Pride Month: is it of benefit to your brand?

June is the beginning of summer and you may notice many of your favourite brands turn rainbow as June is Pride Month.For me, as a gay man, and former Trustee of the charity that runs Coventry Pride, Pride Month is deeply important to because it increases visibility of the challenges that the LGBT+ community face, celebrates diversity and is a beacon for anyone who is coming to terms with who they are. You may notice that as a joint owner of Glued, each June our brand logo turns rainbow to mark Pride Month; so for our business being 50% gay owned, I feel proud to fly the flag. Diversity is a core value of our brand: one of our values is ‘be yourself, your unique’.

Each year at Pride events around the country, brands support the community. Those brands who dig deep to financially support pride events I applaud. Having helped to run a pride event in Coventry for three years I know how that support is critical. In that case we wanted the event to be free for everyone to access, so sponsorship was the vehicle to achieve that objective.

But looking at Pride Month through the lens of a gay man, I do sometimes feel that during Pride Month some brands just decide to jump on the bandwagon trying to turn it into a commercial opportunity and make money from it. Without naming names some brands do little to support the challenges and issues. In many cases they are not aligning values with being inclusive and fighting discrimination in all its forms. They just want to cash in on the so called ‘pink pound’.A bit of history for those that don’t know: on 1 July 1972 the UK’s first Pride march was held in London. This date was chosen as the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the riots, or uprising, at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, where LGBT+ patrons had been targeted by the New York Police Department. Modern-day Pride Month both honours the movement for LGBT+ rights and celebrates LGBT+ culture. 

In my view brands who want to fly the rainbow flag need to connect that with what they do on a daily basis to support the LGBT+ community. Do your values reflect diversity and inclusion? Is everyone welcome and able to be themselves when they experience your organisation? Do you support any LGBT+ charities? If the answer to those question is a big rainbow yes then happy Pride Month and thank you for helping to create a better world, where we all celebrate our differences, love and respect each other.