This all started with an Orbitz commercial and a delicious double cheeseburger meal at Wendy’s. I was having a classy meal at this fine establishment with one of my friends when I brought up a commercial I saw for Orbitz. It appeared on Logo during a thrilling episode of "RuPaul’s Drag Race," promoting their gay tourism website. Here’s the commercial in question:
For me, it was really the first time I noticed a major cooperation taking money out to advertise to the gay ol’ crowd on a large national scale. Men holding hands? A crazy party/rave/go-go boy convention? On an ORBITZ commercial?! Even though I don’t find this commercial super creative, something about it stuck with me. Being a gay man, the fact that this company took the time and money to spend on advertising towards me and “my people” really made an impact. If for some reason I want to book a trip an unknown island to meet my foreign boo for a mojito in the sun, Orbitz will be #1 in my mind cause of this one commercial that stuck with me.
Now back to the glorious meal of those delicately simmered square, never-frozen beef patties. I was sitting there with my friend telling him about this commercial as we were dipping our fries in our Frosties. We started to talk more about gay advertising and how we don’t really see it very much. That didn’t seem right to me. Why wouldn’t companies market and advertise to the LGBT community? In my opinion, we’re fun, easy going, accepting, hell the gay community sounds like my dream man.
After that, I went home and immediately went to my friend Google to see what I could dig up. What I found shocked me. I found a blog post or an article here and there, but really there was not much on the subject! The only big organization that I found to care and recognize LGBT advertising was Commercial Closet, which is now owned by GLAAD. I encourage everyone to look at the amazing collection that founder Michael Wilke put together though the years. The library consists of many LGBT ads (and will be a great source for this website) and loads of information up until about 2010. Ever since it was bought out by GLAAD (which since started the Media Awards in Advertising, now called the Amplifier Awards) there really isn’t a place anymore where this subject it talked about on a regular basis. And as wonderful GLAAD is and all they have done for the community, they have a lot more topics to discuss and share other than advertising. So, I figured why the hell not, and here I am. Hello! Nice to meet you.
So what do I hope to do with this blog? First, I just wanted a place to house any ad that has to deal with the LGBT community. Good, bad, creative, offensive, inspirational, bring it on. The more we talk about these issues, the more we can learn about what it takes to create a truly great LGBT ad.
Second (and this is where you come in, so get excited) there are a lot of different topics and issues that go with LGBT commercials, and with them come a lot of opinions and thoughts. I think all opinions matter and I hope that these posts will start up conversations, either with comments on here or your family dinner table, lets get talking people!
Also, SUBMIT SUBMIT SUBMIT any ads you see! Whether it’s a TV ad, something in a magazine, a window display, online banner, local ads, a logo painted on a guys abs during Pride, send it my way by emailing me at adsogay@gmail.com! I want to get as many ads on here as I can, and mama don’t have access to every ad known to man, so your help is greatly appreciated!
Okay, here we go. Let’s get started!!
PS: My grammar sucks…I know. I’m not apologizing for it, just stating the facts people.
I love this blog and anxiously await your future posts. And as the daughter of an English teacher who corrected each and every grammatical misstep throughout my youth, I can confidently say your grammar does not suck. - Jill B.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and the nice comments Jill! And thank God it was okay...but I can't promise it'll be okay for future posts, but I'll try! Haha
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