As we're writing this, it's August. That means that you might only be reading this in September. You might ask yourself, why are we talking about Pride in SEPTEMBER?
To answer that, we have to take a step back to early 2021.
We wanted to better understand where many brands fall short. So we started by opening a dialogue within our team with members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
We wanted to know what they thought brands could be doing better to support and celebrate LGBTQIA+ communities. And one important insight was that many only seemed to care for the community's issues during Pride month, not all year round. People felt this was insincere, they felt used.
And so, one of our first decisions was to be here for the community all year round. As long as we're here, we'll be here for the LGBTQIA+ community.
So we'll be using The Other Half as a platform for the community's voices, and we'll keep publishing stories by authors concerning all kinds of issues, from Dating Inside the Closet to the impacts of Covid on the community.
Some other insights from the Bond Touch team
Many answered that brands used pride as a sales point with the community by rainbow washing. Others were concerned that brands were only emphasizing the more extravagant/flamboyant members of the community while ignoring the rest.
Another important insight was how most brands and support groups ignored the presence of family and their support to the LGBTQIA+ community, and how this month could help educate them.
We wanted to educate, inform and celebrate our bonditos and their relationships but where to start?
By taking this information, and starting working on more than just a simple campaign:
we set about creating our most inclusive campaign ever.
June is a celebration of love. Loving loud and loving proud.
Here at Bond Touch, we believe in healthy happy relationships, we wanted to use this Pride month to continue to make our Bondito community feel seen, heard, empowered, and celebrated.
So we continued talking with the members of Bond Touch who consider themselves to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
And we brainstormed with them possible solutions. We looked for how to really have the community be represented and what questions should brands be asking that they weren’t.
And so the Me, Myself & Pride campaign was born!
Me, Myself & Pride is meant to be a celebration of authentic stories from across the community, whose voices, love stories, and experiences we will continue to raise up. But more than that, we decided to make this campaign fully inclusive and so most of our campaign team - including the content production - were lgbtqia+.
Shooting this campaign was super, super fun not only because of the energy and enthusiasm of everyone involved but the spirit of love present on set!
But we were still missing key recommendations on content, information, and educational materials to share with our community. So we are making a 5K donation to the Trevor project, asked the participants to be spokespeople for us during this month, and what tips and advice they wanted to share with our bonditos.
We also created two playlists - come on you guys knew this was coming - one of them is more party-like to celebrate and the other one to empower lgbtqia+ artists.
Check them out and tell us if you have more suggestions in the comments!
We truly believe in celebrating Bonditos all year round and encourage all artists, writers, content creators from the community to come to talk to us and share their stories.
So whether it's pride or not, love proudly, love healthily, and love happily!
And bond a lot!
