Inclusive marketing isn’t progressive — it’s competitive
You don’t have to be a radical, leftist dissenter (like me) to find the value in marketing to LGBT people and communities
This essay was sparked by an experience I had indulging one of my compulsions: taking surveys.
I obsessively take surveys. As a long-tenured marketer and current head of a marketing agency, I know the power that surveys and data have to effect meaningful change in business. The same applies to more complicated issues like politics, à la gerrymandering, the U.S. Census, etc. though that is not the focus of this article; the takeaway is that we are driven by data, and speaking on behalf of marketers, we are driven to collect and analyze that data. It is valuable.
An old idiom in this country is that something is ‘worth its weight in gold.’ But that aphorism no longer applies, because data is literally weightless. You can’t divide by zero. The idea of weight being tied to worth breaks down when looking at the value of data, which is — by extension — infinitely more valuable than gold or cash, when collected and analyzed properly.
However, despite its intrinsic value and the general consensus that good, solid data are important to obtain, not everyone collects or analyzes data well. Case in point:
As a disclaimer, I don’t know much about Walmart’s policies or politics. I, like a lot of left-leaning folks that I know, have a vague apprehension that they are a large, evil corporation that is misbehaving and mistreating people and acting in ways that don’t serve the world’s — or anyone but their shareholders’ — best interests. I’m not a fan, but I can’t say that I specifically know why.
However, they are famously inexpensive, so when I needed to stock up on office supplies and snacks for search/local HTX, despite my misgivings, that’s where I went. And when — to my delight — there was an exhortation to take the survey on the back of my receipt, I complied almost immediately.
My reaction can probably best be summed up by the grimacing face emoji, and it occurred about halfway through their (very lengthy) survey. Check the image above for what prompted that reaction.
Despite many opportunities to ‘write in’ answers throughout the survey, including for ‘race/ethnicity’ on the very next slide, Walmart insists that survey-takers (I hate the term ‘users’) identify as either male or female. One or the other. No write-in.
I’m sure for every person nodding knowingly, there is at least one person wondering what the big deal is. I offer this excerpt, a Lambda Legal quote from a 2017 USA TODAY article:
“Presenting an identification document that does not accurately reflect one’s sex and is inconsistent with one’s gender identity can trigger invasions of privacy, prejudice, stigma, violence and discrimination and harassment in a wide variety of settings, including in employment, education, public accommodations, health care, housing and interactions with the government, including with law enforcement,” the non-profit organization, Lambda Legal, wrote to the Oregon Department of Transportation.
In other words, that binary choice — male or female — can and does trigger exactly the sort of feelings in survey-takers that would inspire them to stop taking the survey.
What mystifies me the most is that write-in options are all over the rest of the survey, including, as previously mentioned, on the very next page. This is a deliberate choice by Walmart’s marketing team to force people to conform to the gender binary.
Why? Whose interests does that serve? I always think of a line that I, like many people my age, learned from The Departed: ‘cui bono?’ Who benefits?
In this instance, I sincerely don’t know who does. If Walmart is deliberately carrying out some sort of politico-gender agenda, it’s doing so at the expense of good data collection, which would arguably (well, maybe inarguably) benefit them considerably more.
Here’s the simple fact: transgender and non-binary folks are shopping at Walmart. I don’t need to look up data. It’s a patent fact. And they’re doing so in increasing numbers, as increasing numbers of people find that the male-female dichotomy does not accurately describe their identity or lived experience.
Now, I am very left-leaning, and I despise the patriarchy. I’m all for dismantling it, and — especially in Texas — that brings me into conflict with all kinds of well-intentioned, if (according to me) ignorant, people. This is not one of those instances where I’m trying to be the most progressive person in the room.
This is a question of #GoodMarketing vs #BadMarketing, and inclusivity-marketing isn’t a progressive principle, it’s a business principle.
Kent Loftin is the Chief Development Officer at The Montrose Center, an organization that has existed since the 1978 Astrodome Town Hall Meeting I that sparked 40 years of Houston Pride, ably and effectively serving the LGBT community and Houston’s most at-risk populations.
When I was still the CMO for Katz Boutique, I met with Loftin at a coffeeshop nearby The Montrose Center, and I was all vim and vigor and said something disparaging businesses that simply put up a rainbow flag outside their establishment and do nothing more substantive (in my mind) than that to support the LGBT community.
Loftin said something to me I’ll never forget: “There’s a lot to be said for putting a rainbow flag up outside your business.”
His point — which I agree wholeheartedly with — is that a token show of support is better than no show of support. I can only speak authoritatively for myself, but anecdotally, among LGBT-identified people I’ve spoken to and interacted with, something is better than nothing, and a small sign that they have been accounted for and thought of is enough to inspire real engagement, even loyalty.
I have met plenty of bigots and idiots who have told me something equivalent to, ‘Well, I don’t want their business anyway.’ 20 years ago, that might have flown. But now? Pfft. Yes. Yes, you do. I promise.
Here on Medium, Zachary Zane wrote a terrific piece for The LGBT Foundation called, “How LGBT Customers Became the Most Undervalued Economy in the World.”
Here’s one fact that stuck out to me:
… if the LGBT community were a country, it would be the fourth-largest economy in the world, with a GDP of $4.6 trillion.
This article from The Advocate amusingly takes much the same stance I took with Loftin, damning companies who slap a ‘rainbow label on a bottle once a year and call themselves gay-friendly.’
Is there a more aptly-named source than Money.com? ‘Same-sex couples outearn straight couples by more than $60,000 [a year].’
No less august an institution than Bloomberg writes that 7% of Americans identify as gay, bisexual or transgender — and that was in 2016.
That was a flurry of sources, the reason being that with search/local HTX, I often have to convince conservative or right-leaning clients that there is money to be made marketing inclusively, and specifically marketing to LGBT-identified people. Sometimes, we compromise on not marketing exclusively, but like Loftin told me, there’s value in that, too.
So to tie things back to the irritating survey that inspired me, why leave money on the table? Walmart was and is actively hurting its own marketing cause by deliberately creating a bottleneck in that survey. They are essentially saying — either by accident or on purpose — we don’t want your data or your business if you don’t fit into box 1 (male) or box 2 (female).
Even if, in your home or heart, you somehow hate gay people or hate what you perceive as a ‘gay agenda,’ as a business-owner, you’d be a fool to drive those clients, customers and (ugh) users into the arms of a more inclusive company.
Cui bono? Who benefits? In the world of marketing, when you add inclusivity as a principle and adhere to the idea that — at a minimum — ‘their money spends just as well,’ everyone benefits. Everyone wins. Everyone except the bigots and troglodytes smugly watching the world and economy pass them by.
