India’s brands and ads industry have made strides in recent years around awareness and support for the LGBTQ+ community. They are represented in mass media and roadside billboards, and people support brands that actively promote LGBTQ+ equality.
In spite of the progress, there’s still a way to go.
Brands can be better allies of the LGBTQ+ community by creating genuinely inclusive ads.
Fewer than 1% of ads “show LGBTQ+ representation,” and Indian consumers want brands to increase the visibility of marginalised groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, in ad campaigns.
That gap shows the incredible influence brands have on LGBTQ+ inclusion in marketing and media. But performative allyship and advertising during Pride Month is not the answer; creating genuinely inclusive ads where everyone feels seen year-round is what’s needed.
On that note, three brands in India stand out: Joy Personal Care, Bausch + Lomb, and Times of India.
Their fundamental commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is what sets their ground-up, inside-out approach to LGBTQ+ representation apart. Here, we spotlight how they’ve cracked the code on creating genuinely inclusive ads.
Be consistently inclusive: Joy Personal Care
When a brand selectively represents some marginalised groups, like the LGBTQ+ community, but not others, it can undermine the sincerity of its inclusion efforts. So a brand seeking to increase LGBTQ+ representation through its ads should walk the talk on inclusivity. That was what skincare brand Joy Personal Care did.
Committed to breaking beauty stereotypes, the brand featured plus-sized women, sex workers, and survivors of acid attacks in its ads over the years. “Skincare should not judge (people) on the basis of gender, race, body type, or any other factor,” says its CMO, Poulomi Roy.
So last November, it shone the spotlight on transgender people through its “Beauty is for Everyone” campaign.
The ad, for its signature body lotion, was fronted by the popular entertainer Sushant Divgikar, who identifies as a transgender person. And the campaign achieved a reach of over 55 million across online media platforms.
Be community-led: Bausch + Lomb
Another way to create ads that are genuinely inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community is to let the creative process be community-led. That’s how eye care brand Bausch + Lomb approached its #LookOfLove campaign.
The ad, which features love stories from the LGBTQ+ community, was part of the brand’s continuous push to represent different communities, from seniors who struggle with presbyopia to the visually impaired.
For the campaign to be genuinely inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community, the brand knew it had to tell the real stories of real people, and not stories inspired by them. But it did more than just find couples who checked the box. It worked with its agency, FCB Kinnect, to engage the community throughout the creative process.
The consultations spanned everything from brainstorms around relevant storylines to the best ways to represent the couples who’d be featured and tell their personal stories.
Because the campaign was built from within the LGBTQ+ community to speak to the human experience of love, it was able to resonate widely and achieved a reach of 13.5 million.
Be in the everyday: Times of India and Bombay Times
To authentically represent the LGBTQ+ community, brands can also look at depicting and impacting the everyday lives of people in the community. The Times of India did just that a year after India’s landmark ruling in 2018 to decriminalise consensual same-sex relations.
The “Out and Proud” campaign offered members of the LGBTQ+ community free space in its classifieds section across print, digital, TV, and radio, to post about everything from their everyday needs — for a home, a job, or a partner — to their personal stories.
And last year, Bombay Times, a free supplement of The Times of India, launched a YouTube series of “Out & Proud @ Work” videos. Coinciding with the start of the financial year, the campaign showed how the livelihood of the LGBTQ+ community could be affected by workplace discrimination, and that more could be done to ensure fairness and create an inclusive culture.
To help professional circles make a difference, Bombay Times partnered with Pride Circle, an inclusion-first consultancy, to identify and highlight salient issues in its campaign. The resulting videos drew 5.3 million views, raising awareness in India around the creation of fair and inclusive workplaces.
While brands and the ads industry in India have made progress on LGBTQ+ inclusion, there remains much work to be done ahead. By joining hands, we can seize the opportunity to make creative choices that genuinely include the LGBTQ+ community, and drive cultural transformation.
