1st Edition

Untold Millions Secret Truths About Marketing to Gay and Lesbian Consumers

By Grant Lukenbill Copyright 1999
    236 Pages
    by Routledge

    236 Pages
    by Routledge

    The first definitive book on researching gay and lesbian market behavior, Untold Millions: The Truth About Gay and Lesbian Consumers in America will help marketers, advertisers, and public relations managers learn how to successfully market and research products for gay and lesbian consumers. Author Grant Lukenbill, a leading consultant on the cultural and motivational aspects of gay and lesbian consumer behavior, provides you with important procedures, research, and guidelines that businesses today are following in order to develop successful marketing strategies to this growing target audience. From this updated and revised edition, you’ll receive current methods, new data, and sure-fire strategies that will help your company break into this market segment, satisfy intended customers, and boost company sales.

    Providing you with statistics and data from the first market research study of its kind, the Yankelovich MONITOR’s Gay and Lesbian Perspective, this book gives you suggestions on what things need to be done within your company before planning your marketing strategies. You’ll benefit from ideas and suggestions in Untold Millions that will help you create consumer-driven market strategies to gays and lesbians, including:

    • recognizing that there are families and relationships in society that are not heterosexual
    • acknowledging age differences and the needs of particular generations
    • attracting customers by circulating non-discriminatory hiring policies through press releases and company memos, installing domestic partner health care plans, and identifying cultural reference points to which gays and lesbians can relate
    • remembering that many gays and lesbians may look at business with cynicism and doubt and may be quick to interpret actions as victimization
    • referring to the Wall Street project before addressing gay- and lesbian-specific issues
    • focusing on the areas of individuality, a need for association, and the need to alleviate stress
    • reserving a post script in your direct marketing letter to remind consumers of your company’s domestic partner benefits or if you support a particular gay/lesbian interest organization

      Untold Millions contains advice on several other topics, such as corporate legal issues, public information trends and analysis, and changes in gay and lesbian communities to give familiarize you with your target audience. With Untold Millions, you’ll be able to develop appealing marketing or advertising campaigns that will satisfy the highly profitable and emerging gay and lesbian consumer market.

    Contents Foreword
    • Acknowledgments
    • Chapter 1. You Can Bank on It
    • Recognize What Is Changing
    •  Coming Out with the Code
    • A Melting Pot of Coded Messaging
    •  Reading the Future Between the Lines
    • Seeing Is Believing
    •  Real People and (ital)The Real World
    • Moving Ahead
    • Chapter 2. Visibility: The New Politics of Profit
    • Strong Medicine for Corporate America
    • Refocusing the Images
    • Putting First Things First
    •  Gay Is Good--Big Is Not
    •  Communicating Sensitivity
    •  Understanding the Influence of the Gay Male Aesthetic
    •  Changing Times for the Gay and Lesbian Consumer, Employee, and Investor
    • Communicating Legitimacy in an Age of Grief
    • Chapter 3. Will the Real Gay Consumers Please Stand Up?
    • Elevating the Discussion and the Science
    •  Staying Mindful of Statistical Games
    •  How We Got Where We Are
    • Identifying the Consumers That Matter
    • The Population Estimates on Gay and Lesbian Americans
    • The Overall Picture
    • Chapter 4. Understanding Pride and Pragmatism: A Marketer’s View of Modern Gay and Lesbian Culture
    • Economics and the Sexual Identity Crisis
    • Adaption and Change
    • Context Matters
    • A General Gay and Lesbian American Profile
    • Attitudinal Profile of Gay and Lesbian Americans
    • The Psychology of Disenfranchisement
    •  Business and Marketing Implications
    •  Chapter 5. Brand Loyalty, Management, and the Creative Process: Promoting Products and Services to Gay and Lesbian Consumers
    • The Equality Principles on Sexual Orientation
    •  Take Action; Be Decisive
    •  Fifty Great Ways to Build Stronger Customer Relations with Gay and Lesbian Consumers
    • Corporate Nightmares: The Truth About Boycotts and Backlash
    • Common Sense Public Relations
    •  Gay and Lesbian Consumer Demand: Key Areas of Growth
    • General Strategy
    •  HIV and the Gay Marketing Moment
    •  Chapter 6. Key Cities and Emerging Opportunities for Business
    • Investing in Tas

    Biography

    Dececco, Phd, John; Lukenbill, Grant