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According to AdWeek magazine, IBM is about to launch an advertising campaign targeted to gay buyers. The ads will attempt to convince homosexuals that IBM is as gay as they are and will run in about 40 gay-themed publications including Out, and The Advocate. However, IBM should carefully weigh whether the ads will achieve their objective, or whether they are more likely to cause a damaging backlash against the company.
The new ads will feature the headline “Chelsea/Provincetown/The Castro/Armonk.” The first three locations are prominent gay hangouts. IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York. Clearly, the company is trying to communicate that IBM headquarters is a gay hangout.
Given Big Blue’s stodgy image, best known for boring button down shirts worn inside boring business suits, I doubt that homosexuals will confuse Armonk with the Castro district in San Francisco. For those unfamiliar with this small section of America’s most openly gay city, here’s a description from SFGate.com’s Gay and Lesbian guide: “The Castro is queer central, ground zero for the gay bourgeoisie, as the fluttering rainbow flags make clear. While there’s a special place in every queer’s heart for the Castro, mainstream guys enjoy it most, whether they want to shop, bar hop or just stroll and cruise. A world-wide symbol of gay freedom and a major source of gay political power, the Castro is also at the heart of a controversy over queer commodification as rents rise and the one-time Gay Freedom Day parade seems more focused on selling than on yelling.”
Although IBM is clearly “more focused on selling than on yelling”, something tells me that none of the Castro’s residents are ready to pull up roots and move to Armonk.
Does IBM really expect homosexuals to be fooled into thinking that the stodgy giant is more attuned to them than their competitors who have been born and nurtured in the Castro’s neighboring communities of Silicon Valley? Is IBM really more gay-friendly than Hewlett Packard or Sun Microsystems?
However, many of us will get the clear signal that IBM wants to be seen as gay-friendly, as a company encouraging behavior clearly presented as sin by God in the Bible.
The IBM ads will feature photos of members of IBM’s 1,100 member Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) Network. According to Big Blue’s website, the company has 315,889 employees. The members of the GLBT Network represent 0.35% of IBM employees. And yet, this miniscule minority has succeeded in convincing the company to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to advertise to a similarly vocal, but similarly small minority of potential buyers. How foolish is that?
Even if the makeup of IBM’s potential market is 10 times as predominantly homosexual as their own employee base, then there would be nearly 30 times as many non-gay buyers as gay buyers. Even if IBM’s market is one hundred times more dense with homosexuals, there still would be twice as many non-gay customers as gay customers. And something tells me that the IT department isn’t the most likely place in a company to find rampant homosexuality.
My guess is that there will be many more than 1,100 employees at IBM who are shocked and dismayed by this new ad campaign. Much worse for the company, I’m guessing (and hoping and, yes even praying) that there will be many more customers of the company who react with revulsion and rejection to the company’s attempt to embrace a community defined by a sinful lifestyle. Perhaps such a backlash will shock IBM back to its senses.
I have been impressed with IBM’s ability to recover from its strategic blunders of the early 1980s. I have been pleased with the company’s support of innovative technologies such as open source and wireless. I have thought highly of the company and had made a mental note to consider them first the next time I was going to buy a type of product that they offered.
I have erased that mental note.
I hope that IBM will read this written note. Feel free to send them your own.
Contact Noah.
