A love-themed Mickey Mouse backpack. Pronoun pin. “Not a Phase” hoodie. “So gay for each other” greeting card.
Every year, national brands reach out to LGBTQ+ Americans with colorful merchandise during Pride Month, but this June, those displays may not be as loud and proud.
“Especially during Pride season, most businesses like ours are pretty busy with Pride projects. I personally haven’t been busy, but I think across the board,” said Matt Scarrelud, president of Pink Media, which helps brands reach the LGBTQ+ demographic.
Mainstream brands once downplayed anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, but that changed last year when conservatives organized online boycotts and sales plummeted.
National retail chain Target moved its Pride displays from the entrances of its stores to the back after conservative activists confronted employees and vandalized the displays. This year, Target is scaling back its Pride collection and will not carry it in all of its stores.
Bud Light, owned by beer giant Anheuser-Busch, is still embroiled in backlash from conservatives over a social media campaign last year featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
“The goal is to make Pride toxic for brands,” conservative commentator Matt Walsh wrote at the time on X, the precursor to Twitter.
The strategy worked: Activists used hashtags and slogans like “wake up and go bankrupt” to rally supporters and stage boycotts and other actions that became known as “bad writing.”
Not only have sales fallen, but some in the LGBTQ+ community have also distanced themselves from Target and Bud Light, accusing them of caving to conservative pressure.
Now, as brands navigate the volatile political climate more carefully, Scalerud said he expects to see fewer rainbow logos in the future.
“Nobody in the media, marketing and advertising industry wants to acknowledge how heavy and difficult this has been,” he said. “After the Target and Bud Light debacle last year, so many brands decided they were much better off standing by and waiting for this situation to resolve itself.”
Retailers and brands to back off Pride products and promotions
While opposition from conservatives is common, the outbursts usually die down quickly. Indeed, until last year, companies were likely to be criticized for “rainbowwashing,” or using Pride promotion to show support for the LGBTQ+ community without making any substantive commitments.
But that’s not the case now. Business leaders who have long been involved in divisive issues like abortion, immigration and racial equality are trying to distance themselves from the country’s culture wars.
Transgender issues in particular have emerged as a conservative battleground. Hundreds of bills restricting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced and dozens have been passed. Harassment and violence targeting gay and transgender people has skyrocketed. The backlash against Target last year was largely due to false allegations that the company sold “tucked” swimsuits for children.
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, said mainstream brands realize they can’t please everyone. He expects they’ll celebrate Pride in a more subdued way, selling less merchandise and keeping promotional efforts low-key.
“If you promote Pride, some people are going to be unhappy with it. If you don’t promote Pride, some people are going to be unhappy with it. It’s a battle that’s not entirely winnable, so some retailers and brands are taking a middle-of-the-road approach and keeping it low-key,” he said. “They’re promoting it, but they’re limiting it to what they think is acceptable and acceptable to the majority.”
Sanders doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
“The country is extremely polarized right now and there are few signs that that’s going to change, so this approach is likely to continue for the foreseeable future,” he said. “Retailers and brands will likely be more cautious about how they promote issues and causes.”
Levi Strauss & Co. told USA Today that it has no plans to scale back its Pride Month collections or celebrations.
“This year’s Pride collection marks 10 years that the Levi’s brand has celebrated Pride through its products, marketing and a $100,000 donation to OutRight International, an international organization that advances the human rights of LGBTQ+ people around the world. We’re excited about this year’s collection and what we have planned to engage consumers with,” the company said in a statement.
Wells Fargo, a long-time supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, said it would celebrate Pride Month by hosting events for employees, supporting LGBTQ+ organizations and sponsoring parades in cities across the US.
“Our plans for this year are not being scaled back. We have celebrated Pride Month in previous years and will continue to do so in the future,” Wells Fargo said in a statement.
However, other brands contacted by USA Today, including Walmart, Google and Hyatt, declined to comment on whether they would adjust their Pride Month plans.
“Until last year, there was more and more corporate money being put into Pride,” Skarlerud said, “and now everyone’s wondering if businesses are going to come back.”
Conservatives step up pressure on Target, Bud Light and other brands
Jared Todd, senior spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, said the organization hasn’t seen many companies withdraw their support for Pride Month yet.
“Certainly, many businesses have not yet made their Pride plans public, so things could change at any time,” Todd said.
A recent survey found that most organizations have no plans to reduce their shows of solidarity.
Gravity Research surveyed 200 communications and corporate affairs executives, including executives from Fortune 500 companies, and its president, Luke Hartig, said they found most brands hadn’t adjusted their plans to engage with customers during Pride Month.
A small number (13%) said they were unsure, suggesting some may be taking a “wait and see” stance, Hartig said.
Plans vary widely by industry, with consumer staples industries most likely to change course (30%), as brands that faced boycotts last year are more likely to take preventative measures.
“This suggests that companies are viewing last year’s anti-LGBTQ+ backlash as noise rather than a signal,” Hartig said.
What’s causing some consumer brands to pull the plug? Increasing pressure from conservative activists, says Hartig.
His firm’s research found that 18% of businesses said the threat of a conservative backlash had forced them to adjust their 2024 Pride plans, compared with 9% of progressive consumers who said the same.
“The landscape of corporate reputational risk around LGBTQ+ issues continues to evolve,” Hartig said.
How major brands became allies of the LGBTQ+ community
Pride Month, observed every June, commemorates the 1969 riots that followed the police raid on New York’s Stonewall Inn.
Over time, community activism, from protests to boycotts, has helped transform indifferent or hostile companies into powerful allies in the global fight for gay rights.
The brand has taken a stance on LGBTQ+ equality, both internally through inclusive policies and publicly through its support for same-sex marriage and opposition to transgender bathroom laws.
Anders Jacobsen, co-founder of investment advisory firm LGBT Capital, says the LGBTQ+ community represents a huge customer base with trillions of dollars of potential sales.
Jacobsen’s company estimates that LGBTQ+ people in the United States have an estimated purchasing power of $1.4 trillion, and $3.9 trillion globally.
At the same time, LGBTQ+ identification in the United States continues to grow, with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or a sexual orientation other than heterosexual, up from 5.6% four years ago.
The percentage of young people who identify as LGBTQ+ is even higher, making up more than 1 in 5 Gen Z adults, so companies looking to win their business need to appeal to them.
Surveys also show that Americans tend to favor brands that support the LGBTQ+ community.
A GLAAD/Ipsos poll conducted last year found that Americans are nearly twice as likely to support a company that faces criticism for supporting members of the LGBTQ+ community than to support its critics.
The poll found that two in three Americans have neutral or positive feelings about Pride products in stores, and nearly three-quarters of Americans have neutral or positive feelings about companies that offer Pride products.
Skarlerud said such research should bring the LGBTQ+ community together.
He said colleagues and competitors are hesitant to talk about the brand distancing itself from Pride month because “it would be an admission that the people who orchestrated these attacks a year ago have won.”
But Skarlerud says he sees it differently.
“I think if we acknowledge that, we can bounce back and come up with a game plan and a strategy to move forward and win.”
