To celebrate Pride Month, brands released their campaigns to celebrate love. Hundreds of brands stand in allegiance with the LGTBQA+ community by creating campaigns focused on Pride Month. Although many brands’ campaigns are a bop, this year had a couple that was a flop. Here are some of the best and the most cringe Pride Month campaigns.
Flop
This year there were a few brands whose campaigns stood out for being tone-deaf to the LGBTQA+ community and completely missed the mark.
Burger King
To celebrate Pride Month, Burger King Austria created a ‘Pride Whopper’ to promote an LGTBQA+ burger. Their Pride burger consisted of two options: a burger with two top buns and a burger with two bottom buns.
The top and bottom buns were to signify tops and bottoms in the gay community, but this campaign entirely missed the mark. Burger King Austria said the campaign was to “highlight equal rights and equal love—through a play on the traditional Whopper build—featuring two identical buns on the two options of the sandwich,” but the company missed the mark.
Burger King apologized after the PR blow-up and said its intention was never to offend the LGTBQA+ community.
Postmates
Another company to suffer from a Pride PR nightmare is Postmates. To celebrate Pride Month, Postmates curated a list of restaurants and promoted it as a bottom-friendly menu. The company has marketed this menu to help aid in digestion.
Not only was this menu offensive, but Postmates stole this idea from a TikTok creator. Alex Hall is a well-known gay chef that makes recipe videos to promote digestion for bottoms.
Postmates has yet to issue an apology statement, but it will take a lot for Postmates to recover from this failed Pride campaign.
Bops
What brands need to do differently to show their allegiance to the LGTBQA+ community is stay away from slapping a Pride flag onto their products and calling it a campaign. Brands need to use their platform to their advantage and advocate for the LGBTQA+ community because members of the community can see through it.
Hulu
Starting in 2019, Hulu has continued their Pride celebration of “Pride Never Stops.” Their pride campaign promotes TVs and Movies that include and celebrate the LGTBQA+ community.
Along with the promotion of entertainment, Hulu is live-streaming Pride Parades. They live-streamed the Los Angeles Pride Parade on June 12th and are live streaming the NYC Pride Parade on June 26th.
For Pride Never Stops, Hulu is promoting: Glee, Fire Island, Vida, Love, Victor, Mormon No More, and Wildhood.
Saks off 5th
This year Saks off 5th took a great approach to celebrate Pride Month by partnering with The Phluid Phoundation. The Phulid Phoundation is “a nonprofit that supports trans-led organizations and homeless queer youth at a grassroots and global level.”
The two worked together to create a gender-neutral wardrobe capsule that is friendly for everyone in the LGTBQA+ community. The net proceeds go to The Phluid Project for up to $100,000.
Overall, every year it seems that brands are getting a better grasp on how to celebrate Pride Month, but we still have a long way to go.
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