PrideAM is a lobby group pushing for fairer representation of LGBT+ people in ads and in the agencies that create them. So it’s produced a “Creative Review” of ads doing it right and doing it wrong.
The panel included M&C Saatchi CCO Justin Tindall who received a right old kicking for saying in Campaign that he was “bored of diversity,” wishing people would concentrate on talent, wherever it came from. Injudicious but you know what he meant.
The panel, including Tindall presumably, thought Baz Luhrmann’s fey number for Erdem/H&M was “appalling, fake and full of Brideshead Revisited repression.” Can’t recall a great deal of repression in Evelyn Waugh’s book although the leads have their (mostly unstated) sexual issues. But the depiction of gays at Oxford is remarkably open, for the time.
Others they didn’t like included Tesco’s Christmas effort from BBH, which featured a couple of muslim women but no obvious lesbians or gays as far as we can see. So are you not supposed to invite muslims for Christmas?
And this for Coke from Wieden+Kennedy in the US.
It may not be much good but why does it offend? Among the adjectives applied to some of these were “disconnected”, “saccharine” and “almost offensive.” Isn’t “almost offensive” something of a weasel?
Brands must insist on the involvement of LGBT+ people in the creation of their campaigns if they want to create work that will ring true, PrideAM advises. For everything? What if it’s a two-person band who are both WASP-ishly straight?
They did like this one for Apple Australia, which we did too.
But gay weddings is the subject.
Everyone exaggerates to make a point from time to time and agencies should be as diverse as they can be.
But some of these judgements just look silly.
