Unless you are living under a rock, you would have seen rainbows all over your social media feeds. It’s because June is celebrated as Pride Month. Festivities, parades, and events are organised to honour LGBTQ+ voices and experiences and to draw attention to the issues that members of the community still face.
With the awareness about LGBTQ+ issues rising in the recent past, brands too have seen an immense opportunity to demonstrate their support for the cause.
There are both statistical and ethical reasons behind this mindset of brands. With 7% of the adult US population identifying as LGBTQ+, the community now represents nearly $1 trillion in buying power. Additionally, 54% of millennials say they would love to choose LGBTQ-friendly brands over others.
In 2017, McDonalds celebrated Pride Month with a rainbow fries box and even changed its slogan to LovinisLovin. The brand’s inclusive stance was appreciated by the customers.
The same year, Nike also launched rainbow products like sneakers, t-shirts and socks as a part of their BE TRUE collection.
When Conversation Media Stepped Up To Celebrate The Pride Month
Launching goodies to show their support to the queer community has been normal for brands for quite some time now. With the increased use of social media by consumers, brands shifted their campaign strategy to a personal level, and Conversation Media forms (Emojis, GIFs, Stickers, Memes) played a significant role here. It gave people a medium to connect to the LGBTQ+ community and support them personally. Most people from the LGBTQ+ community do not speak about their sexuality in public and many of them haven’t come out because of the associated stigma and stereotypes.
Conversation Media gave us all a colorful way to share our opinions, be it on social media or messaging platforms.
Here are a few examples of brands that made use of Conversation Media to show their support to the LGBTQ+ community.
1. Twitter
In 2018, Twitter announced hashtag-triggered emojis to mark LGTBQ Pride Month in June. Users had to type particular hashtags like #Pride2018, #LoveIsLove, #Pride, #LoveWins, #PrideMonth and #PrideParade and it would turn into emojis.
They even used a GIF to announce which hashtags will trigger the pride emojis.
2. Instagram
Just last year, when the entire world was under lockdown and organising pride events and parades wasn’t possible, Instagram introduced a range of visual features.
A selected bunch of hashtags that are often used for and by the LGBTQ+ people appeared in rainbow colours. Some of these hashtags were: #lgbtq, #bornperfect, #equalitymatters, #accelerateacceptance, or #pride2020.
Not just this, they expanded the existing sticker pack to include more pride stickers.
3. Giphy
Giphy is one of the largest platforms that provides GIFs to its users. These GIFs can be shared across messaging platforms like Facebook messenger, Instagram, etc. They have always supported the LGBTQ+ community with amazing GIFs.
This muscle-flexing unicorn designed by Phil Corbett was a part of their pride collection and the entire set of GIFs were shared over a billion times during the Pride month in 2018.
Giphy has a lot of other GIFs that represent the LGBTQ+ people and give us something to share with our friends and families.
4. Spotify
In 2018, Spotify transformed its volume bar into a beautiful rainbow to celebrate the Pride month. The colourful feature was made available for the entire month of June in Pride Hub, a special section of the app where you could also find a collection of Pride Month playlists.
They even added celebratory messages as users increased the volume like: LOUD AND PROUD and LIVE AT FULL VOLUME in rainbow colours.
5. Facebook
Facebook added Pride features like LGBTQ-themed backgrounds for status updates, Pride reactions for posts, stickers in Messenger, and Pride masks and frames for Facebook Camera.
These small steps taken by social media and conversation media platforms started the conversations that mattered.
Each year, more and more brands are joining the Pride Month celebration by showing their support for the community with various emojis, stickers, GIFs, or even merchandise.
Have you used these cute and meaningful GIFs and stickers to voice your support for the LGBTQ+ community during Pride month? Remember, each one of them is capable of starting a new dialogue. Why not start right away?
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