CALL: 985-778-0798
Marketing Changes with Society | Velocity Agency | New Orleans
It may not be the Royal Wedding, but it could be a close second. As ABC’s hit comedy-series “Modern Family” gears up for it’s second leg of a part-2 season finale May 21st the marriage ceremony between characters Cam (played by Eric Stonestreet) and Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) allows the union of the partners to become official.
Co-creator of the series, Christopher Lloyd, told USA TODAY in an article about the show’s nuptial, “Something like this 10 years ago would have made a splash. It will jar some people but hopefully the much more prevalent reaction will be ‘oh that reminds me of my wedding day.’”
While the on-screen “Modern Wedding” finale has seen overwhelming positive reviews and hype on social media by fans, gay marriages and partnerships on television have long been awaiting their acceptance on TV without a controversial backlash or stereotype.
Lagging behind their cinema and silver-screen counterparts, television advertisers are finally feeling secure enough in their brands to feature gay and lesbian families in commercials. Perhaps these advertisers are realizing they have more to gain by running the advertisements than lose.
The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite ad, which aired March of last year, shows a female reading her Kindle by a swimming pool side-by-side with a male attempting to read a competitors tablet in the sun. After dialogue between the two about the tablets the woman casually mentions her husband getting a drink for her, and the man replies “so is mine” while the duo turns and waves to two men standing at a tiki bar.
Inevitably, the commercial was topic of conversation and controversy for months after the airing date; some groups petitioning for Amazon to reshoot the ad, demanding that the advertisement promoted homosexuality and was too graphic for their children to see, even though the gay husband’s weren’t in the same scene together. In the end Amazon chose to keep the commercial as-is and the mainstream brand still occasionally runs the ad despite the negativity towards it.
Almost a year later, an even more disputed commercial for Honey Maid Graham Cracker featuring a gay couple bottle-feeding a baby together threw conservatives into a social media frenzy, horribly bashing the brand for it’s portrayal of “This is Wholesome” tagline promoted by Honey Maid. Calling the ad showing loving families sharing Honey Maid products together “disgusting” and “horrible.”
Amazingly, Honey Maid handled the hateful backlash beautifully as you can see in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBC-pRFt9OM
Since then, strides within other well-known brands have been reached, as JC Penny’s recent catalog used lesbian parents to promote a Mother’s Day Sale, which they will be doing again for Father’s Day.
In an article to Huffington Post, vice-president of GLAAD (Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Rich Ferraro stated “they’re no longer just targeting gay and lesbian people. They’re targeting people like my mom who wants to know that a company embraces and accepts their gay and lesbian family members, friends and neighbors.”
As advertising becomes more tailored to the consumers with each passing second, it would be more reward than risk to stick with an open-minded approach when it comes to selling a brand. Our world is getting smaller, and thinking larger, thanks to the platforms that technology has given us. The ad’s mentioned above are great examples of how pushing past cliches can lead to a more loyal consumer, the real modern families in our world.
-Velocity Agency is a digital marketing and advertising firm specializing in digital and internet marketing & advertising, print, web design, graphic design, film, and HD video promotion and post-production. Velocity serves clients all over the United States from our Metairie, LA office just outside of New Orleans by strategically implementing proprietary tools and techniques to get you the most conversions for your business through lead generation, cost-per-acquisition, and top line revenue.