In the Particular is Contained the Universal

It’s Pride Month, and that means it’s time again for brands to rake over a classic anxiety. If we tell an LGBTQ+ story, will it only speak to LGBTQ+ people? Will it narrow the work? Will straight audiences look away? Will we piss anyone off?

“In the particular is contained the universal.” I must have used this James Joyce quote a million times in various strategy decks, but I believe it takes on particular resonance for advertisers in Pride month. Great advertising doesn’t become powerfully effective by smooshing the totality of lived human experience into a neat set of three to five supposedly average archetypes. It becomes powerfully effective by articulating something in one life that looks nothing like our own, yet is somehow unmistakably recognizable.

That’s how we’ve always sold stuff. Parents and non-parents alike cry at stories about kids who aren’t theirs, people who have never swung a tennis racket in anger understand Serena Williams’ ferocious grace on the court. We don’t need 1:1 demographic equivalence to feel something; all we need is enough human truth to recognize ourselves.

The fear that queer stories are too niche has always felt intellectually lazy to me, but now it’s also becoming commercially unviable.

GLAAD and Procter & Gamble found that exposure to LGBTQ+ representation in media and advertising was associated with higher acceptance among non-LGBTQ Americans. Wonderful. They were also more comfortable with LGBTQ+ people as family members, neighbors, and doctors. Even better. [1]

That shouldn’t be all that surprising because it’s obvious that familiarity changes how people process the world, but advertising must never forget that it’s always been a helpful conduit for making those changes happen in culture at large. 

GLAAD and Kantar’s Advertising Visibility Index gets even clearer on the implications for brands. 79% of non-LGBTQ consumers agreed that brands should aim for multidimensional, human representation when including LGBTQ+ people in advertising or content. The message is clear: the broader audience is asking for characters with lives, context, and texture, so let’s ditch the vague symbols of tolerance. [2]

This is where I feel that a lot of Pride work falls apart. It conflates visibility with understanding. The rainbow arrives on June 1st, the cast gets diversified, and the copy says something warm about belonging. Then everyone feels nervous for a day, the comments section does whatever the comments section does, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief as the whole thing disappears until next year.

That may ‘tick the box,’ but it rarely makes for resonant and effective advertising.

I think the most useful word here is specificity. And specificity demands intersectionality. The LGBTQ+ acronym represents a big tent, and within it, there are almost limitless permutations of identity. A Black trans teenager in Georgia, a gay Latino father in Queens, an older lesbian caregiver in Arizona, and a disabled non-binary designer in Minneapolis are all LGBTQ+, but they are by no means interchangeable expressions of the same ‘insight.’ Treat them that way, and the work gets very thin very quickly, and you miss out on so much potential richness. 

The Unstereotype Alliance’s Beyond Gender 2 study looked at intersectional advertising across Japan, Turkey, the UK, and the US. The US showed the biggest lift in brand closeness among the markets tested. The strongest impact was among LGBTIQ+ and Hispanic women, the people who the same study found most agree with the statement, ‘I rarely see myself represented in advertising.’ It makes total sense that the people who least often see themselves represented with proper love and respect notice it more than anybody else when they are. [3]

The commercial case has moved on, too. In 2024, the Unstereotype Alliance and Oxford Saïd analysed 392 brands across 58 countries over four years. Brands with more inclusive advertising practices saw stronger short-term sales, stronger long-term sales, and better performance on consideration, trial, loyalty, pricing power, and brand equity. Not bad. [4] 

If you still believe inclusive advertising is a charitable gesture brands make at the expense of growth, then the data is against you. If you think queer stories can only sell to queer people, the data is against you, too.

A lazy Pride campaign remains lazy even if the casting is inclusive. A rainbow logo with no organizational commitment behind it is still a hollow, doing-the-bare-minimum gesture.

LGBTQ+ stories are rarely too specific, too particular.  The more common problem is that brands lack the confidence to tell them with the care and craft it takes to create universal resonance.

This Pride Month (and every other month, for that matter), brands need more specific human stories.

“In the particular is contained the universal.” Advertising would be a lot better and a lot more effective if more brands and their agencies lived and breathed that sentiment.

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References:

[1] GLAAD, Procter & Gamble and GLAAD Study: Exposure to LGBTQ Representation in Media and Advertising Leads to Greater Acceptance [link]

[2] GLAAD, Advertising Visibility Index 2023 [link]

[3] Unstereotype Alliance, Beyond Gender 2: The Impact of Intersectionality in Advertising [link]

[4] Oxford Saïd Business School, New research proves inclusive advertising boosts sales and brand value [link]