Ian Johnson, Out Now
June 7, 2007
So what does Enrique Iglesias have to teach us about market positioning and communications strategies for the LGBT market?Well plenty as it turns out.
Last weekend in London, Enrique Iglesias gave a very good lesson in 'Gay Marketing 101' on how to take a mainstream brand and better position its communications strategy to target an LGBT market.
If you were to think of celebrity brands that convey mainstream heterosexual sex appeal, Enrique Iglesias would be a brand quite at home in that list.
Following on from his crooner father, Julio Iglesias, Enrique has built a career, a 'brand' if you will, by appealing to customers via his looks, his voice and his sexuality. His core target market is teenage girls and women.
Does that mean that Enrique - as a brand - does not, or should not seek to, appeal to a gay male audience?
Not at all, as the audience at G-A-Y club in London discovered last weekend to their great delight.
The issue really is - what to do then with a mainstream brand in a gay market space?
What to do indeed.
How do you take a mass market brand targeted at the mainstream market and reposition it to have relevance and authenticity for gay consumers?
One thing Out Now has advised customers for years is to not try to pretend your brand is a 'gay' brand when it isn't.
Unless your brand is one that targets an exclusively gay audience, your brand communications strategies in the LGBT market need to 'walk the line' between demonstrating support for GLBT consumers whilst not patronising gay and lesbian attitudes and opinions.
Lack of sincerity is almost always obvious from a long way off, so it is important for a brand to send a message to gay and lesbian customers that the brand is supportively positioning itself to say: this is quite clearly not a gay brand but this is a brand that values you, the LGBT consumer, as a part of the brand vision.
So what does Enrique Iglesias have to do with all that?
Take a look at last weekend's Enrique Iglesias performance at GAY club in Soho, London:
Enrique Iglesias gets it right.
He showed a gay audience that he understood the market space - or media environment - in which the brand was positioned - where he was and who he was in communications with.
The audience did not need to think or care that Enrique himself may not be gay.
What they wanted - and what Iglesias delivered extremely well - was the clear message that here was a non-gay brand, seeking to appeal to a gay customer base by extending its brand relevance to include gay customers.
The message was not 'I am a gay brand' and nor should it be.
The message was 'I am here in your gay market space, I support you and hope you might choose to support my brand as a result.'
That is good gay marketing at its best - subtle yet unambiguous - and at least one young gay man understands that now, and better than most - thanks to Enrique Iglesias last Saturday night at GAY club in London.
Well done Enrique.
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