EQUALITY MEDIA Newsletter ::: DISNEY, TRAVELOCITY, GOLDMAN SACHS...Marriage Equality as Corporate Buzzword

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Thursday, September 6, 2007
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On the Issues...
Marriage Equality as Corporate Buzzword
Companies parlay inclusion into profitability

As of 2006, the Magazine Publishers of America counted upwards of 6,734 consumer magazines (PDF) around the world? Of those, two were new wedding title launches, and in Grand Central Station, one can find roughly twenty-five wedding magazines on sale at any moment.

Yet you can count the number of same-sex wedding-focused magazines on one hand. They include the all-gay Rainbow Wedding Network Magazine, which I have yet to hear of anyone actually finding; and my own all-inclusive With This Ring magazine, which exists in prototype form but (like so many startups) could certainly use a cash infusion.

Online resources abound, including GayWeddings.com in America, and TheKnot.com dedicates a substantive but discrete and fairly well-hidden
area of its massive portal to same-sex unions.

Especially in light of the spending power and oft-emphasized brand loyalty of the GLBT community to those who support inclusiveness, this industry-wide oversight seems inexplicable. Before beginning work on WTR, I asked my friend and advisor George Sansoucy--a revered print advertising executive, late of such agencies as Initiative and Magna Global--why a company like Fairchild (pre- or post- merger), which produces so many wedding titles, doesn't simply spin off a GLBT-focused title and dominate the burgeoning market?

With curiosity, he replied that one of two options was likely the case: either the major publishing companies didn't see any profitability in catering to the GLBT market, or the politics were too thorny for their shareholders, managing executives, and current advertisers.

The latter argument is passionate, visceral, and fundamentally unwinnable. But the GLBT community is one of America's single wealthiest, highly educated, social, and ambitious demographic groups, so blindness or bias can only be blamed in failing to see the potentially lucrative opportunity of reaching out to them directly, engaging their issues, fulfilling their needs uniquely.

So, let's leave aside my vehement support of Equal Marriage Rights and defer to a strict business sense, considering the benefit that marriage equality poses to businesses across the board and around America. We'll find ourselves--finally--in good company, alongside unlikely partners that include the Walt Disney Company, Travelocity, and Goldman Sachs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average consists of thirty stocks that are said to be “representative” of their respective industries. In theory, their heft and histories stabilize the Dow component stocks; their standard operating procedures are well-worn and familiar, if not always embraced.

Disney (DIS) represents a particular brand of entertainment—as it has since its inception in 1923—that is gentle, conservative, “All-American,” and [in this author’s opinion, having once applied for a job at the company’s Anaheim theme park] utopic, for better or worse. The company’s laser-focus on so-called “family values” explains the predominance of G-ratings among Disney-branded films.

In light of its obsession with wholesomeness, Disney's decision this past April to “open [its] ‘Fairy Tail Weddings’ program to same-sex couples” was seen as a watershed moment for modern inclusiveness, as well as a double-take-inspiring diversion from tradition.

According to MagicalMountain.net, a news blog that tracks the Walt Disney Company, the “dramatic change of policy” generated a slurry of criticism from conservative religious organizations that accused the company of pandering and forfeiting its own values. Simultaneously, the gay community cheered, along with every proponent of TRUE Equality.

One doesn’t become a seminal American company without a healthy dose of business acumen; Disney doesn't do anything without considering the market's likely reaction. Thus, one can assume that it is no coincidence that exactly 17 out of 30—or 57%—of Dow components are listed on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2007 ranking of the Best Places to Work for GLBT Equality.

These companies have internalized the core marketing message expounded for years by GLBT-focused firms like Witeck-Combs Communications: “Seven in 10 (70%) [gay, lesbian, and bisexual] respondents say they are extremely or very likely to consider a brand that is known to provide equal workplace benefits for all of their employees, including gays and lesbians.”

Yet the practice--and benefits--of targeted outreach are hardly limited to the largest corporations, or any particular industry. From the nimblest Web-based technologists to the most overachieving financial firms, modernist companies are inspiring loyalty and increasing targeted outreach by viewing customers and employees alike holistically, rather than as commodities.

As Jeffrey Glueck, Chief Marketing Officer of Travelocity, told me via email: "As a business we do not take political positions, nor do we make advertising decisions based on political issues...We firmly stand by treating all the various communities we serve with respect, and we think that's what a responsible business does."

Meanwhile, as the newspaper Crain's New York Business reported in its April 10, 2006 edition, Goldman Sachs has not only empowered its GLBT employees within the corporate structure, it has embraced their family lives, throwing anniversary and pre-commitment ceremony celebrations for them and their partners -- just as they do for the company's heterosexual cohort.

The payoff is real: Goldman is a model of across-the-board inclusiveness for both employees and consumers. Last year, Goldman employees raked in more than $16 billion (with a B) dollars in bonuses. Maybe that's serendipity, but one wonders if the two are related.

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