Using Pride Month as a marketing ploy to profit off customers’ emotions while demonstrating disingenuous messaging shows a lack of consideration for the LGBTQ+ community’s well-being and needs to end.
Pride Month is intended to be a time of reflection on the challenges activists have faced in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. It is an opportunity to raise awareness on LGBTQ+ issues, further advance rights and celebrate the community as a whole, yet often this is overshadowed by corporate greed.
‘Rainbow washing’ is the term applied to the practice of deceptive marketing techniques that use LGBTQ+ imagery and themes for profit rather than donating funds to LGBTQ+ charities. Some of these techniques may include adding rainbows to products and posting on social media in support of Pride Month.
Rainbow washing targets the LGBTQ+ community in order to gain business, not to celebrate Pride. Luckily, many LGBTQ+ advocates have begun to notice and raise awareness on this issue.
Within the last few years, major companies such as AT&T, Pfizer, Amazon and CVS Health have donated thousands of dollars toward the campaigns of U.S. lawmakers who support and push anti-LGBTQ+ bills. These laws include banning transgender students from participating in school sports, restricting gender-affirming care for minors and eliminating discussions about LGBTQ+ topics from the classroom.
This year AT&T actively ran a Pride campaign manipulating consumers into thinking the company supported the LGBTQ+ community. Other companies listed above have done the exact same thing.
Although these companies are carrying out their political motivations in the U.S., Canadians must take notice as the two countries are diplomatically connected and the effects are sure to cross borders. These companies use Canadians’ money to fuel homophobia.
Rainbow washing is fraudulent in nature, as a company’s true motive is hidden from the naked eye. If a company truly wants to act as an ally towards the LGBTQ+ community it must make it well-known that revenue generated from Pride campaigns is going to respective charities.
Companies shouldn’t spend profits from the LGBTQ+ community to fund hate. Such practices are deceitful and downright disturbing.
