the following formula:

Representation –> visibility –> normalization –> tolerance –> acceptance –> respect.

This formula describes the importance that minorities have in diversity in marketing and communication, whether it concerns women, ethnic minorities or LGBT+.

On the other side of the table are the brands and organizations: they have no fewer than 4 reasons to put diversity into practice, plus two bonus reasons. So win-win?

But how do you, as a marketer or brand, deal with cultural sensitivities? How do you prevent “get woke, go broke” from becoming a reality? To start with the latter, don’t worry, it’s not going to happen, that disdainful attitude about “woke” comes from the last remnant of ignoramuses who believe that marketing should only be about the product and that companies should refrain from social engagement. That may have been the case in 1974, but not anymore. Get woke, but do it right.

Three examples of clips that recently went viral but had a cultural impact and sparked religious outrage.

Mexico

The first has to do with Mexico and came from Doritos last year: “It’s never too late to be who you are”.

Doritos had a somewhat dubious reputation in Marketing the Rainbow (lots of gay vague and gay tease over the years, see separate case study). But in 2020 they had promised not to pinkwash by only hooking up to a Pride Parade or LGBT-themed day, but to pay continuous attention to rainbow diversity with #PrideAllYear. Pure branding, where the product is sometimes casually shown for only a few seconds. For All Saints’ Day (November 2) we saw a Pixar-esque video about a family in the cemetery, where Uncle Albert has his post-mortem coming out. The materfamilias receives this with joy, after which the whole family is happy.

The video was viewed on their own channel even more than “The best gift” from the previous year (18 million times in 2 weeks, up from 14 million in 2020). But the reception was more negative. People blamed PepsiCo for usurping an LGBT-themed major Mexican religious holiday. It was even argued that this day dates from the time of the Aztecs, so “deeply ingrained in Mexican culture and history”… but that was a month-long festival that took place in August. If you do have criticism, make sure your facts are correct.

On the Doritos channel the like:dislike ratio was still positive 45K:17K, but on mine there were 4x as many dislikes as likes. This is mainly because I added English subtitles, which mostly appealed to American trolls who – with 25K views and almost 700 comments – wanted to interfere with what was happening south of the border.

My question to you: can you use cultural values ​​or even ‘reverse’ them for your advertising? And was that done here deliberately to go viral? Because of course that (expensive!) clip was first passed through all kinds of focus groups.

Singapore

Then we recently saw Samsung, which got pretty burned in Singapore. As a major competitor of Apple (a role model in the field of diversity), they already went quite far in the US with Marketing the Rainbow (see my case study). They told some wonderful stories of the gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy and the very flamboyant Todrick Hall did a little dance for them too. Although those clips will not be shown in Asia, they no longer know any boundaries due to social media, so they will reach the consumers there as well.

In their new “Listen to your Heart” campaign, they created a 4-minute spot to promote the Galaxy Buds2 and Galaxy Watch4. Drag artist Vyla Virus and his 60-year-old mother Zainab were among the four couples who showed their appreciation for each other under the slogan “Listen to your heart”.

The commercial received negative feedback because of the combination Muslim & drag queen. Viewers complained that the ad was “insensitive and offensive to some members of our local community.” According to 2020 statistics, approximately 15.6% of Singapore’s residents are Muslim. That’s not to say their feelings aren’t important, but commentators were talking about hurting 2 billion people <sic>.

Cowardly the tech company gave in to public pressure: “We recognize that we fell short in this case and have since removed this content from all public platforms. We will certainly be more perceptive and thorough in considering all perspectives and points of view for our future marketing campaigns.”

Corporate blabla: but were they really so wrong about those cultural sensitivities? They showed maternal love, and the son was presented not as gay but as a drag artist: so a very mild form of Marketing the Rainbow. But somewhere it was quoted – quite selectively – that according to the Qur’an it is “haram” (sin) to dress as the opposite sex. This also applies to the wearing of silk clothing, rawhide leather, tight or translucent clothing and outfits that are traditionally worn by non-Muslims: should I then think of Italian designer suits, ties, skirts? I never hear any noise about it. This selective interpretation of holy books is also common in Christian circles.

Because the clip was removed by Samsung, I had some trouble digging it up and posting it on my YouTube channel. Within a week I had mor than 40,000 views and 450 comments, partly because of a mention on a Hungarian news site and – yes – Breitbart, who couldn’t find any other source than my YouTube channel. The like:dislike ratio is 1:4, which is also special. The comments came mainly from the Muslim neighboring country of Malaysia – while the advertising was not even intended for them – and were in Malay (a lot of Google translate work for me). About 90% of these wished Samsung and me the purgatory of Allah, because he would ban LGBT, which not everyone agrees on either. The word fatwa was almost mentioned. And a lot of shouting about boycott – and if you shout that loudly and often enough in that context, it will happen, in contrast to the declining influence of Christian dissidents in the US like One Million Moms. However, I don’t read much about that intended boycott anymore, except on my YouTube channel.

The protest was led by the group “We are against Pinkdot in Singapore” who stated on their Facebook page (with 7,000 members): “This group was created to challenge the LGBT agenda and IDEOLOGY. We are NOT against individuals.” (capitals are theirs) The group was previously removed from Facebook for hate speech, but came back later. Another group stated: “We oppose the integration of homosexuality and transgenderism in a conservative society.” (bold mine) However, neither the first nor the second is mentioned in this clip, which is disturbing and indicates a smear campaign and the mimicking of the loudest, uninformed protesters.

Gay marriage is still illegal in Singapore, despite the growing acceptance of the LGBT community. However, this was not about Singaporean society, but specifically about the Muslim community, a small, fanatical minority – especially those from abroad.

Although Samsung in the US has an extensive section on diversity and inclusion on their corporate website, it is different in Korea. “Samsung does not have a support policy for LGBT employees, but the company respects the rights of every individual,” said Kim Jung-suk, director of Samsung Electronics’ corporate communications team, very generously. He explained that laying down certain rules about such a sensitive situation can lead to different kinds of problems. “Just mentioning a person’s sexual orientation at the company level can yield unexpected results that are usually not positive.”

In short, the corporate culture in Korea is clearly different, and the attempted representation in Singapore bounced back like a boomerang.

Israel

But Judaism also knows how to take a leaf from that book, and again Doritos plays a role. February 1 was Family Day (Yom HaMishpacha) in Israel: the holiday began as Mother’s Day, but was later expanded to honor the contribution of all parents to creating a family. Doritos paid attention to this with a special commercial. They immediately faced boycott calls from some conservative religious Israeli Jews, including rabbis, politicians and the press. The clip, of course, went viral with 1.3 million views in a week. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a subtitled version, but the story is described below.

The ad starts by showing members of Israeli families, with the narrator saying that family is not something you choose. “But there are some families who choose to be family. Families have been created by the complex reality,” he says, as the screen shows a pair of women with two babies and a young girl, and a single father with his two children. “There are families who have traveled to the other side of the world on their way to become a family,” the voice says, as two men are shown with a toddler. A mixed religious-secular couple is also shown next to their children and we see plenty of tattoos, which is also not allowed according to the holy book of a few millennia old.

“There are many families and they are all special and even if it takes courage to make some choices, all families deserve to be families,” the narrator concludes.

Despite the opposition, Doritos had no intention of removing or modifying the ad: “We respect all views, beliefs and diversity of Israeli society and have no intention of harming any group.”

Doritos clashes twice with culture and religion, but it has also charmed pundits with its Marketing the Rainbow. See my article From hate to endearment.

Conclusion

Sensitivities in advertising, whether it concerns people who are overweight, with a different skin color or LGBT people, will often provoke negative reactions – even more when it comes to cultural aspects or matters that (appear to) affect religion. Some companies aspire to that, others want to prevent it. I think you don’t have to look for the most common denominator to have an effect that positively contributes to your image. As Oscar Wilde said: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”