Chevron Corp., Diversity

Diversity is an easy concept for most companies to embrace these days, but Chevron Corp. is the first to take that message to the airwaves with a commercial that includes gays.

The ad for the country’s third largest oil company mentions and pictures gay employees, who are shown marching in a gay pride parade. The group carries a Chevron banner with the letter V in the company name turned into the familiar pink triangle symbol.

In typical public service announcement format, the commercial is straightforward and dry, but barriers are often broken with a whisper.

"Businesses that support diversity are a key factor in the success of any community," Corporate Diversity Manager Janet Winters Smith says as she addresses the camera. "Valuing diversity by empowering Asian, black, women, Hispanic, Filipino and lesbian and gay employee networks encourage a more inclusive work environment. Employee networks offer a place for groups of employees to be together with common goals that are aligned with their companies strategies and values -- things that are important to us all because we live here, it's our home."

The public service ad began airing on Fox-affiliated KTVU, San Francisco, in December. The station, which sells a lot of advertising airtime to Chevron, offered several public service announcement slots to the company as a bonus, explained company spokesman David McMurry. An 18-year Chevron employee, McMurry created the ad and is a member of Chevron Lesbian & Gay Employees Association.

While gay inclusion may be considered an easy sell in the company’s San Francisco headquarters, no other corporations are broadcasting such a message, let alone another oil company.

"It's easy to dismiss these things because the company is located in California," says Kirk Nass, who works in the company research department and is co-chair of CLGEA. "But when I saw the ad, I was completely blown away. We're still surprised in general at these things."

Diversity advertising -- often with a recruitment aim -- aimed at gays has become popular in national gay magazines over the last several years. The Los Angeles Police Department and US West were among the first and most recently, Genentech Corp., Aetna, Dun & Bradstreet and First Union have published such ads. In 1996, International Business Machines Corp. first entered the gay market with diversity recruitment advertising but later brought in all of its brand campaigns as well. And Coors Brewing Co. published a print ad in 1997 to counter longstanding boycotts against the brand and to show progress the company has made with internal policies for gays. With three attractive men at a bar table, its tagline was: "Perception isn’t always reality."

While Chevron hasn't made a concerted effort for the gay market, the company included itself in a February 1998 OUT magazine special section called Companies That Care, devoted to corporate gay awareness.

An early corporate adopter to include gays in its non-discrimination policy back in 1993, Chevron was far and away the first oil company to do so. Domestic-partnership benefits for same-sex partners were added in 1997 -- an effort since echoed by its competitors. Chevron operates approximately 8,000 gas stations and has 40,000 employees.