{"id":203,"date":"2021-06-04T17:31:23","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T16:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/?p=203"},"modified":"2021-06-04T17:31:49","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T16:31:49","slug":"profiting-from-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/2021\/06\/04\/profiting-from-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Profiting from Pride"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

June is here and that means one thing\u2014Pride month! There are rainbow flags in every shop, colourful cocktails out in the bars and a range of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) themed merchandise available to buy. Of course, this can be incredible as it encourages the celebration of rights of the LGBTQ+ community, but the question is\u2026 just how much is rainbow packaging or \u2018Pride\u2019 written over certain products going to be helping the Pride community?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps we should ask how much does it benefit the companies promoting Pride month? A great deal. Many corporations have Pride promotions each year and make money from it, some donate to charity and some don\u2019t do anything at all, they just profit from Pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s look at some of the Pride campaigns over the years and see whether it benefited the LGBTQ+ community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. The infamous LGBT sandwich \u2013 Marks and Spencer<\/strong><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato on bread, a take on the popular sandwich \u2018BLT\u2019. What does this have to do with Pride? Well, M&S have boxed it in rainbow packaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In 2019 M&S received stick for this sandwich, one critic saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cWhilst it is good a national company is raising awareness, this is blatant exploitation of a marginalised community for a huge profit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    M&S do annually donate \u00a310,000 of their profits to AKT, the UK\u2019s national LGBTQ+ youth homelessness charity, but as they make about \u00a31,000 a minute, they have received backlash saying this is not generous enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Colourless skittles<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
      \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      The company Mars have sold \u2018colourless\u2019 Skittles for the past few years for Pride month with the slogan \u2018only one rainbow matters this pride\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      This received heavy criticism, some people believed this may be promoting \u2018white pride\u2019 which is quite the opposite of what the LGBTQ+ community hope to encourage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Mars did make effort to interact more with the Pride community and even encouraged LGBTQ+ illustrators to create limited edition packaging for Skittles in 2020. They also partnered with GLAAD to donate $1 per pack of colourless Skittles sold (up to $100,000) to the LGBTQ media advocacy group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Skittles created a #OneRainbow on Twitter too, so you can see they benefited from Pride, but have also made efforts to help the community rather than just see it as a commercial opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      • Pride Listerine<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
        \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

        Arguably one of the most ridiculous ones\u2014 mouthwash with rainbow packaging around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Twitter went crazy when they saw this, one user @FanDabbyJosie said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \u201cI’m so f*ing tired of companies just chucking a rainbow on their sh*t to sell to us as if it means something<\/em><\/strong>

        I’ll wash my hair w ogx gay shampoo, eat my gay m&s sandwich and drink my gay absolut vodka wearing my gay primark top before I rinse w gay listerine.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Listerine didn\u2019t even make any donations to Pride, they just put a rainbow around their mouthwash bottle\u2014 like that helps anyone whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        • H&M Pride range<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          One of the most awful of all is H&M Pride\u2019s range which is made in Bangladesh, where homosexuality is punishable with life imprisonment. H&M said 10% of the sale price from the H&M’s \u2018Love For All\u2019 collection will be donated to the UN’s Free & Equal campaign, but this isn\u2019t directly going to the Pride campaign or helping the countries that suffer the most from illegal homosexuality laws and other devastating situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          • Pride Absolut Vodka<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

            One company who have supported the LGBTQ+ community for 35 years is Absolut. Since 1981 they have run Pride-based ads in magazines and even covered pride slogans over London buses, encouraging passengers to donate to Stonewall (LGBTQ+ charity).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Absolut have been a huge advocate for Pride and have raised awareness and raised a great amount of money for the cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            As we\u2019ve seen, many companies profit from promotional occasions such as Pride but won\u2019t actually donate to charities or raise any awareness for the minority group. Placing rainbow packaging over a product and doing nothing else to help the LGBTQ+ community is awful and we should not support these corporations. It is probably more worthwhile to directly donate to the charities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            June is here and that means one thing\u2014Pride month! There are rainbow flags in every shop, colourful cocktails out in the bars and a range of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) themed merchandise available to buy. Of course, this can be incredible as it encourages the celebration of rights of the LGBTQ+ community, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211,"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk\/kentconnect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}