Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 17 June, 2011
Living in St Kilda and shopping at Prahran Market in Commercial Road, you’d better believe that I’m aware of the “pink dollar” - which is what they call the market segment populated by gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and other exotic variations from what the missionaries would accept.
Once a taboo subject that would never have graced the pages of this paper, the fact is that changed social standards have been rapidly followed by ever-questing marketers, never slow with their arithmetic.
In America they have already calculated a $750 billion market. Apportioning it to Australia’s population, that’s still a lot of bucks.
And let’s face it these LGBTs (yes, that’s the official term in US marketing circles) have certain advantages over their more conventional brethren. Like, few or no kids, or school fees, or families to support, feed, clothe and take on holidays. So what they earn they get to keep for themselves.
I’m talking in the third person here, but if it should be second-person, read “you”, with my apologies.
A couple of years back, the Sydney Star Observer surveyed their readership and found that they had an average income of $55,234, and that 54.7 per cent were managers or professionals.
In addition, 9.9 per cent owned businesses, only 8.2 per cent had children, more than half were in a relationship and that more than half had a tertiary qualification. Sounds like a dream target market to me.
In addition, a Queensland Pride survey found that 87.3 per cent of respondents were more likely to buy from companies which they perceived to be gay and lesbian friendly. So hang out the discreet rainbow flags.
Australian gay and lesbian marketing firm Significant Others says that the gay market is a good prospect for investors.
They score highly in many areas like automotive, alcohol, financial services, health and wellbeing, and particularly travel.
The gay life favours exotic destinations. With nearly half living in Sydney and Melbourne, a break means getting up and away.
Four years ago a Roy Morgan survey found them spending nearly a billion dollars on leisure travel. With the booming dollar pushing more and more adventurous holidays, you can be sure that the figure will be higher today.
The other side of the coin, however, is a lingering prejudice. Especially in some of Australia’s good ol’ boys destinations which also happen to have glorious beaches.
Recently Sunshine Coast Destination, the tourism authority, was criticised for not taking advantage of Sydney’s Mardi Gras.
Kelly Choong, a University of the Sunshine Coast advertising lecturer who is doing his PhD on ways of marketing to subcultures like gays, said the Mardi Gras should be particularly appealing to SCD given it was the low season.
However, he feels the local tourism operators may be dragging their feet because of community reluctance to invite gays into their midst.
"I think Sunshine Coast tourism authorities should be looking at this," he said, "It doesn't seem to have a welcoming feel."
So how real a problem is prejudice? Well just this year the Advertising Standards Board ruled on a TV commercial made by Westpac, where two very obviously camp lads talk to camera about slow payers in their clothing business.
The sucked cheeks and hand-waving were pretty obvious and drew complaints that they were portrayed as stereotypes. But in return the bank claimed the commercials went down well in the gay community.
In the end the Board found that: “The men are presented in a manner which, although somewhat stereotypical, focuses on their frustration as business owners and is not negative." Case dismissed, back to the carnival.
ray@ebeatty.com
No comments:
Post a Comment