BuzzFeed News Reporter
When Sarah Warn founded AfterEllen. com in 2002, there had never been a lesbian sex scene on television. The site’s namesake, Ellen DeGeneres, and Portia de Rossi had not yet begun dating. the canon of lesbian pop culture, had not even been transmitted.
“At the time, there were so few lesbian and bisexual women on TV that you can literally count the number,” Warn told BuzzFeed News.
She created AfterEllen to write about the representation of queer women on our screens. At first it was an obstacle, but over the next 14 years it has become one of the few publications reduced through, for and on queer women. When Warn left AfterEllen in 2009, he belonged to Logo, Viacom’s LGBT wing. In 2014, the site acquired through Evolve Media. According to editor-in-chief trish Bendix at the time, Evolve gave AE two fiscal years to make a profit throughout the company’s list of publications. about women and mothers.
That deadline came in September with an announcement from Bendix: it was removed and AfterEllen, at least as we knew, left. Bendix learned the news through a phone call from Evolve director Emrah Kovacoglu. He said: “We can’t locate cash for LGBT sites, we need to put our efforts into developing mothers and in the fashion area where the money is,” Bendix said. After Bendix broke the news in a Tumblr post, Kovacoglu responded with his own post on AfterEllen, titled “False Rumor: We’re Not Closing!”While the site is still active, it seems to have become a shell of itself, harboring some uninspired lists. (Kovacoglu and Evolve did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ requests for comments).
AfterEllen has faithfully told the big changes in the way queer women are represented in pop culture, but one thing has changed: advertisers are still interested in promoting lesbian content.
Warn witnessed this by wooing AfterEllen advertisers, as well as other logo sites such as AfterElton (now known as The Backlot). “Logo reps have constantly tried to sell to gays and lesbians, but advertisers have almost sought to market their products only. to gays, ” he said. This was even though AfterEllen’s traffic was still high, especially given the lack of competing sites for queer women at the time. The fact that AfterEllen attracted 1. 5 million readers at the time of Warn’s departure did not appear to matter.
Homosexuals are stereotyped as an advertiser’s dream. Think of Will
“I think the knowledge did not fit in with their preconceived notions about demographics,” Warn said. “It came down to stereotypes: gay stereotypes for gay men worked for them as consumers, but they worked against us as consumers. When you have stereotypes and knowledge,” stereotypes have won.
The relatively limited market studies conducted on LGBT consumers paint a positive image of other people directly. Nielsen Media Research’s 2015 LGBT Consumer Report found that families with at least one user identified as LGBT spend more in some very hot areas. LGBT families, for example, spend 48% more on wine and 35% more on alcohol than non-LGBT families. They also spend more on animal care (38% more), electronics (43%), and men’s toiletries (32%). In other words, the nonessential. These are the types of products that require a discretionary source of income, studies of which have shown other queer people have an increasing amount to throw away. Bloomberg reported that LGBT Americans had a combined purchasing power of $ 917 billion in 2015, 3. 7% more than last year. Some studies have claimed that married gay men report more sources of income than heterosexual families. A 2015 study found that gay women earn 9% more than women outright, but those figures are controversial. Studies of LGBT market places rarely separate men from women, or take into account other points such as race or education. The “T” in LGBT is also almost ignored, as if other trans people were not 4 times more likely to live in poverty. The same studies that found lesbians winning in the workforce found that gay men are penalized 11% per source of income compared to men directly. Then there’s the fact that in many states, discrimination in the employment of other LGBT people is still perfectly legal.
However, the myth of homosexual wealth has remained in the minds of marketing specialists, even for women.
AfterEllen is not the first and will not be the last publication aimed at queer women suffering from a lack of advertising revenue. credentials: it is the men who have had the percentage of representation of the lion. There is a long history of coded messages in advertising, involving amateur men and ironic words, intended to subtly attract queer men. it is also the demographic organization with which the pioneers have discovered their success.
Absolut vodka began to be marketed to gay consumers in the early 1980s, long before anyone dared to do so. It began with ads placed in LGBT magazines The Advocate and After Dark. Like other early classified ads aimed at gay consumers, the messages were sophisticated: the slogan and rainbow tones warned other LGBT people, but surpassed ads classified as him by all. Absolut was also one of the first to place these messages in major publications, rather than just homosexual media. sponsored the RuPaul endurance race.
Today, Absolut’s gay ads don’t care about being subtle: rainbow bottles and slogans like “Absolut Pride” abound. You’d also find it hard to find a Pride occasion without your call on the sponsor list.
Absolut has not completely ignored gay women (take this adorable lesbian marriage proposal video, for example), however, most of those LGBT classified ads were gender neutral or showed pictures of men explicitly. This is the case for many brands, according to Todd Evans, president and CEO of Fondcombe, which considers itself “the gay media company. “
Fondcombe accounts for about 95% of queer media and HIV/AIDS in the United States, adding Curve, the best-selling lesbian magazine in the United States. Evans has been in Fondcombe since 1992, and in the meantime, the lack of interest in queer has remained a puppy nuisance.
“Women are unattended, and that’s history and our business started in 1979,” she said. This lack of interest can kill publications, and AfterEllen is in fact not the first. Evans claimed that in his early days there were about 20 lesbians. Focused publications. ” I think we’re down to five today. “
Remember a cosmetics company convinced that lesbians don’t wear makeup. “I couldn’t even convince the company that I had Ellen as a spokesperson to promote it on Curve,” she said. Fondcombe has just submitted a cross of postcards reminding brands that possibly lack the “L” in LGBT people.
However, there are notable exceptions. In the mid-1990s, Subaru struggled to sell his cars. Instead of seeking to please everyone, the company tried which niche teams were already loyal to. According to Priceonomics, they found that among outdoor enthusiasts and teachers, these niche equipment also included lesbians. However, this was at another time, when conventional advertising for other queer people was almost unknown. An innovative ikea ad in 1994 with a gay couple provoked boycotts and unfounded fear of a bomb. Despite the threat and prospect of a backlash, Subaru agreed.
In the end, the automaker got good luck with ads with coded messages for queer women, things flying over classified ads from direct customers. Classified ads had plaques that said “P-TOWN,” in reference to Provincetown, Massachusetts. , and “Xena LVR”, a nod to Xena: the warrior princess, an exhibition that made more than one woman realize her uniqueness. Other ads featured celebrities such as tennis player Martina Navratilova. They also invested their media advertising dollars that other LGBT people consumed, such as The Advocate and Out, and gave the impression on The L Word as a sponsor of fictional tennis star Dana Fairbanks. In the most sensible, Subaru went beyond messaging and was the first automaker to offer benefits to them. sexual partners.
Although lesbians obviously have an affinity for Subaru before the logo realizes it, it is the company’s own paintings that have established itself as the lesbian car. Now the logo is up with U-Hauling and snapbacks on the list of lesbian jokes.
Subaru also demonstrates why it’s a mistake in the component of brands to forget about lesbians: we’re an incredibly unwavering group. Research shows that queer women will remain unwavering with brands known for their kindness.
Image of one for Subaru of America 2013.
An LGBT community survey published through community marketing
Queer women are also affordable to succeed: campaigning in publications like AfterEllen or Curve costs less than giant magazines like The Advocate or Out, which are basically read through gay men.
But then there’s the trick of how. While gay women remain such an obvious mystery dressed in flannel and top- position studies in the market turn to gay men, where do advertisers start?a communications expert who teaches people directly how to market the position in LGBT communities.
“If you need to succeed with queer women, you can’t just put inventory models in an ad and pretend it’s for queer women, but use the same message you’d use for your undeniable ad,” she said.
Marks should also appear. It’s not enough to put a lesbian couple in an ad, but it’s not enough to help LGBT workers or occasions like pride celebrations. Absolut vodka and Subaru announced with queer messages in queer publications when no one else would. “There are many marks that I am unwavering because I have noticed them at times, ” said Grace. She says there are corporations she can accept as true through her LGBT marketing. “When I move on to a Marriott, I know I probably wouldn’t have to. worry about being discriminated against, I know the user behind the table will probably not ask my wife and me if we need two beds. “
Since a site as visited as AfterEllen can almost disappear for lack of advertising profits, even if queer women are obviously unwavering with the brands they believe in, virtual queer spaces are suffering to survive. to keep our cultural centers afloat.
Riese Bernard runs Autostraddle. com, which is now, for all purposes, the only major online publication for queer women only. For her, the fall of AfterEllen is proof that advertisers are going to save us.
“This seemed to me to be the definitive proof that the media for gay women cannot be supported through advertising, period,” she said. “From the beginning, there was something that opposed us. At first we thought it was our lack of experience, our lack of connections, our lack of traffic,” he says. Maybe our traffic wasn’t high enough and once we decided the cash would come in. Then we did, and the cash made him not enter. “
At first, they thought it might be due to the site about sex, but when they saw AfterEllen’s struggles, it became clear that the old stereotypes were working.
“When you think of stereotypical homosexuals, you think of a wealthy, well-dressed man who lives in a loft with his elegant boyfriend,” Bernard said. “When they believe in a stereotypical lesbian, they think of hairy armpits and Birkenstocks, and it’s not very commercial. “
Through a voluntary advertising sales team and joining an advertising network, Autostraddle has conducted campaigns such as O. B. tampons, WNBA and the film Pariah. But after hours lost to woo the brands that simply rejected them, Autostraddle said: we will do it ourselves.
Now, the vast majority of profits come from derivatives sales, premium subscriptions and A-Camp, a series of camping trips for queer women. Autostraddle earns even more cash from associated advertising, links to products that provide sales relief. – that of classic ads.
Autostraddle readers are so understanding that Bernard says other people simply send them cash when they have it. We are in a position to do what we can to protect our other people. Because even though stereotypes about lesbians have opposed those in America. , there is one that is true: we stick together.
And that’s the last message Bendix had in his Tumblr post for AfterEllen readers. Despite all that we have lost, we cannot expect ourselves to keep alive the pillars of our network.
“The last thing I leave you is that we have each other, because from anywhere else it is not guaranteed. Support queer women, women of color, trans women – give other women who deserve their money, their eyes, their attention. to their Kickstarters, scale on their websites, promote it on their pages, buy their albums, watch their movies in movie theaters, buy their novels, make a stopover in their businesses. “
Today’s queer women are more visual than ever. But it still doesn’t update spaces like AfterEllen, which we can call ours. Without the cash, whether advertisers or the public itself, to keep those spaces alive, parts of the queer network die with them. Other people or see other queer people, represented, ” said Bernard. “But other people who say those spaces are no longer needed are simply ridiculous. “