WHERE SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING MEETS LGBT EQUALITY

     
GE Cooks With Male Couples

by Michael Wilke

As if borrowing a page from the taste making Fab Five of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," General Electric has gotten the gay housekeeping seal of approval for its high-end GE Monogram line of appliances in a new ad.

A real male couple who are home furnishings designers, John Dransfield and Geoffrey Ross, are featured along with their black and white Harlequin Great Dane, Cooper, at their summer home in a new three-page print ad campaign.

The first page has them next to the pool and hot tub in their back yard with the headline, "Hamptons beach house. American abstract expressionist art. French and Italian antiques. So what's cooking in the kitchen?" Then a two page spread shows the happy pair preparing a stir-fry and shortbread with balsamic zabaglione dessert -- surrounded by a Monogram stainless steel stove, refrigerator and dishwasher in their country-modern kitchen. (Cooper was elsewhere.)

The ad is running in September issues of Wine Spectator, Bon Appetit, Saveur, Gourmet, Architectural Digest, Metropolitan Home, and other top shelf home magazines, However, since gays aren't specifically the target, no gay media is planned.

The campaign from McCaffery, Ratner, Gottlieb & Lane in New York, is three years old and follows the format of featuring various real couples in outstanding homes around the country -- this is the first time a same-sex couple appears in the series, and the first ever from a GE-branded product. Previous ads in the campaign have featured a widow with her three granddaughters, and another included Donald Trump, before his successful ride with "The Apprentice."

"We didn't go out to do this" with gay men, explains Paul Klein, GE's general manager for brand and advertising, consumer and industrial, based in Louisville, Kentucky. "It was a very organic process and it just made sense.

"We wanted to communicate that Monogram is the choice for people who can choose anything," says Klein. The brand is targeted at mostly female homeowners that are "extremely upscale, affluent people in the top 2% to 5% of the marketplace." Indeed, the line includes $1,000 food warming drawers and $30,000 walk-in wine vaults.

Geoffrey Ross, featured in the ad, happened to be friends with an executive at the ad agency, who at dinner in April spontaneously asked him and his partner John Dransfield to consider being featured. After all, the pair run a 14-year-old home furnishings design company, Dransfield & Ross, and their homes have been featured in magazines before. "They thought John and I would be perfect for the GE campaign," says Ross, "and we were already customers."

After submitting photographs of their kitchen for review, which already coincidentally included Monogram appliances, the agency decided to include the men on one condition -- they had to switch out their non-Monogram dishwasher with a GE one.

Wondering if GE was actually going to feature them in its advertising, Ross says, "I posed the question to the ad agency -- is GE cool with us being a gay couple? He looked at me with a blank stare. It was a non-issue."

The couple and another house they had previously was featured in a magazine article before, but being in the campaign for GE was special. Says Ross, "Being photographed as a gay couple for House Beautiful was nice, but being included in an ad for one of the largest corporations in the world felt empowering."

Siemens and Ariston Also Reflect Gay Men

GE is not alone among appliance manufacturers being inclusive in ads. In Australia back in 1999, Italian manufacturer Merloni Elettrodomestici featured two men cooking a pizza together for its Ariston line of stainless still ovens that read, "I live with my best friend and we have a whippet called Clint. We like breakfast in bed, lazy Sundays and freshly cooked pizza." It later adds, "Ariston is interested in who you are and what you want. ... This is a result of Ariston's ongoing research into changing needs and lifestyles for a new tomorrow."

That ad appeared in Australian magazines Elle Cuisine, Australian Home Beautiful, Australian House & Garden, Marie Claire Lifestyle, Vogue Living.

Meanwhile, Europe's largest electronics and appliance company, Siemens, broke a campaign for the gay market in the May issue of OUT, as a co-op with retailer Best Buy. Picturing a more middle-class dishwasher and stove, the headline reads, "It's a facelift for your kitchen. (We expect to sell a lot of these in California.)" Ironically, Siemens has not yet introduced the line into gay media in Europe.

Home appliances, both upscale and midrange, is just the latest ad category recognizing the diversity of the marketplace.

GE's creative example is a great one to follow -- including gay people in ads naturally, as part of the diversity of society. Not a punch line.\n