Read our pick of the top ten gayest ads of all time!
Despite huge progress in gay equality over the last few years advertisers have been slow to tackle the queer market head on. Print media has been braver, often hiding behind posed and styled snap shots to appeal to the fashion faggterati or by taking up the mantle of Oscar Wilde, with witty headlines that safely diffuses potential controversy with humour.
TV advertising is a more demanding master, and the gay take up has been much slower. It does exist – and when it does it’s often very good – but I bet you can’t name more than a handful of examples. Go on, try it!
However Kodak, Impulse, Marmite, Ikea and numerous fashion labels (most recently D&G with a TV ad campaign featuring two guys kissing) have all successfully bitten the bullet and marketed directly to the gay community.
It’s particularly encouraging to see this kind of commitment from major corporate companies in the current climate of whacko right-wing American family fundamentalists, who seem hell bent on attacking anyone targeting gay audiences.
Recently Ford Motor Co. ran into huge pressure from the American Family Association, an uber-conservative and right wing organisation, to stop advertising in gay magazines. Despite initially pulling its ads, Ford has now realised the commercial value of that decision and has since said it will now feature the company’s eight vehicle brands in the gay press.
As a side note to the hysteria that gay adverting can cause, the American Family Association - yes, them again - last year attacked Johnson & Johnson for promoting its Tylenol product to the gay community with what any sane person would assume was a witty and harmless publishing ad. Click on the image to the right – can you see what all the fuss is about? Thought not.
The Pink Pound
Of course seeing gay couples or themes in adverts isn’t anything new. Advertisers – outside gay publishing - cottoned on to the commercial value of the ‘pink pound’ as far back as the late 80s, although this evolution has mainly taken place on the printed page rather than TV.
If anything, some TV commercials have unwittingly caused offence by relying on stereotypes. A good example of this was the ad for Alpen, which was eventually pulled from the screens because it featured a naked married man – locked out of his room - fearing unwanted attention from a camp hotel worker. Outrage! labelled the campaign “homophobic and offensive.”
Whereas television advertising often uses shock tactics, irony or ‘end of pier’ humour to appeal to the masses, it is normally left to upmarket magazines to depict non stereotypical, albeit well heeled, professional gay folk spending their disposable dosh on expensive furnishings.
Get Those Jeans Off!
Probably some of the best remembered gay ads on the box that cocked a snook at heterosexuality were the Levi commercials that many gays thought were aimed at them.
One in particular featured a Transsexual using an electric shaver in the back of a taxi that was particularly popular and spawned several other adverts using a transgender plot as both a comical and socio-political comment to sell a brand.
Other striking ads by Levi’s illustrating their ‘diversity’ campaign were a series of still photographs such as the ‘Don’t Tell My Girlfriend I’m Gay’ featuring an attractive, urbane black girl holding up a placard with the aforementioned statement scribbled on it.
A Cheap Camp Punchline
The past twenty years has witnessed some groundbreaking examples of positive advertising aimed at gay audiences. However, there have also been some offensive corkers along the way!
Some of the most complained about are accused of using gay characters for cheap punchlines or using the humour based on straights’ assumed fear of being accosted or approached by gay men, who are usually extremely camp.
That’s not to say that camp has to be entirely negative. A brilliantly funny ad that embraced camp as its weapon to undermine hetero machismo was the ‘Ice Skater’ commercial for Delta Lloyd finances, which featured a fey looking Lycra clad male ice skater beating a bunch of sweaty ice hockey dudes at their own game.
The Good, The Bad, And The Downright Ugly
Even though it made a ground breaking ad in 1994 that showed an ‘average’ gay couple shopping in Ikea, the furniture store also demonstrated that it could be equally crass in its depiction of the gay community with cheap reliance on stereotypes.
Despite claims that its commercial featuring two effeminate men breaking up – and everything else in their flat - was meant to be a parody, the ad ‘Starting Over’ could have been the kind of offensive, belittling drivel thought up by an anti gay organisation.
Too Gay?
Over the past few years clothes outfit Abercrombie & Fitch have proved to be a turning point in demonstrating a cross-over appeal to straight and gay consumers without overt marketing strategies.
Never afraid that its advertising appeared ‘too gay’, A & F’s beautifully shot campaigns – by the likes of Bruce Weber - of young men half dressed, in boxers and swimming gear has appealed to a wider section of the community than just the 18-22 college students the company insists are its core target.
But maybe at the end of the day we shouldn’t be too sensitive to promotions that linger on mild stereotyping and clichés. As actor Harvey Fernstein once noted, visibility, even that of an insulting nature, reminds the world that gay people exist and are consumers.
As for those advertisers who intended offence, or thought there was nothing wrong with depicting gays as sissies and predators, would they show Asian and Black people with an equal level of disingenuous stereotyping? I doubt it.
Read our pick of the top ten gayest ads of all time!
Do you have a favourite ad that’s been aimed at the gay market? Or perhaps there’s one that you just hated because of the way it portrayed homosexuality. We want to know what you think! Send us your thoughts on the best and worst ads to feedback@gaydarnation.com.
To get you thinking, here’s some the best and worst gay ads:
The Good
Levis: Taxi (1995)
Delta Lloyd: Ice Skater (1999, 2000, 2002)
Dockers: Black Dress (2002)
The Bad and the Ugly
Yahoo: Park Bum (2002) - even Graham Norton complained about this one
7Up/Seven Up: Captive Audience (2002)
Ikea: Sales Tax Evasion Day (2002)
Ikea: Starting Over (2001)
Bud Light: Opener (2002)
For a complete look at queer advertising take a look at the excellent www.commercialcloset.org.