Proud parent

Many, many years ago, a brand of pasta lost a devout customer until then. That customer was me. Seriously, that was my go to brand of pasta. And being married to a guy with Italian roots, I can assure you we eat a lot of pasta at our home. They decided to say something that affected me profoundly. They said that they would never do a commercial with a homosexual family. Apparently, no chance to feature a gay son and his boyfriend visiting his proud parent.

Never is a strong word

I had a hard time trying to understand why my family would be any different from other family configurations. This episode prompted me to pay more attention to how companies communicated with their customers. I realized that there were nuances on their message. Some campaigns were targeted to specific audience, and not others. So far, so good. You want to sell to some audience, that’s fine. But go out and say that you never would do a commercial with a gay family? You are explicitly saying you don’t want them as customers. Well, I took the hint.

DEI is a cause worth fighting for

On the other side, I begun realizing there were many brands that championed DEI causes. Yes, I am a big supporter of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. This is being challenged fiercely lately. Nevertheless, time will show that we are on the right side of history.

Proud Parent

Oreo partnered with GLAAD and created an emotional campaign called Proud Parent back in 2020, which you can watch below. It shows how gay people feel bringing their boyfriend or girlfriend to their parents’ home. Specially if the parents are conservatives. I went through the same situation myself. It’s beautiful when you see yourself represented in a commercial, even more so with a positive message like this. I always liked Oreos (who doesn’t?!) but I saw them with other eyes after this campaign. I feel that they portrait us with more compassion than other brands.

The pasta brand apologized later, and did a series of videos on Youtube with LGBTQ personalities. While I appreciate the effort in trying to rectify the error, I couldn’t see that brand the same way again. But again, we need to try to forgive and acknowledge people can learn from their mistakes.