MXWhile I’m traveling this week, Madame X over at My Open Wallet wrote a gay-friendly column today and said I could re-post it here for the queers. Read below… this is why everyone loves the Madame!

This past Sunday was New York’s Gay Pride Parade. (Ok, it’s really the Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender parade but who has time for all that.) It’s right up there with the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the Puerto Rican Day parade, and even the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in terms of the number of people who turn out to enjoy the festive atmosphere and wacky floats, and to show support for their gay friends and family members.

The news reports always seem to feature the outrageous drag queens, who are many, but the singing groups, church groups, politicians, motorcycle enthusiasts, PFLAG chapters (parents and friends of lesbians and gays) and sports clubs are even more numerous. Regardless of affiliation, a good time is had by all.

It would be interesting to estimate some of the financial aspects of this celebration: the thousands of tourists it brings to the city and how much they spend here, amount spent going to restaurants and parties and clubs, amount spent on rainbow flags, rainbow bracelets, rainbow underwear, mardi gras beads, whistles, etc!

But what about the purchasing power of the gay community? A quick Google search turns up this article, which estimates it at $641 billion in 2006. Vying for a piece of that juicy pie, some of the corporate sponsors participating in this year’s parade included Mazda, Sirius Satellite Radio, Delta Airlines, Starbucks, Zipcar, L’Oreal, Svedka Vodka, and Bacardi.

A perfectly-timed NY Times article titled “Hey Gay Spender, Marketers Spending Time With You” (6/26/06) talks about the transition of gay-targeted marketing from print to TV, the internet, radio and movies, noting that more than 60 mainstream companies have advertised on Viacom’s gay and lesbian cable channel Logo, including Anheuser-Busch, eBay, GM, Sony, Sears, Dell, and Orbitz, as well as Subaru, who have been marketing to gays for over a decade. But here is the thing I found really fascinating in this article: when Logo did early research about what their audience was looking for, the viewers “said they wanted to see ads on the channel to see who would be reaching out to them.”

If that is not a marketer’s dream, I don’t know what is. I suspect this is somewhat true for any minority market– African-American, Latino, gay– the consumers WANT to see the ads, and the very existence of those ads inspires interest at the very least, and often extends to brand loyalty, for the sole reason that being a target of advertising makes people feel that they are not being ignored, that they have power and command respect. (I mean, what could possibly be gay about a Subaru? It’s not like they offer cars with special hers and hers lipstick holders or anything!)

In today’s society, attention from advertisers has become a measure of status, legitimacy, and self-esteem. Interesting, isn’t it? It makes sense– commercials are a huge part of the pop culture we absorb, so it makes sense that everyone wants to see themselves represented in that space. So my next question is… are TiVo’s sales lower in these minority markets???