Lesbians’ assessments of gay advertising in France: not necessarily a case of ‘La Vie en Rose?’

Abstract

The social, political and economic importance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is increasingly being recognised by what is routinely referred to as mainstream society. However, surprisingly little is known about the nuances of differing behaviour within this broadly defined subpopulation. In a French context, this study examines lesbians’ responses to advertising that is purportedly targeted at them, including ‘gender neutral-implicit’ and ‘gay-explicit’ advertisements. This research furthers previous work by examining ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’ lesbians’ reactions to (1) gay male-explicit, (2) gay lesbian-explicit and finally (3) gender neutral-implicit advertisements. Further, this research focuses on specific reactions beyond simply ‘attitude towards advertisement’; precisely, an overall ‘evaluation of advertisement’, the ‘ability to generate curiosity’ about the brand, and the ‘degree of likeability of advertisementʼ are compared. It was found that lesbians’ responses to targeted print advertisements were significantly influenced by whether they self-identify with gay males under the holistic banner of ‘gay’. These findings suggest that marketing practitioners would be judicious to stop thinking in terms of one common LGBT advertising target market and start to think about the nuances of homosexual advertising that include (1) response differences to advertising between the ‘G’ market, comprising homosexual men, and the ‘L’ market of homosexual women, and (2) the subtle, but important differences found within the lesbian sub-market.

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