15 years ago, advertising was a straight man’s world. Now, gays are inescapable.
Although we might be inclined to rush to the consensual conclusion that this is merely a testimony of social integration (after all, advertising is often an ephemeral snapshot of the society it was created in), the reality is overtly more cynical.
Marketers love gays for their welcome differences. Advertisers are often keen on capturing their attention for they boast more buying power and discretionary time than their heterosexual counterparts. They even found a word to describe their ludicrously lucrative potential: “dinks” (dual income, no kids).
Because the very delimitation of this demographic relies on an antagonism (you cannot be defined as gay and straight at the same time - otherwise, you would qualify as bisexual), it’s almost trivial to stress that the prevalent theme infusing almost all the following adverts is one of difference - or lack thereof.
This has for long been private territory of militant organisms that were recurrently hard pressed to assert that gays and straight people were born equal towards love, lust, sins, boring couple routines and, especially, sickness (given the amplitude of the phenomenon within the gay population, AIDS awareness campaigns usually consist of a two-faced tactic: one targeted towards straight people, the other one for gays).
Aides | Live Long Enough to Find The Right One – Gay Version
See the straight version here.
Aides | The Plane
Tagline: “The good news is that Bernard and Patrick had protected sex”.
Mainstream advertising has been much clumsier in its approach of the gay community. And the harsh backlash that surrounds odd-inspired or ill-advised attempts acts as a bitter reminder that gay advertising is still considered more-thorny-than-horny territory.
This is not bad advertising. And most of the times, it isn’t intentionally homophobic advertising either; but advertising that tackles the gay issue from a straight vantage point.
In the same spirit with which adolescent boys might be prone to engage in homophobic verbal attacks to affirm their straight manliness; advertising often refer to gays to emphasize a contrast, an opposition. This is unfortunate but normal, since our culture places such a high value on masculinity-over-femininity ideal; and homosexuality is viewed as the ultimate betrayal of this unspoken rule.
This results in a series of – sometimes genuinely funny – gay-themed commercials that treat homosexuality either as a straight man’s nightmare, a mistake imputed to mismanaged testosterone, an uncomfortable misunderstanding, or just plain insecure fear (which is why the sound of a soap dropping on the floor of a public shower will usually be similar to one of a nuclear explosion). In the end, all of them end up selling a taboo more than the product itself.
Virgin Atlantic | How Deep is Your Love
Tribeca Film Festival | Transvestite
The fact that advertising is a short medium doesn’t help either. Ideas have to be sold in less than 30 seconds (packshot included). Characters drawn in three lines. We don’t have time for subtlety. Advertising thrives in stereotypes. After all, what would be the point of having a gay man if his role is not to be a flamboyant drama queen you can laugh at?
Delta Llyod Insurance | Booming Car
Conscious of the dual nature of their audience (and the key trendsetting role that gay men can play), fashion and luxury advertising enjoys blurring the lines between straight and gay men, with advertising where ambiguously lascivious boys like to hang around naked in the locker room with their friends (who are also light on cloth). Strikingly enough, the fact that every single gay man is pictured as a six-packed Adonis with low self-esteem introduces a latent ambiguity around every man pictured as such.
MTV and Levi’s were two of the first brands to subtly embrace both sides of their audience. After all, advertising for gays is not just a question of targeting, but one of representation. In the following commercials, gayness is treated as a non-issue.
This is probably how gay advertising looks like when it’s done properly: not just as a source of jokes, but as part of a larger whole (the difference is in the “w”).
Levi’s | Change - Gay Version (see the straight version )
Vodafone – I’m Gay (also see the rest of the campaign)
Banner credits: Beautiful and Aymeric Giraudel
I think you made an interesting inventory on the subject.
However, it is not quite clear what conclusions one could really draw on this basis.
I would be most interested in a further analysis, and I will contemplate your ‘evidence’ myself as well.
Good initiative!
Greetings, Emile J. Walters, The Netherlands
I spent a lot more time viewing the multimedia than I did reading the article.
The reverse would actually be a worrying indicator of your reading skills.
The only thing I hate about “Gay” advertising is that they insult my intelligence. They assume if they put a half naked man in an ad I will rush out to buy the product. No matter what the item, even when not appropriate. They think as a gay man that I am so shallow? Some straight ads do as well but open any gay magazine and you’ll see what I mean. It’s just insulting and we sometimes do this to ourselves!
I don’t understand what we’re worrying of or be disturbed by. It’s not new to anyone that advertisings use the most lineal lectures of each and every stereotype they can find. But nobody tells anything when they open a straight magazine and find it full of wonderful girls wearing a ridiculous bikini sitting on top of a 4×4, or when an ad about a detergent treat the straight man as the most stupid and useless animal in the universe. Why should we be different? Being as gay as any other can be, I don’t find myself insulted or underestimated by any of this ads. I just understand the topic -as usual- and laugh at it.
this archive is amazing! thanks for sharing.
Those ads make being gay seems fun.. wish my life was that interesting. The jean’s ad is really good
I think we have to remember that our increased visibility in the marketplace is not an indicator of equality. For that reason, I am suspicious of marketing within the gay community. It is even worse in the HIV/AIDS community where buff, muscular guys are used to indicate that a particular drug is a good fit for an individual. Where are the videos of men running in haste to the toilet for that unexpected diarrhea or vomiting from the nausea induced by the meds?
Marketing is about illusion. It may smack of sour grapes for me to rant about the $$$ made by those who dream up ways to make us unhappy with what we have now. It is their illusion that people need a product when they were often blissfully unaware in the past. Often, the result is shallowness of spirit and the creation of that “hole that can not be filled” known as addiction.
Are these ads fun to watch? Often so. Could we live without them? I think so. When I see GLBTQ gatherings that are sponsored by alcohol, tobacco and Pharmaceutical companies, I know that we are out of balance.
Ron Hudson