June each year is Pride Month where the LGBTQ+ community is given heightened awareness and visibility. It’s a great opportunity to understand more about the struggles facing the queer community. It’s also a great time to celebrate them. When it comes to your eCommerce business, you might be wondering how to incorporate the theme of the month within your brand. This post will explain the best way of doing it.
What Is Pride Month?
Pride month is the sixth month of every year, June. It’s a month dedicated to understanding LGBTQ+ history, reflecting upon how far they have come. Just as over time, society becomes more inclusive and understanding of queer identities, there are still struggles being faced. Issues such as marriage equality and acceptance of same sex couples have come a long way from where they started. This is a cause for celebration!
However, at the same time issues such as trans rights and intersectionality within different queer identities are still very much being fought over. The struggle for equal rights within the LGBTQ+ community is still active, and June is a great way to acknowledge this. The more we know about queer communities, the more allies we can have, the faster we will move to a place of acceptance for all.
Pride Month Marketing Campaigns
In recent years, pride campaigns put forward by many businesses have been deemed as inauthentic. When companies simply state that they support gay rights, but have done no actions to prove this, it is not received well.
This is particularly true of Gen Z, who feel very strongly that they only want to spend money with brands that match their values. Marketing relies on deep connections, and trust with your customers. They need to know that gay rights are something that your brand encompasses throughout the year, and simply highlights during June.
Especially for any LGBTQ+ shoppers that you might attract, you should show your genuine commitment and the heart of your campaign. This is the way you make authentic connections, brand engagement and lifelong customers. All this, and you will be making a positive impact for people’s rights moving forward.
How To Create An Authentic Campaign
There are several ways that you can create an authentic LGBTQ+ campaign this pride month, and here are a few.
Talk To LGBTQ+ People
When creating your campaign, make sure to center the voices of LGBTQ+ people within your business. They will know what is most important to say, the best ways to approach topics and what your shoppers will be looking to see.
During this month, queer voices should be uplifted and prioritized. They will also be able to help make sure that you are using correct terminology. Since many queer identities face a lack of awareness and sometimes harmful terminology lingering from past ages, make sure you are up to date with how people want to be referred to and in which ways.
Use Queer People In Images
If you have product images featuring models and none of them are visibly queer, this could be something to change. Particularly in your marketing campaign for pride month, queer bodies should be visible. Once you have the contacts, continue to use them. Make sure you show your activism is sustained, not just seasonal.
Be Real
Social media is a great way of marketing pride month. Telling real stories can be a helpful way of achieving this. This could be is queer stories from within your employees or brands, or about historical figures such as Marsha P Johnson, the black trans woman who started the first ever pride. Either way, making sure you let your shoppers know that you are listening to queer stories is a great way of showing your authenticity.
Back Up Words With Actions
Just as with Green Ecommerce, making donations to charitable causes is a great way of proving your authenticity. During pride month, sending a donation to LGBTQ+ charities is a great way of showing your care about the community. Without actions like this, businesses can be accused of ‘rainbow washing’ which implies that businesses only pretend to be queer friendly in order to ‘be correct’ rather than actually genuinely caring.
Conclusion
Pride Month is a time for celebration! Queer people should be celebrated, for the amazing things they have brought to the world, and they continue to. When celebrating pride month within your business, it’s important that it comes from a sincere place. This will resonate with your shoppers, and boost your brand image.
Speak to queer employees, get up to date with queer history, research other successful queer marketing campaigns- and then have fun! There’s a place for everyone within every sector of our society, our diversity and difference is what makes us so powerful.