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Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast.
- Where’s the Beef in Burger King’s ‘Proud Whopper’ Campaign?
- How Burger King Recently Brought Out The Intolerance Of Facebook Christians (Video)
- Three (3) critical mistakes you don’t want to say in a crowd of LGBT people…
Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below.
One of the plenary sessions featured a prominent business man who was amazing and brilliant in his business advice and acumen! However, during his speech he hit three (of the many) critical mistakes in mis-communicating with the LGBT community. When he said them I cringed a little on his behalf. He was so passionate, so genuine and so authentic with his care for the community, but he wasn’t armed with the right way to effectively communicate.
All three things he said have been the subject of previous blog posts or material in my new book. What was so fascinating is that I had many people come up to me and say ‘hey, can you believe he said that?’ or ‘I’ve read that on your blog before.’ My response to all of the conversations I had were ‘I’ve addressed this topic on my blog and/or book, I’m so happy you are reading my materials. Ultimately he seems like a genuine man so we should give him the benefit that he just doesn’t know the right language to use.’ Everyone I said this to, had a collective, ‘yeah, that makes sense’ kind of response. It was great to have people come up to me and say they took notice, but also that people were understanding of his faux pas.
Now you may be curious as to the three faux pas. Drumroll please…
He referred to the LGBT community as having a ‘lifestyle’ – read more on this topic here.
He referred to being LGBT as a ‘preference’ – read more on this topic here.
He used the phrase ‘Those people have style’ – read more on this topic here.
Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.
AUDIO TITLE: Episode #39 – NGLCC Recap and Burger King Case Study
Jenn T Grace:
You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 39.
Intro:
Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you’ll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We’re talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We’ll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host – she’s an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N’s, T. Grace
Jenn T Grace:
Hello and welcome episode number 39 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn T. Grace. And today I have a couple of things that I want to talk to you about. And then I want to talk about two specific topics, and those are my experience just recently at the NGLCC conference which is the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. And I’ve been talking about their annual conference for a couple of episodes, and certainly I’ve interviewed many people who have ties to the NGLCC in past episodes. So I know I’ve been encouraging a lot of you to attend this year, and what’s great is that I’m actually shocked and almost at a loss of words how many of you I was able to meet for the first time this year who came because you are listeners of this podcast. So I am beyond excited with that type of success. So I’m really fortunate to have met a lot of you, so I want to talk about the conference experience and then a couple of faux pas that unravelled right before my eyes which are so worth talking about here.
So that’s going to be one, and then two, while this is somewhat probably about a month overdue at this point, I do want to talk about the ad campaign that Burger King did for Pride, and there was one hell of a kerfuffle that occurred from it towards the- I would say the end of June, beginning of July. And I did get a lot of emails from folks who were interested in my thoughts on what they did or did not do, so I thought may as well just bring the topic to my podcast listeners, and of course those who emailed me about it, I am directing them to listen to today’s episode.
A few random tidbits…
So a couple of random tidbits, today’s episode is not going to be edited in any way, shape or form. And by not editing, it does- I do put myself out there a little bit more than I try to because I typically- I end up screwing up something at some point. So I’m warning you right off the bat today is unfiltered, unedited, here we are. So what do I want to share with you as of today, August 6th, and the number one thing that I’m so excited to tell you about is the fact that my book is out, it has been released, life is good. I haven’t done a huge marketing push around it as of yet, however you will certainly begin to see that coming out soon. I just put up the Kindle version of it on August 4th, so just a couple of days ago. So I’m super excited about that. I’m also working on the audio book which is somewhat of a pain in the ass to do to be honest. The last one I did to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not overly proud of. I feel like I was really rigid, and stiff in the way I was reading it, so I’m really putting a lot of thought and mindfulness about how I’m going to deliver this second book in an audio format. So my plan is to really work on that. I would say come September I’m really hoping to get the ball rolling on that and have something hopefully out by the middle to late September for you to consume if you so choose to listen to the book rather than read it.
So that’s my excitement around the book. I have an event as you’re listening to this, I’m probably mingling and networking at an event which I’m super excited to be sharing my books for the first time in the state of Connecticut where I reside. So I’m super excited to get the books in the hands of so many business owners that I know here, I’m really, really excited about it. And this actually leads into my NGLCC experience quite easily actually. And I do want to make a note that today’s episode is probably to going to be a little bit shorter than you’re used to, although a lot of times when I do say that, somehow I end up on some sort of tangent and lo and behold it’s the regular average sized length of episode. So I do have intentions of making this a little bit shorter than usual because I am about to take my technology-free week, I do it once a year, it seems crazy and it’s so refreshing to do. But once a year in August I go one week without technology. That is cell phone, computers of any kind, tablets, you name it, no TV, nothing. And it’s almost like a technology detox. So I am on the brink of entering my technology detox so I’m trying to make sure that I get this episode out to you prior to that happening. So of course I want to hear from you about this episode, so if I say something you want to ask more questions on, if I hit a sore spot for you, trust me I want to hear about it. So if you do reach out to me via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all those great places, I will not be back on those places until August 18th. So I’m pretty excited. It’s usually a little bit stressful in the beginning of the detox but by the end it just seems so refreshing.
First things first.. the NGLCC
So anyway, now enough of the rambling. What I want to talk to you about is the NGLCC first, and like I said Burger King as a secondary thing. So I just got back from the NGLCC conference a couple of days ago, and I was there from Monday through Saturday. This year I feel like I stayed one day too long. I was seriously exhausted by the time I hit Saturday. However, I am going to- I won’t call her out by name, but I did have a roommate this year which I’m more than happy to share a room with anybody; who snored. And I won’t call her out by name, however I didn’t realize what a light sleeper I was or a dainty sleeper perhaps, but good Lord, trying to sleep with someone who snores while you’re at a conference is just not an ideal situation. So my advice to you is if somebody tells you in advance that they snore, and you think that you are perfectly capable of handling it, and say, “Oh no, it’s not a problem.” Don’t fool yourself, it is a problem. Don’t do it.
So anyway, my experience, I was totally exhausted probably by Thursday where I had just not slept in days. So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I really just didn’t sleep at all. So I am one of those creatures of habit who really needs eight hours of sleep a night or else I don’t function well. So come Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I was a nightmare. However I met so many amazing people, and I wore four separate hats at the conference this year, I think this might be a record high of the number of hats I was wearing. But I had to figure out how to basically equally balance them all out, and of course I have very specific roles and responsibilities that I do on behalf of the NGLCC, so I had to make sure I carried out all of that great stuff. But what was really great is the second I got to the hotel, I ran into people that I know which is always great seeing people you haven’t seen in a year. And then as I was- we were at Caesar’s which is an enormous property, absolutely huge. And as I was making my way into the elevator to go up to my room with the folks I was checking in with, I ran into someone else I know yet again, and we had a quick exchange, someone had their suitcase stuck in the elevator door, it was actually quite comical. But you know we had a quick exchange, and I’m hoping to have that person as a guest on this podcast. Hopefully in the near future, however once she actually does come on then I will share the whole suitcase issue at that point. But what really struck me is that the few people that I had already run into in route to my room are all people I totally know. So it’s like, you know long-lost loves. I’ve talked about it in the past that the NGLCC conference for me is really a family reunion, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s legitimately people that I consider to be family, and I see them a couple of times a year if I’m lucky, but this is the one time of year where everybody I know is in one place. I would say it’s probably safe to assume- it’s probably 70% of my network is in one location at one time. So it’s really- it’s exciting, it’s exhausting at the same time, but as we had checked in, got ourselves situated, we went down to the lobby and as I was getting in the hotel, two women who were in the elevator already approached me and they said, “Oh you’re Jenn,” and we got into this big long conversation about how they’ve been on my email list for at least a year and a half, it was so great to meet them in person. When they shared their names I was like, “Oh yeah I actually remember seeing your name at some point in my email.”
So it started off really interesting because of the fact that I had people who have been following me and have been listening to this podcast for a while, who I didn’t actually meet before. And I did send out an email to my list of people prior to leaving for Las Vegas saying, “Hey if you’re going to the conference, let’s connect.” And I- connecting, I certainly did. I met I would say probably at least an additional 25 people or so that I hadn’t met at all before, and then I was able to actually strengthen some of the relationships of people that I’ve known a little bit, but now I know a lot more. So it was totally awesome, and that happened throughout the entire conference. I would just be walking somewhere, and running- I hop in the elevator quite a bit, it actually seemed like it was planned that way. But I was running into people all over the place and it was just great to have people commenting to me about how they listen to the podcast, and how they’ve taken some of the advice I’ve given to help implement things on their own home turf, which in some cases I talked to a couple people who are in real estate, I talked to some people who were in travel, so- and even promotional products people. So I really got a wide range of people who it was so awesome to just connect with. So I’m really looking forward to another opportunity where I might be able to connect with a large group of you as well. I don’t really know when that will be, however I will certainly be talking about other conference that I’m attending and if you’re going to be there, let’s connect.
So what was really interesting is the conference is just packed, and I mean packed, with stuff happening. So I was starting my day at about 6:00 AM because I had calls on the east coast I still had to manage, and I wouldn’t get back to my hotel room until like 2:00 AM. So- and I do this to myself because networking is where it’s at, and I want to make sure that I’m everywhere I can be and meeting as many new people as I can. Many of which, actually I asked four separate people if they would be guests on this show and all four of them said, “Absolutely.” So I’m really looking forward to possibly throwing in more interviews in the next couple of I guess coming months or so, because as you might know- if you’re a new listener you don’t know this, but for those who’ve been listening for a while, my format is typically an episode like today where I just cover some sort of topic that’s recent. And I alternate that with interviews with people who are most of the time part of the LGBT community, but oftentimes actually aren’t. So it’s really good to get varying perspectives of how people are effectively reaching the community. And the best way to learn is really by hearing what others are doing. So I rotate out between those two types of formats, and I think that I might switch it up and provide a lot more interviews in the coming months just because there’s so many people- I honestly have a list that’s much longer, it will probably take a year or so to get through all of these people as guests on the show. But ultimately I think their information is really what’s going to be of the most value to you.
So what I was going to say is the conference itself is just packed. And they always bring in really amazing guest speakers. So we got to talk to fitness experts, we got to talk to business experts who were like legit business experts. And what was really interesting to me- and if you read my blog post from Tuesday of this week, you- this will all be something that you have already heard. But I know many of you are just podcast listeners and you don’t go to the blog, so I thought it was worth mentioning again. And additionally when you’re writing, or when I’m writing a blog post, I do my very best to get as much of my personality across, but certainly it’s not as simple as it is with just recording a podcast where you can actually hear me.
An opportunity to promote my book..
So this I thought was so, so brilliant for the promotion of my book because in my book I talk about a lot- and this is my second book. I talk a lot about communications and if you really want to sell to the LGBT community, you have to know the right type of language to use, you have to just know how to handle yourself in certain settings. Ultimately it’s not rocket science, however there’s a lot of people who just don’t know. And I say this all the time, I will continue to beat this dead horse, that the majority of people don’t come from a place of ill intent, they just come from a place of being ill informed. And nine out of ten times that’s no fault of their own. So until a situation arises, you don’t really know what you don’t know, right? So we had a- one of the big keynote type of speakers come in, and he was talking about business and he was sharing his past story, and for his benefit I don’t want to call him out directly. But I want to call out a couple of things that he did that I would consider to be those faux pas. And the best thing that happened out of this, is that as he was just rolling right into trap after trap after trap, because he hit up three really big ones. You could tell that he was really sincere, he was really genuine, that’s my Skype going off, don’t mind that. And as I said, I’m not editing this. So he was really genuine and sincere and seemed like he really had a compassion for helping educate this audience of a lot of the LGBT business owners, a lot of corporate people who are LGBT, a lot of allies. So it was really, really interesting to see that I’m sitting at a table minding my own business with people that I know, and listening to how he was kind of hitting one after another after another, but to actually see a couple of people make eye contact with me, knowing damn well that I’ve addressed this in my book, on my blog, probably even in my first book in some instances. So it was interesting that this all continued to come up.
And so I wrote a blog post the other day, and I titled it ‘The Three Critical Mistakes You Don’t Want to Say in a Crowd of LGBT People.’ And of course I was putting the tagline just to get your attention. And ultimately they’re critical mistakes, but as my messaging always is, I think the majority of people truly understood that he was coming from a place of good intention. And that’s the critical difference between making a mistake and having somebody crucify you for it, and making a mistake and having somebody understand that you didn’t mean anything by it.
The three mistakes…
So for those of you who might be wondering, the three mistakes, the faux pas as I like to call them, are number one he referred to the LGBT community as having a lifestyle. I have beat this horse to death tenfold on why using the term lifestyle is not good for marketing efforts, and certainly not for your communications efforts. But at the end of the day, lifestyle is implying a choice, and being LGBT is not a choice. If you want more information about this you can go to the podcast- the blog post for this podcast which is www.JennTGrace.com/39 for episode 39. You can head on over there and you can get all of the information that I’m talking about today right there on the blog post. Simple, easy as that.
So number two is that he referred to being LGBT as a preference. A lot of times people will say whatever your sexual preference is. And again, that’s just kind of more of that implication that there’s more choice involved than there actually is within the LGBT community.
And then the third one he was saying- he was talking about basically how he was nervous to come to this conference and you know, he had to do a lot of preparation, he wanted to make sure that he was doing everything the right way, which again goes back to his authenticity because he was really upfront and open with kind of saying that. And he ended up using the phrase that ‘those people have style.’ And now that’s not a good phrase to say because you’re saying ‘those people’ and you’re lumping the entire LGBT community into one big monolithic mass of people. And ultimately we know that is not true. And I actually dedicate the first chapter of my new book to breaking down that monolithic stereotype.
For more information on the subject..
So if you want more information on any of these three things, of course you can head over to the website and check out this blog post. But you can also find more information on my new book which is titled, ‘No Wait, You Do Look Gay.’ And that is actually the URL that you can find information on it as well. www.NoWaitYouDoLookGay.com.
So I encourage you to go check that out because overall the conference, I can never complain. There’s never anything to complain about, which is amazing. To me my complaint is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to be perfectly honest. So this is just an amazing conference, I met so many new connections, and I hope to continue to do that. And if you’re listening to this and you can think of a conference that has maybe an LGBT slant to it, or maybe you’re somebody who’s in real estate and you know of a conference that’s for LGBT people in real estate, please just reach out and let me know because sometimes I don’t know what else is out there and I want to get more involved because I want to meet more people like you. So please just send that information over so we can certainly connect.
So that basically wraps up my very, very happy and exciting NGLCC experience. So if you were there and we didn’t get to connect, please reach out to me because I want to find a way to make sure that we do connect. And if we did connect, I still want to hear from you too. I’m working on my follow-up, so if we spoke I owe you an email or I owe you some sort of communication which may take time, because of my tech-free week about to start. But I still want to hear from you. So let’s keep talking, let’s just keep the dialogue moving forward as we always do. And before we hop into the second half of the episode, and talk about Burger King, I would like to pause quickly for a sponsor break so you can hear from the lovely folks who sponsor this podcast. So hang tight, and I will be right back.
Alright we are back, thank you for taking a moment to listen to my lovely sponsors. I couldn’t do this without their loving support, so thank you guys.
Now we talk about Burger King..
So I want to just talk for a couple of minutes about Burger King. And I’m hoping that you saw the commercial that they put out, and if you didn’t again go to the blog post for this particular podcast episode which is my website, episode 39, just type in 39 even it will come up. Because I want to make sure that you see the video that they did because honestly when I saw it, I was like, “This is brilliant marketing. Truly brilliant marketing.” I was so impressed with Burger King. And I teach folks around why having the internal stuff in check is important, because no matter how brilliant your external marketing may be, ultimately if you’re not doing the internal in the house type of stuff, it’s going to end up coming back to haunt you. And with Burger King, this is exactly what happened.
So let me just give you a quick rundown. So for San Francisco Pride, which I don’t know the exact date of when that occurred, but Pride month is always June, so it had to be sometime in June. The brilliant people at Burger King put together a campaign, and they had- it was in- I don’t know if it was in a San Francisco restaurant to be honest, I’m not really sure. It must have been because it was part of Pride. So what I guess- you know now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not really sure all the logistics of how this all played out. But essentially here’s what happened. So number one, go watch the YouTube video because it’s really important. And what they were trying to do, or what they did- and I think they successfully accomplished, is they had this great commercial where there’s folks inside the local Burger King and there’s the Proud Whopper on the menu. And it doesn’t say anything about what the Proud Whopper is, it just says the Proud Whopper. And it’s wrapped up in a rainbow package, but it doesn’t have any text on the outside to allude to what this is.
The LGBT community reacts…
So LGBT people probably are recognizing, ‘Hey Burger King is supporting Pride, they’re putting their Proud Whoppers in the rainbow package.’ And those who are not familiar with LGBT may or may not have understood that the rainbow is symbolic of the community. And you can tell when you’re watching the video that some people knew right away, you could tell the other people didn’t know. Most of the people seemed really cautious, they were kind of like, “What is this? I don’t quite understand.” And they had- it was really cool because they had the Proud Whopper wrapper- oh my God, I should be editing this but guess what? I’m still not going to. The Proud Whopper wrapper is rainbow, and on the inside it has some text but you can’t really see the text until you’ve eaten the Whopper. So you can see that there’s a couple of women sitting at a table and they’re saying, “You know does this Whopper taste different to you?” And one of them saying like, “Oh yeah, there’s definitely something different about it.” It’s a whole thing. So it’s in people’s mind that something’s different about this Whopper. And finally you start to see that people are looking at the bottom of the wrapper. And the bottom of the wrapper says really big and bold, ‘We’re all the same inside.’
So you could see that when people got to that point, some people were crying, some people were laughing, it was really just one of those, ‘How impressive are you, Burger King, to have thought of something so-‘ to me this is really sophisticated marketing. It seems simple but I think to have thought through this entire type of message, they really thought this through. And you know a lot of companies, they try to come out with some sort of LGBT marketing. They fail, they do a terrible job at it, or they do it somehow in some kind of offensive way. But their message here was so good, it’s just we’re all the same inside. You know they’re not talking about gay marriage specifically, they’re not talking about equality, equal rights really in the terms that we’re used to hearing about them on the news. They’re talking about it in a very simple, a two year old- I shouldn’t say two. A four year old could understand, we’re all the same inside. Nothing makes someone who’s LGBT any different than somebody who is not LGBT.
So- and Burger King, I don’t remember what their old slogan was, it was something- ‘have it your way,’ maybe. I think just recently in the last couple of months they changed it to ‘Be your way,’ or there was some sort of tagline shift that’s just recently happened. And something- yeah okay I just found the article in front of me. It used to be ‘have it your way,’ and in May they changed it to ‘be your way.’ So even within their own tagline, they kind of have a nice message of be your way.
So here’s where the shit hits the fan. So you have Burger King, who even when I saw it I was like, “Oh my God, I love this.” I have not seen a commercial in a really long time that I did not just feel like, “Wow, they did it right.” But alas, that sneaky LGBT community saw right through it. So I had made an original Facebook post that said something about you know, this is marketing brilliance at its finest, something to that effect. To which I posted something shortly thereafter saying, “However, I have not eaten at Burger King in quite some time because of their HRC score.” And for those listening for the very first time, I talk about the HRC and the Corporate Equality Index a lot. I addressed it in both of my book, it’s on my website, it’s in past podcasts. I actually even had a guest, Liz Cooper, who is with the Human Rights Campaign who is the producers of the Corporate Equality Index, I had her on as a guest awhile back. So if you are interested in hearing a little bit more detail about them you can go check out her podcast.
What the HRC does..
So basically what the HRC does, is they rate Corporate America in addition to some other criteria. But for the sake of time we’ll just say Corporate America right now. And they score them on a scale of 1 to 100 of- or actually it goes into negative numbers because there are companies that are at negative numbers. But essentially you want to have a green score, which is anything from like eighty and above. And if their score is green, that means they’re good to do business with if you’re someone from the LGBT community.
So some of you listening might know of the Chick-Fil-A controversy and how their CEO or founder, or somebody there donates significant amounts of funds to anti-LGBT groups, and really is playing the religion card significantly to the detriment of the LGBT community. That’s a really public well-known one. So most LGBT people know to steer clear of Chick-Fil-A, in addition to places like Hobby Lobby. So there’s a lot of them that are just kind of like the obvious- you know Walmart for the longest time although Walmart is on the up. They are not quite there, but they’re getting there, they’re trying. And there are places like Exxon Mobile who they’re just in the toilet and I don’t know that they ever will come out of that. But basically Burger King seems to be one of those kind of sliding under the radar type of companies. There’s not a lot of controversy around it, they are not doing anything overtly against the LGBT community. However, they have a 55 out of 100 on the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. And what that’s saying is the HRC evaluated them on a significant scale of all sorts of different questions, and different types of merits, so whether they have equal employment protections for LGBT in addition to gender identity, whether they have healthcare coverage for their transgender employees. So they ask a lot of questions to get to this scoring that’s quite fair, and in their case they got a 55.
So in Burger King- I don’t want to say in their defense, but a lot of the shortcomings that come from a company not being up and up in terms of their LGBT rights, in terms of Burger King, they’re not taking any type of hard stance on mainstream gay rights type of issues, they have domestic partner benefits, they have equal employment protections based on sexual orientation. So they have a lot of things that are in their favor, but where they fall short are some of those more underlying things that a lot of companies are still not quite there yet on. So things such as not providing equal healthcare coverage for transgender employees, or not having employment protections based on gender identity, or I think another one was a lack of adoption assistance for same-sex couples.
So these are all really important equal benefits that every LGBT person working for Burger King should have. However they are not the devil in disguise like some of these other companies like the Chick-Fil-A’s, the Hobby Lobbies, the Exxon’s, et cetera. Those companies are overtly trying to do harm to the LGBT community, whereas Burger King and many countless other companies are trying their best, or maybe not their best, but they’re trying to do better. So my guess- and don’t quote me on this, but my guess is that Burger King is probably going to be taking a hard look at their policies and what they do or do not have going forward after all of what came out. Because if you do a quick Google search for Burger King Proud Whopper, or something to that effect, you’ll find a ton of articles. Like I referenced one from Huffington Post while I was doing some research to talk about this. And there are a lot of people who are legit pissed that Burger King would put in such an amount of effort, and amount of money to reach the LGBT community, but lack basic protections for all of their workplace.
So I was- you know I was really happy to see what happened when this all came out, because ultimately they did exactly, exactly what I advise every company not to do. Mind you they have a brilliant marketing department because I will not take that away from them, because that campaign was awesome. However, they should have done their homework first. They should have realized how savvy the LGBT consumer is, and how quickly they would be discovered that, ‘Oh yeah, by the way, Burger King is not really that helpful for you if you want to work there and you happen to be LGBT.’ And that’s really not the message that you want to send in my opinion, that’s certainly not the right message. So if I were advising Burger King, I would have told them when they came to me, “Hey let’s go check your HRC score, let’s go check to see what the Corporate Equality Index says about you. Alright we’re looking here, okay so there’s these three key areas that you are falling significantly short in. What can we do right now that we could address that when the fallout occurs, you have somebody in your PR department at the ready to say, ‘Yes, right now we have a zero when it comes to gender identity in the workplace. However we’ve recently proposed X, Y, Z, insert answer here, with our HR department and that’s something that we’re moving forward.’ Or ‘We don’t currently have adoption assistance for LGBT couples.’ Do you have it for everyone else in the company, every other straight couple? My guess is yes. Therefore what can you do right now today that can get you ahead of the shitstorm that’s coming down the pipe at you because you have unveiled this campaign.”
So it’s really interesting to see how this all unfolded, because I really respect Burger King for trying, and I really hope in my heart of hearts that they take this getting smacked- basically smacked in the face, because they didn’t do it the right way. And actually take it to heart and figure out how the employees can actually benefit from their misstep.
So I could easily get on a multitude of tirades about basically what happened and how so many other companies are doing this. But again, for the sake of time because I didn’t want this episode to go too long, I encourage you to just poke around and type in ‘Proud Whopper’ and ‘Burger King’ and see what comes up. Because it’s really interesting because there’s a whole big thing happening as well which I’m not getting into because I really try to stay out of the religion front. But with a really significant backlash from religious customers of Burger King who are really upset that Burger King would put their neck out there and say that they support the LGBT community in an inadvertent way.
So if you do some Google searching I guarantee you’re going to find quite a few interesting articles that you’re going to say, “Wow” to because that’s kind of what my reaction to was in a lot of instances. But ultimately I’m here to be on the positive side for you and really just show you how you can learn from the mistakes of others. And in this particular instance, just you can learn from this really easily. So if you’re about to set out on your LGBT marketing campaign, my first suggestion is to just do the homework on the company that you either work with, or if you own a company try to identify what you can do to be progressive and put you at the forefront of doing things that are positive for the LGBT community. Because then you can actually use that in your marketing.
So if Burger King had done it the right way- oddly enough it’s ‘have it your way.’ If they were having it my way, they could have easily used what they were working on. Of if they actually had good policies to begin with, they could have been really blunt about it saying, “Listen, this is our great new ad campaign but also we have the meat to back it up with,’ no pun intended. So it’s one of those things that I think there’s a lot that can be learned from this, and I hope that you take the time to stop over at my blog and check out some of the links I posted because there are a handful of links that I found really interesting. But again I try to steer clear of talking religion on the podcast because it’s certainly one of those polarizing type of topics. But I do have a couple of links that will send you to some interesting commentary by others. So I encourage you to certainly go check that all out.
In conclusion..
So I want to say that actually might wrap up today. So we’re earlier than I was expecting which is great, and as always I encourage you to check out my next webinar by going to www.JennTGrace.com/webinar. You can go in, RSVP, join me, I’ll probably be talking about Burger King. I’ll probably be talking about this as a case study for quite some time to come because it’s interesting the outcomes- I’ll be watching to see what happens from this. Just like the whole Barilla Pasta thing that happened last- I think it was probably last September. So it was about a year ago, and I still talk about that now because it was so significant and really just outlines what not to do. And that’s another scenario where if you’re interested in finding more, just go to my website, type in Barilla, lots of information should come up.
So that’s all I’ve got. Please take a moment to check out my new book if you haven’t already, I would love for that to be the case. If you buy the Kindle version and you want to leave me a review, I would love it. If you buy the print version, same thing, I would love, love, love for you to check it out. And for the hundreds of you that I gave books to for free at the NGLCC conference, because that’s my launching pad and my unveiling of my new books every year- or at least this was the second year in a row, and I do intend to have a third year. I encourage you to leave a review for it. I handed it out to you, no strings attached, but if you could take a moment and just share with others your honest thoughts on it, I would totally love that, that would be really awesome.
Alright well that’s it for today’s episode, I will catch you in about two weeks when I am back from my technology hiatus. And at that time I should have a really awesome interview for you. So thank you again, I will talk to you soon. Thanks so much, bye bye.
