Every year, June serves as an important time for LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies to celebrate Pride Month, educate communities on LGBTQIA history and issues, reflect on struggles and accomplishments, and create awareness around the work that still needs to be done. While June is a good time to emphasize allyship, unfortunately, it has also become an opportunity for many brands to hijack this cultural marker as a way to simply amplify and sell products through Pride Month marketing campaigns. And often, they fall short of anything of substance to support the LGBTQIA+ community.
As a brand, it’s not enough to simply talk about inclusivity and diversity or alter your logo with rainbow colors when the calendar turns to June. Brands need to show they’re genuinely committed to social responsibility (and do so year-round). One of the most authentic ways for brands to responsibly achieve this is to partner with LGBTQIA+ influencers on Pride Month marketing campaigns and help amplify their voices and missions during this important month.
Below we’ll highlight some major dos and don’ts when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns and collaborations. We’ll also look at examples of successful influencer/brand partnerships and pride month marketing that authentically support and genuinely amplify the voices of the LBGTQIA+ community.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Dos
For every bad example of Pride Month marketing, there are also amazing ones. By following the below guidelines, your brand will signal genuine inclusivity and support for the LGBTQIA+ community:
Show Empathy and Compassion in Campaigns
The saying, “Show, don’t tell” holds true when it comes to creating Pride Month marketing campaigns, executing digital PR, or collaborating with LGBTQIA+ creators and influencers. Brands should always strive for empathy and compassion in their campaigns, which seems obvious, but many companies let words do the work, rather than actions.
Instead of promoting a product or service in every post, use your marketing campaigns to advocate for and educate audiences about LGBTQIA+ history, challenges, or current activism movements. Better yet, get involved in movements and organizations that resonate with your values! When brands go beyond voicing their support to actually engage with the community, their commitment to doing the right thing shines through.
Collaborate With LGBTQIA+ Influencers and Creators Year-Round
Make efforts outside of Pride Month to work with social media influencers and creators on collaborations and marketing campaigns. If your brand is truly an ally, you will want authentic representation across channels, regardless of what time of the year it is. Not to mention, sometimes the freshest content ideas come from long-term collabs in which both creator and brand fully understand the value the other brings.
Give Influencers and Creators More Creative Freedom
Influencers know their audience the best, so one of the best things a brand can do when working together is to allow for more creative freedom than you might typically give in a traditional collaboration or marketing campaign. In fact, this can mean a world of difference when it comes to whether or not a Pride influencer campaign is successful and genuine.
Choosing to work with top-tier influencers and giving them creative wiggle room to do things that align with their audience is the best way for brands and influencers to generate a beautiful, authentic campaign.
Get to Know Your Influencers
As a company, do your homework on your influencers. If you’re working with MagicLinks, your homework will be done for you, but it’s still important to communicate your priorities to our team! We know that finding that perfect match is about more than just reach or engagement. It’s important to take the time to watch their content, get familiar with what they like, and appreciate the nuance of what makes them unique.
A perfect example of this is The Body Shop and TikTokers Matthew Mackinnon and Ryan Payne, also known as @matthewandryanuk on their social media accounts. When working together on a past campaign, The Body Shop, invited the couple to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Ryan explained how this appealed to them because it’s an authentic fit for their audience. The Body Shop took the time to watch their stories, noticed their passion for gardening, and invited them to an event that aligned with their interests.
Represent and Protect Your Talent
If you’re working with LGBTQIA+ influencers on marketing campaigns, the unfortunate reality is that it’s not uncommon to experience backlash. Companies should anticipate this and be prepared to create safe environments for the influencers they’re working with.
At the very least this can mean speaking up to hateful comments and not letting trolls derail a campaign. Again, your action (or inaction) will be noticed both by creators and their audiences. In more extreme circumstances, this can mean prioritizing the physical and psychological safety of the influencers.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Don’ts
Sadly, there are endless amounts of pseudo-support marketing campaigns surrounding Pride Month. Instead of focusing on any one specific campaign, here are some key things all brands should avoid during Pride Month.
Solely Changing Your Brands Social Icons to Rainbows
Nothing screams pseudo-support more than a company plastering rainbows on its social media accounts for Pride Month, or creating a pride month logo with rainbow colors—only to sit back and do nothing of substance to actually support the LGBTQIA+ community.
Some of the biggest companies in the United States are guilty of this kind of performative allyship. Meanwhile, many of these companies “signaling” support have donated millions to anti-LGBTQIA+ politicians. Not only does a social post with pride colors do nothing to actually support the LGBTQIA+ community, but the hypocrisy speaks volumes to anyone paying attention and typically a brand’s most engaged customers are.
If you’re using LGBTQIA+ symbols or language, be sure you understand their cultural and historical significance to avoid messages that are disrespectful, exploitative, or inaccurate.
Limiting Support for the LGBTQIA+ Community to Pride Month
Unfortunately, even many well-intentioned companies and brands limit their support for the LGBTQIA+ community to the month of June. Doing so is unauthentic—there’s no other way to say it. Sorry, not sorry.
Yes, Pride Month is a great time to help amplify the voices and issues of the LGBTQIA+ community, but it’s not the only time a brand should recognize the queer community on social media or in its advertising as a whole. If your brand is only doing so during June, it signals a lack of real support and inauthenticity. Brands that put in months-long or year-round money and marketing efforts towards the LGBTQIA+ community find allies, opportunity, and purpose.
Staying Silent In the Face of Hateful Comments
We’ve all seen companies signal support or act in a way that actually makes them seem like an ally, but in the face of hateful comments on Pride Month social media posts they remain silent. Not speaking up as a way to placate the masses or to avoid “rocking the boat” is not support. One staple of the nature of creator content and social in general is supposed to be authenticity. Nothing undermines authenticity like hypocrisy, real or perceived/imagined.
Successful LGBTQIA+ Influencer Campaigns and Collaborations
We’ve chatted through some key dos and don’ts for Pride influencer campaigns. Now it’s time to take a look at some great examples of brands in action.
ASOS and Tanya Compas
Tanaka Fuego (@tanaka.fuego) Photo Credit: @bluespit
In celebration of Pride Month, Collusion, best known as an online retailer and offshoot brand of ASOS, joined forces with youth worker Tanya Compas and her organization Exist Loudly — a Black LGBTQIA+ youth non-profit. This extension of the ASOS Pride campaign focused on celebrating pride month and the stories of Tanya Compas’ mentees. They also donated £38K to Exist Loudly. These funds helped launch a long-term program for Black LGBTQIA+ youth in need of education, employment, and training to support them in entering the workforce.
Additionally, the campaign and collaboration helped result in a series of projects that celebrated the stories of Compas’ mentees.
Nordstrom and Natalie O’Dell
Credit: @natalieodell on Tiktok
MagicLinks worked with LGBTQIA+ Tiktok and Instagram star Natalie O’Dell for two separate Nordstrom campaigns in 2022. The first was for a live shopping campaign for Nordstrom’s anniversary sale, in which Natalie was cast as the PRIDE ambassador of the campaign. By featuring Natalie as their PRIDE ambassador, Nordstrom demonstrated their genuine support for the LGBTQIA+ community and fostered a sense of inclusiveness among their audience…and her content earned a 22% engagement rate with viewers!
For the second campaign, Natalie made a special appearance at a Nordstrom store launch with her girlfriend to show her support for the retailer and drive foot traffic to a specific location. Because of her promotional videos on TikTok and Instagram, her fans turned up in full force to see Natalie in person. This collaboration showcased Nordstrom’s commitment to reaching the LGBTQIA+ community in an authentic way through Natalie’s relatability and genuine connection with the brand.
NYX Cosmetics and LGBTQIA Twitch Influencers
Photo Credit: PR Newswire
NYX Cosmetics is known for its successful LGBTQIA+ marketing campaigns, but one that especially stands out is the Game Out Loud Pride campaign. With nearly 90% of LGBTQIA+ gamers experiencing harassment about their identities online, NYX Cosmetics created this campaign as a way to target hate by creating safe spaces in both the online world and real life. Game Out Loud is a collaboration with five talented, LGBTQIA+ gaming influencers: Brian Diaz, Frederic Chen, Glitch, Lilly Teel, and Martin Corona.
Through live streams on Twitch and Roblox the gaming influencers and NYX focus on education, ally messaging, and inclusivity towards younger generations—all while using NYX makeup to represent their favorite games as part of the campaign. Additionally, NYX will offer allyship training and education on nyxcosmetics.com.
The end goal of this Pride influencer campaign is to create representation and visibility for the LGBTQIA+ community in the gaming space, which has long been lacking. The streams and games hosted by NYX give the influencers a chance to educate their audience about LGBTQIA+ history, issues, and rights, share personal experiences, and dispel stereotypes within the gaming community.
Virgin Radio UK
Photo Credit: @tiakofi on Instagram
Another noteworthy mention is Virgin Radio’s Pride UK campaign. As part of its core programming, this brought on influencers like Tia Kofi, Phil Clifton, and Shivani Dave to speak on topics surrounding trans rights, gay adoption issues, and living with HIV. It also focused on education sessions for parents to better understand their LGBTQIA+ children and the current issues they face.
In addition to the program running beyond pride month, Virgin Radio UK also partnered with local organizations like The Food Chain, a charity that helps people living with HIV in London lead healthy, independent lives.
Key Takeaways
Pride Month is an amazing way for companies to show their allyship towards the LGBTQIA+ community, but it’s not as simple as a once-a-year practice. The most effective and genuine marketing campaigns are those that really focus on making a difference and building ongoing relationships with LGBTQIA+ influencers and the community.
Not only is working with these individuals an important way to help show your support but their unique insights and voices are invaluable — and reflect a spectrum of lived experiences that haven’t been traditionally been less seen or heard.
