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Nowadays you have all kinds of (online) marketing, but ‘in the olden days’ you actually only had TV and radio. But even then there was ‘Marketing the Rainbow‘. Visually speaking, TV is of course much more relevant. Here are three early examples of TV commercials that featured LGBT themes.

3. IKEA – Dining table (USA, 1994)

This is often considered to be the first rainbow-themed commercial to appear on TV, but in fact it was ‘only’ the third – and with limited airtime at that. In 1994, IKEA released this commercial featuring a gay couple. This groundbreaking spot made headlines around the world. The two middle-aged men, finishing each other’s sentences, say, “a leaf means devotion.” At the end someone says, “There’s another leaf waiting for us if we REALLY get along,” – perhaps implying marriage or having children. In any case, it was 21 years before they could legally marry.

It was one of the first times that an advertiser in the US dealt openly with a gay relationship. It wasn’t “gay vague” like many ads before or after this one were: the two men verbally declared that they were each other’s partners.

IKEA still had some reservations. The spot was shown only once in New York City and Washington, and only after 9:30 p.m. “out of respect for children.” Many wrongly assumed the commercial was intended to target gay buyers, but it was part of a larger campaign about “non-traditional” families, including a mixed-race couple and a single mother with an adopted child.

The commercial’s director told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that it wasn’t important to be the first company to show a gay couple together and “Actually, I was surprised when we first started looking at this that no one had done it before “. The IKEA ad disappeared shortly after it was launched, when the retailer received a bomb threat at a store – from conservatives, who at the same time called for a boycott. Nevertheless, the commercial was popular with the gay community. The stereotype of fashion orientation and tastemaker was used in the advertisements, giving IKEA a kind of ‘Gay Housekeeping Seal of Approval’. One of the two actors is also openly gay, although he said that was not known when he was cast in the role.

2. Politiken – Timian (Denmark, 1993)

In 1993, the Danish newspaper Politiken hired the now famous Danish film director Lars von Trier. The ad shows a humorous yet romantic scenario of a couple having dinner – and the couple just happens to be two men. The video is called “Timian” (= thyme), and the story apparently has little to do with a newspaper, although… the recipe that one man is making is in that newspaper. And from a kiss the whole thing develops into the Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson scene from “The Postman Always Rings Twice”.

Apparently there wasn’t much concern about a backlash in Denmark, but in some countries, including the US, many brands at the time were still shying away from using traditional mainstream media channels to reach LGBT communities, or use them as protagonists.

1. Amev: We understand people (Netherlands, 1992)

Not very surprising, but the ‘winner’ comes from the Netherlands. As early as 1992, Amev said “we understand that not everyone is the same”.

Fun fact: Amev was also active in Denmark at the time, but under the name “Utrecht”. This was reportedly because a word ending in a ‘v’ was not that common in that country – or at least that’s what I was told when I visited there on behalf of ING at the time. However, there are many more words that end with a v, at least more than in Dutch or English.

Conclusion

And so it began – the journey from representation to respect. Representation –> visibility –> normalization –> tolerance –> acceptance –> respect. This gained worldwide momentum in 2015, when ‘gay marriage’* was legalized in the US.

* I always put this in quotes because it is identical to a heterosexual marriage, but when introduced in the Netherlands in 2001 – a world premiere – it was officially called “opening up civil marriage to couples of the same sex” and that just doesn’t sound so sexy. To indicate that it concerns such couples, I use ‘gay marriage’.

Alfred Verhoeven is a marketer and is in the final phase of his PhD research Marketing the Rainbow.
He previously wrote for ILOVEGAY about Royal Dutch Shell part 1 and part 2, Marriott part 1 and part 2, Super Bowl Ads: What Would Jesus Do?, Zalando’s journey from activism to size-inclusive shoes, Zalando goes from controversies to hidden stories, 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.