Gay Market Leaders - UK Gay Market

Much of the gay marketing activity traditionally used to be centered on the North American gay and lesbian markets. Now increasingly it is Europe that leads the trends when it comes to the latest in lesbian and gay market developments.


Ian Johnson, Out Now
October 29, 2008

Gay and lesbian marketing. Mainstream trade media coverage of lesbian and gay market developments. Marketing magazine. Brandrepublic. Out Now 'So Gay' campaign. UK industry coverage of trends in gay and lesbian market.

One of the good things about my job is that after nearly two decades as a lesbian and gay specialist marketer, you begin to get an increasingly clearer picture of where the gay market has been - and where it's headed.

When we set up Out Now back in 1992, it was the US market that led the field.

Nowadays though, it is increasingly the brand marketing activities of companies in European markets that set the pace and develop new trends.

We are certainly seeing that with many of our clients - as the comfort factor increases between the brand and the market, so too does the ability to deliver leading-edge marketing solutions.

And all designed to maximize gay and lesbian target consumer response.

Sweet.

There is a very interesting (and lengthy) lesbian and gay marketing article discussing the latest that is going on in the UK market on the advertising, PR and marketing trade publication website BrandRepublic.

The article - which originally appeared in Campaign magazine - discusses some aspects of marketing trends that have seen many of the leading-edge gay and lesbian marketing campaigns of recent times originate in European markets.

Here is an extract:

The New Demographics: Gay Groups

With statistics showing gay men and women to be higher-than-average earners, advertisers are beginning to recognise a lucrative, if heterogeneous, market. Claire Murphy investigates.

With consumer spending power so curtailed by the effects of the economic downturn, what marketer wouldn't be interested in targeting a group whose members earn more than the national average, spend it more freely and display significant brand loyalty?

Income figures were (recently) updated by the Out Now 2008 Millivres Gay Market Study in May, which found gay men earning £31,099 and gay women £23,882.

The research was drawn from readers of the three publications owned by the Millivres Prowler Group, GT (formerly Gay Times), Diva and the Pink Paper. They show that the gay community has a significantly higher income than heterosexuals - men by 20 per cent and women by 17 per cent.

Given that 41 per cent of the gay community holds a degree and that 13 per cent of men and 11 per cent of women are in management, their elevated salaries are hardly surprising.

So far, so promising. But despite the potential commercial benefits to be reaped from targeting the gay community, it's hard to find marketers operating with any consistent strategy in this sphere. Barclays has been sponsoring Stonewall Football Club and the International Lesbian & Gay Yachting Cup since declaring, in 2005, that it wished to be the "bank of choice for gay people". This was the year that legislation was passed that introduced civil partnerships - clearly a motivator for the bank.

Yet marketers of blue-chip brands have been committing more of their budgets to the gay media over the past few years. Although the print titles and websites do still rely on ads from smaller, gay-oriented products, including DVDs, sex toys and dating services, brands such as L'Oreal, Vauxhall, American Express and Johnson & Johnson have also been booking space.

Gay magazines have moved down from their former "top-shelf" spot at newsagents. Titles such as Attitude, GT and Refresh, aimed at men, tend to sit next to the likes of Nuts, FHM and Men's Health. The gay women's title Diva can be found near magazines aimed at people from ethnic minorities, wedding titles and, somewhat oddly, puzzle magazines.

Ian Johnson, the founder of the gay marketing specialist Out Now Consulting, believes the market is still so fledgling that major brands that are seen to support it by advertising in the gay press receive a significant amount of loyalty: "Because this market has historically been ignored by marketers, those brands that are seen to be investing in the community can reap the benefits, as long as it's not just a case of running the gay flag up a pole and expecting gays and lesbians to stand and salute."

Unsurprisingly, publishers in the gay media sector believe their brands offer the best way to target a community that identifies itself clearly as a group. "This is a very complex sector - it would be naive to think an ad in The Guardian would deliver the gay market en masse," Kim Watson, the media director of Millivres Prowler Group, says.

Gay parents are a growing group worth the attention of marketers, Watson adds, as are gay professional groups. Diva has been carrying increasing numbers of ads for adoption agencies, although none of the large nappy brands has yet booked space.

"The gay media generally offers the best-value cost-per-thousand, but there are opportunities in mainstream media," Johnson says. "The TV programme Project Runway, for example, has a high proportion of gay and lesbian viewers, so would be a good media target."

AMRO WORLDWIDE

Amro Worldwide is a travel agency set up by Andrew Roberts in 2002 to cater specifically for the gay market. Its marketing edge is that all the hotels it books clients into have been personally checked to ensure gay people will be welcome.

Although he is a supporter of gay media - and advertises in GT and Diva - Roberts branched out into a poster campaign in June this year to coincide with London Pride.

With financial contributions from the six US tourist boards from the regions the ads were promoting, he ploughed £20,000 - three years' worth of marketing budget - into buying up escalator and lift ads at the nearest Tube stations to the parade, Covent Garden and Leicester Square.

Out Now Consulting was given the task of managing the process and creating the ads.

"By adding these poster sites, we (got) two million people passing our ads over the two weekends - and 100,000 gay men and women."

The creative for the London Underground poster campaign centred on the line "So gay", and subverted its increasingly common use as an insult.

Early responses show that the campaign struck a chord - hits on Amro's website were 30 per cent higher than in the month before the campaign ran.

Gay market insight is Out Now: Gay Marketing. Solved. OutNowConsulting.com
To contact Out Now, send us an email.
-------------------

For information and help with understanding key gay and lesbian marketing issues, to most effectively understand and meet the consumer needs of the lesbian and gay market, rely on the gay market experts, Out Now. Leading in the gay market since 1992.

All content on all Out Now websites (C) 2008 - Out Now. If you find any material you believe is subject to other copyrights here, other than allowed fair use for copyright purposes, please contact Out Now with details. LGBT communications. Gay PR. Global GLBT marketing, gay public relations strategy, GLBT PR, LGBT issues training, gay advertising, LGBT market, lesbian and gay market research leaders, gay marketing. Gay Market News is Gay Marketing 101 - Out Now Gay Marketing, Advertising, Gay PR, Market Research. Travel Market. Training. Out Now Gay Market News -- Gay Marketing 101 gay market updates site. gay market gay advertising gay marketing gay tourism gay travel pink dollar pink pound gay agency advertising marketing travel tourism gay lesbian gay and lesbian market research glbt lgbt communications community pink euro