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In my PhD research Marketing the Rainbow I look at the question “Does the Gay Consumer actually exist?”. To outline the framework, here are some concepts and symbols. Now the icon: the rainbow flag.

Somewhere over the rainbow, Way up high…

That’s the text from the musical The Wizard of Oz (1939), which became a gay favorite – if only because of Judy Garland’s leading role as Dorothy (hence the ‘coded’ expression “Friend of Dorothy”). It was Judy’s funeral in 1969 that led to the Stonewall riots in New York, the first organized signs of resistance to the oppression of gays. This riot was the beginning of the gay liberation movement in the US. In the Netherlands we were six months ahead of them with protests in the Binnenhof against “248bis”. We have always been one step ahead of the world.

That first rainbow

I think it was Judy Garland who first connected gays to the rainbow. This is now widely seen as a symbol of the LGBT community, succeeding previous symbols such as the pink triangle. The use of rainbow as a sign of diversity, inclusivity, hope and desire has a long history. Many groups and organizations were using it, even as far back as 6,500 years ago. And Noah, of course.

The emergence

The rainbow as an LGBT symbol became more or less official when vexillographer Gilbert Baker, a friend of Harvey Milk, designed the Rainbow Pride flag in 1978. “A true flag,” he said, “has been torn from the soul of the people.” He started the project after Milk convinced him of the need to create a symbol to call the LGBT community to action when actress Anita Bryant (indeed, of Singer Without Name fame) publicly portrayed all gays as pedophiles. The cake she got in the face for it (1972) was also one of the impulses of the emancipation movement.

San Francisco

The flag was first used at the San Francisco “Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade”. Since then, it has been used worldwide as a symbol for LGBT unity.

Fun fact: Baker’s rainbow flag has 6 colors, instead of the usual 7 (even though the real rainbow consists of a whole spectrum of colors). However, the original had 8 stripes: hot pink (sexuality), red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sunlight), green (nature), turquoise (magic), indigo (harmony) and violet (spirit). When Baker sent this design to The San Francisco Flag Co. to have it produced for the 1979 parade, the bright pink stripe had to be dropped. He had painted the color by hand, and unfortunately it was not a commercially available color.

Later that year, when Harvey Milk was murdered, the Pride Parade committee felt Baker’s flag was the perfect symbol to unite the entire community in protest of this tragedy. The committee removed the turquoise color to allow the stripes to be evenly distributed along the parade route: red, orange and yellow on one side of the street, green, blue and purple on the other.

Other sources explain the disappearance of the 7th color as follows: if you hang the flag vertically on, for example, the lampposts of San Francisco’s Market Street, the middle stripe disappears behind the pole. The easiest way to solve this was to make it an even number, so that’s why the turquoise stripe is gone. Thus, the 6-colored flag that we know today was born.

Q: which color should be above, the purple or the red?
A: There is no “right” way, both are allowed. This instruction comes directly from Gilbert Baker.

Although the flag already symbolizes diversity, many variations have since emerged within the LGBT community. For example, a black line was added as a sign for those who died of AIDS. There are – unfortunately – also many other variations, which degrades the flag as a symbol of unity.

The flag also became an unexpected fundraiser for the Gay Rights Movement. When large flags were first carried (horizontally) in parades, people spontaneously started throwing money on the flag (perhaps a similar Pavlovian reaction that people have at fountains and other water features). At first some people took offense to this, because they did not consider themselves poor or pitiful. But a movement can’t be made of enthusiasm alone, so many organizations took the opportunity to raise money that way – and they still do. This was probably the first link between the rainbow and money…

I called my dissertation Marketing the Rainbow, not only because the rainbow represents the LGBT population, but also because there is said to be a legendary pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And isn’t that what marketers are looking for?

Alfred Verhoeven is a marketer and is in the final phase of his PhD research Marketing the Rainbow.
He previously wrote for ILOVEGAY about A tram down your throat, The Dutch Rainbows, Pride Month, The Oldest Rainbows, Royal Dutch Shell part 1 and part 2, Marriott part 1 and part 2, Super Bowl Ads: What Would Jesus Do?,  Zalando part 1 & part 2, Get woke, go broke, Spain has 6.8 billion reasons to love rainbow tourists, How Spain markets itself as rainbow destination, Everyone’s gay in Amsterdam, I Amsterdam, Gay Capital, The Ideal Traveler, Diversity & Language, Playing with Pronouns, Abercrombie & Fitch : The Rise & The Fall, Play the gayme: about SIMS and Candy Crush, Diversity in Toys, LEGO does the rainbow, Barbiemania, Bud Light and the 4 bln dollar woman, Dutch retailer HEMA loves everybody, Pronouns, About those rainbows, Alphabet soup, M&M’s and the lesbian invasion, Magnum and the lesbian wedding, Marketing the Rainbow: the process and all that came before it, Sport and (un)sportmanship,  Why you need a supplier diversity program, BeNeLux LGBTIQ+ Business Chamber (BGLBC), From B2C and B2B to B2G and G2G (oh, and G2C), The Men from Atlantis, The other kind of cruising, Booking.com, Home Deco, Haters and trolls: the ‘letter to the editor’ of the 21st century, 5 Bizarre LGBT Videos, TRANSparency, Transgender persons as a target group, Matchmaking, 5 videos that went viral, From Representation To Respect, Cultural sensitivities and social involvement in marketing, 4 reasons to practice diversity and The Rules of Market Segmentation.