WHERE SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING MEETS LGBT EQUALITY

Diageo, Coffee Cups

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Bailey's created its first gay specific ad with this play on Hawaii's marriage issue by pairing two male-faced coffee cups together.

Alcohol is by far the most crowded category in gay marketing, with over 40 brands jostling for attention. Perhaps the most consistent presence has been Seagram's Absolut vodka for over 17 years, but Miller Brewing Co. has also had a mixed presence in gay media since the mid-1970s. Somewhat impervious to early fears of criticism from religious conservatives that other marketers worried about, so-called "sin products" such as alcohol also had something no other marketers did before the 1990s – an easily quantifiable marketplace: gay bars. They didn't need to do research to find out how much gays purchased their products, they just looked at their sales.

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User Comments
Fredrick Bertz
I disliked this ad because it is one of the things that has led to a large number of people, both queer and straight, who believe that gay marriage is actually a fact in Hawaii. Many people jumped the gun on that one and we are still paying for it politically. I actually heard a legal secretary who works for one of my father's colleagues ask what was so special about the marriages in San Francisco since gays had been marrying in Hawaii for years.