Pride or Rainbow-Washing? Exploring LGBTQ+ Advertising from the Vested Stakeholder Perspective

Figures & data

Figure 1. Proposed theoretical framework.

Figure 2. Process of constructing rainbow-washing and its influence on the corporate social license to operate (SLO).

Table

Participant	Pseudonym	Sexual Orientation	Gender Identity	Pronouns
1	Alex	Bisexual	Nonbinary/genderfluid	They/them
2	Antonio	Gay	Cisgender man	He/him
3	Anna	Lesbian	Cisgender woman	She/her
4	Bengü	Pansexual	Cisgender woman	She/her
5	Eni	Queer	Cisgender woman	She/her
6	Felix	Gay	Agender	They/them
7	Frantz	Queer	Agender/transmasculine	They/them
8	Freddie	Bisexual	Genderqueer	They/them
9	Hanna	Lesbian	Cisgender woman	They/them
10	Jessica	Pansexual	Transgender woman	She/her
11	Joanne	Bisexual	Cisgender woman	She/her
12	Joshua	Lesbian	Cisgender woman	She/her
13	Julia	Bisexual	Transgender woman	She/her
14	Liv	Pansexual	Nonbinary	They/them
15	Luna	Bisexual	Cisgender woman	She/her
16	Mark	Homoromantic/asexual	Cisgender man	He/him
17	Mic	Pansexual	Nonbinary/transmasculine	He/him
18	Osas	Biromantic/asexual	Nonbinary	They/them
19	Paul	Gay	Cisgender man	He/him
20	Quirin	Gay	Cisgender man	He/him
21	Theo	Lesbian	Agender	They/them
22	Valente	Lesbian	Cisgender woman	She/her
23	William	Queer	Nonbinary	He/him
24	Willow	Gay	Cisgender man	He/him

Table

Key Insights from This Study	Practical Implications	Directions for Future Research
LGBTQ+ consumers are guided by the salience of their LGBTQ+ identity in their evaluation of LGBTQ+ advertising. A higher identity salience often leads to them diversifying the cues they employ to inform their causal attributions regarding the motivations of the corporations making LGBTQ+ advertising. The salience of their LGBTQ+ identity also influenced the extent to which perceived rainbow-washing led to a withdrawal of the SLO. LGBTQ+ consumers use cues drawn from the advertisement as well as cues drawn from its organizational context to inform their attributions. The SLO offers an opportunity to evaluate attitudinal outcomes of corporate communication (including but not exclusive to advertising). Once the SLO was withdrawn by the most critical community members, they made efforts to share their views with other members of their community and spread the withdrawal.	Advertisers should aim to convince those members of the community whose identity is most salient to their sense of self, as they are the most critical and most vocal in case of a loss of SLO. Advertisers should aim to demonstrate consistent support for the LGBTQ+ community across time and space. Advertisers should invest in showing an understanding of the community, its members, and their lived experiences. Advertisers should build awareness for the relationship that LGBTQ+ consumers have with their brand and shape their advertisements accordingly. Advertisers should ensure that the LGBTQ+ community financially profits from their LGBTQ+ advertising. Advertisers must be aware that LGBTQ+ advertising does not exist in a vacuum but is considered and evaluated in relation to the other activities the corporation has engaged in which are of concern to the LGBTQ+ community.	Future research should continue to integrate SIT, rainbow-washing, and SLOs, for instance, by investigating cases of perceived rainbow-washing and focusing on the processes by which respondents with varying identity salience build a shared understanding of the issue and the corporation’s SLO. Researchers might conduct a social network analysis to model the communication practices inherent to the loss of a SLO within a subset of the community. This study has established along which dimensions LGBTQ+ consumers evaluate LGBTQ+ advertising, and how they use these dimensions to construct causal attributions which determine their evaluation of the advertisements. A next step might be the creation and validation of a measurement scale to measure rainbow-washing in advertisements. Future research should further examine to what extend the insights of this study are applicable to advertising contexts which are not inherently tied to (minority) social identities. Future research should examine whether and how a loss of the SLO of a targeted community can lead to a broader loss of legitimacy amongst the majority (broader public backlash in response to advertising).

Note. SLO = social license to operate; SIT = social identity theory; LGBTQ+ = lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, +.