Publications aimed at LGBTQ+ and other diverse audiences are facing “good old-fashioned discrimination” as advertisers avoid them after political attacks on diversity and inclusion campaigns, editors have said.
Senior figures at publications aimed at the gay community and other minority groups said a previous “gold rush” to work with such titles was over.
There has been a backlash in the US over corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the past 18 months, which has led to some big names rolling back their plans.
Tag Warner, the chief executive of Gay Times, said his publication, which had been growing digitally in the US, had lost 80% of its advertisers in the past year. It has also lost in excess of £5m in expected advertiser revenue.
Warner, who has led the outlet since 2019, said his title’s growth had been accompanied by an enthusiasm from brands to embrace LGBTQ+ audiences. He blames an anti-DEI drive in the US for the dramatic shift.
“I know that media and marketing is also going through a challenging year anyway, but when we’re thinking about other organisations that don’t talk to diverse themes, they’re not nearly as impacted as we are,” he said. “This is just good old-fashioned discrimination. Because discrimination doesn’t have to make business sense. Discrimination doesn’t have to be logical. Discrimination is discrimination.
“We’re really experiencing the impact of what happens when voices that are pressuring organisations to give in to less inclusive perspectives start winning. Then it creates this massive behavioural shift in brands and organisations.”
Nafisa Bakkar, the co-founder of Amaliah, a publication aimed at “amplifying the voices of Muslim women”, said there had been a “change in mood” among brands and advertisers. “There was this DNI [diversity and inclusion] gold rush,” she said. “It is, I would say, well and truly over.
“We work with a lot of UK advertisers, but I would say that the US has a lot more emphasis on what they would call ‘brand safety’, which I think is a code word for ‘we don’t want to rock the boat’. I would say there is a lot more focus on this element.”
Ibrahim Kamara, the founder of the youth platform GUAP, which has a large black and ethnically diverse audience, said he had detected a “relative difference” from 2020 in approaches from brands.
He and others cited the economic pressures on advertisers generally in recent years. However, he said the “hype and the PR around wanting to support and connect with diverse audiences” had also subsided.
“The thing that most people within these kind of spaces can probably agree on is that the energy and the PR is very different now,” he said. “It was almost a badge of honour to be able to say that you’re supporting certain communities. Now, I’ve seen that lots of the diversity and inclusion people that were hired around that period have probably lost their jobs. It doesn’t have the same PR effect any more.”
Warner said the anti-DEI impact pre-dated the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Figures such as the conservative pundit Robby Starbuck have been engaged in a long-running anti-DEI campaign, pressuring firms to drop their diversity efforts. However, Warner said Trump’s arrival “gave everyone, I think, permission to be honest about it”.
Not all publications in the sector have been hit in the same way as Gay Times. Companies with business models less reliant on US advertising, as well as some big players with long-established relationships, said they had managed to negotiate the changing political environment.
“Brands are nervous, that’s for sure, or careful – or a combination of both,” said Darren Styles, the managing director of Stream Publishing, which publishes Attitude magazine. “They’re aware it can be a lightning rod for a vocal minority. But our experience is that most people are holding their ground, if not doubling down.”
Styles also said he was not complacent, however, given the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform party in the UK and its lack of historical support for the LGBTQ+ community.
“I’m not incautious about the future,” he said. “Who knows what next year will bring, because that narrative is not going away. Obviously, there’s the rise of Reform in the polls.
“[Farage] is quite clearly not an ally to our community and he’s expressed disdain in the past at the awards we’ve given out to people in the trans community. So it is a worry as political momentum gains around there. But I think broadly, consumers in the UK are a bit more capable of thinking for themselves.”
Mark Berryhill, the chief executive of equalpride, which publishes prominent US titles like Out and The Advocate, said some brands and agencies “may have been a little bit more cautious than they have been in the past”. However, he said it had so far meant deals had taken longer to be completed, in a tough economic climate.
He said the political headwinds made it more important to highlight that working with such titles was simply a sound business decision. “We’ve tried to do a better job in this political climate of just selling the importance of our buying power,” he said. “Everybody’s cautious and I don’t think it’s just LGBTQ. I think they’re cautious in general right now with their work with minority owned companies.
“The one thing that maybe this whole controversy has helped us with a little bit is to really make brands realise it’s a business decision. It’s not just a charity or something you should do because you feel guilty.
“You should do it because it’s the right thing to support LGBTQ journalism. We’re small. We need to get the word out. We have important stories to tell. But it’s also a good business decision. The more we show that side, certain brands will come along.”
