NPR's Pla Money podst looks at how Suba began marketg to the gay and lbian muny, and how helped turn around the pany the '90s.
Contents:
- GAY-FRIENDLY CARS: IS SUBA NUMBER ONE?
- ARE SUBAS REALLY GAY RS?
- THE ARE THE TOP 10 GAY AND LBIAN CARS
- WHAT ARE THE TOP GAY-FRIENDLY CARS?
- HOW SUBA SAVED SELF BY MARKETG TO THE GAY MUNY
GAY-FRIENDLY CARS: IS SUBA NUMBER ONE?
Apparently, we as a society are so wrapped up the ia of how "gay" objects, clothg styl, and activi are that we n't even leave tomobil out of ! Th, the guys at Car Talk, those te terers of r nversatn, have e up wh the: lists of the top 10 gay and lbian rs. Let's take a look,… * subaru a gay car *
It was such an unual cisn—and such a succs—that helped ph gay and lbian advertisg om the g to the mastream. Mastream movi and TV shows wh gay characters—like Will & Grace—were still a few years away, and few celebri were openly gay. When Ellen Degener beme a rare exceptn 1997, and her character the show Ellen me out as gay an episo of the s, many pani pulled their ads.
“The environment around this is so angry we feel we lose no matter what we do.”At that time, gay-iendly advertisg was largely limed to the fashn and alhol dtri. When a 1994 IKEA ad featured a gay uple, the Amerin Fay Associatn, a nonprof, mounted boytts, and someone lled a (fake) bomb threat to an IKEA store.As Poux explas, the attu of most bs toward LGBTQ advertisg was: “Why would you do somethg like that? You’d be known as a gay pany.” In the 1990s, Poux worked at Mulryan/Nash, an agency that specialized the gay market.
“All the l of marketg went out the wdow at this fear” of marketg to gays and lbians, he says. Wrg The Huffgton Post, the reporter Ron Dicker ptured some of the cultural nfn that followed:When one Suba ad man … proposed the gay-targetg ads talks wh Japane executiv, the executiv hurriedly looked up “gay” their dictnari.
ARE SUBAS REALLY GAY RS?
While Bent, who is gay, didn’t reveal his sexual orientatn for fear of overshadowg the effort, he nohels rells holdg pany meetgs wh nam along the l of “Who Are Gays and Lbians?”A 50-year-old nglomerate like Fuji Heavy Indtri, the parent pany of Suba, is not normally where one would look for a lear social progrs.
Suba of Ameri knew had to support s gay and lbian employe if wanted to appeal to lbian ctomers, so they schled a meetg wh a senr Japane executive to make the se for domtic-partnership benefs.
THE ARE THE TOP 10 GAY AND LBIAN CARS
“It was the easit thg we did.”By 1996, Suba ads created by Mulryan/Nash were appearg both gay publitns and mastream media. In rponse to the ads, Suba received letters om a grassroots group that acced the rmaker of promotg homosexualy.
Like nerds who grow up to nont their bulli, Suba executiv me to realize that the people opposg the acknowledgment of gays and lbians were not as imposg as they seemed.One of the reasons that, the days, the rmaker’s role cultivatg s lbian-iendly image is ls well known is that so many straight people were bld to the subtext of the advertisements.For s first Suba ads, Mulryan/Nash hired women to portray lbian upl. And Stay Out” uld refer to explorg the outdoors a Suba—or g out as gay. They like cipherg .”The light among niche dience groups “dg” the hts Suba ads surprised the marketg team—and the se of s gay-iendly ads, so did straight dienc’ ignorance.
While many gay and lbian nsumers loved the shout-outs the license plat, straight people would only notice featur like a bike rack. Poux, who helped e up wh the license-plate ia, says he held foc groups wh straight dienc where he’d show ads featurg gay upl.
WHAT ARE THE TOP GAY-FRIENDLY CARS?
Even after an hour of talkg about gay issu, they’d thk a man was shoppg wh his uncle.In articl at the time, Suba executiv said they felt uncerta about the “trigue” created by the perceptn of “secret dg.” But Poux says there was some fort the fact that the gay marketg went unr the radar. As more pani began marketg to LGBTQ dienc, such dg—which fell unr the tegory of the new marketg term “gay vague”—beme a way for pani to reach queer dienc wh mimal risk of a nservative backlash.That said, Suba did not hi s support of gay and lbian ctomers.
While Volkswagen played y about whether an ad perceived as gay-iendly really portrayed a gay uple, Suba sponsored events like gay-pri paras, partnered wh the Rabow Card, a cred rd that stead of sh back offered donatns to gay and lbian , and hired Marta Navratilova, a former tennis pro and a lbian, to appear Suba ads.Navratilova’s role Suba’s ads me wh a certa poignance. She had been outed agast her will, and while she spoke hontly about her sexual orientatn, she had lamented that gay athlet had “to hi the closet to sell [themselv] to Madison Avenue.” For her to bee the face of a r pany durg her retirement, says the Rabow Card -creator Pam Derrian, was a betiful, full-circle moment.Suba’s gay-and-lbian–foced marketg mpaign was a h, and the pany’s efforts ntue today. In foc groups and onle polls, gay and lbian nsumers nsistently choose Suba vehicl as their favore rs or Suba as the most gay-iendly brand.
HOW SUBA SAVED SELF BY MARKETG TO THE GAY MUNY
In the 2010s, only Tla grew faster than Suba, which led Suba’s print to worry that Suba uld get “too big.”Lbians buyg Suba rs did not sgle-handly rurrect the rmaker, but the gay market was one of the bt for Suba. Every year, Tim Bent says, the LGBTQ anizatns were the top five terms of rs sold.Suba was not the first pany to create advertisements for gay and lbian nsumers, but was the first major pany the Uned Stat to do so transparently and nsistently.