Don’t fly the flag – take action to be in the pink

Internationally, June is recognised as LGBTQ+ Pride month, and over the last few years, corporates have gotten on board to proudly proclaim their allyship.

Many, if not most, do this with good intentions, but some get it miserably wrong. This ranges from innocuous tone-deaf campaigns to being outright destructive.

With all the buzz around pride month having now died down, July offers some retrospect in terms of what it means to be an ally.

One piece of work in the memeverse has been the Marks & Spencer LGBT sandwich that has caused a substantial amount of controversy – and personally one of my favourite fails.

After coming out to my family as guacamole, I got thinking more deeply about the issue and why this is seen as a failure by so many. And, rather than joining the diatribe of responses, I thought it would be more helpful to outline ways brands and corporates can be better allies during pride month and beyond.

There is a lot of rhetoric around what makes a bad pride campaign, but I think it boils down to two key principles: exploitation of identity for commercial gain and flags over action.

The first point here really poses the question of whether a campaign is indeed allyship, or just exploitation. Identity matters. Using someone’s identity to increase sales without actively protecting these identities (both within organisations and society at large) is probably exploitation.

The key here is that your organisation should be actively reflective of LGBTQ+ values, which goes beyond a “Yasss Queen” or a top and bottom burger (Burger King, another favourite fail).

But how do you reflect these values through action? It goes beyond a month of stereotype assimilation. For example, do you have year-round representation in your marketing (without othering it), or do you actively support the rights of individuals regardless of identity?

Do you create safe working environments and have anti-discrimination policies? And, harder still, do you actively resign clients and partners who do not reflect these values of inclusivity?

I guess what gets the community’s back up is that being an ally is quite hard. You must be prepared to make difficult decisions. Decisions that may impact your bottom line negatively.

Companies who aren’t prepared to do this but still choose to feign disingenuous support, erode the
support of those that are making a difference.

This brings me to the second point. “Flags over action” is more about taking a hard look at what
the real value of awareness is. It is one thing to say you support LGBTQ+ rights but a whole other
thing to stand up for them.

If you are going to fly the flag, it is at some point going to cost you and, as a business, you need to decide if the financial impact is worth more than the values you claim to have.

Not being (insert prefix)-phobic is different to being a supporter or ally. Put in another way, not being part of the problem doesn’t mean that you are actively doing something to solve it; inaction maintains the status quo.

That’s because the absence of discrimination does not make your organisation inclusive. Actions that
move society forward do.

–Van der Valk is executive creative director at VMLY&R South Africa