June is Pride Month – a time for the global LGBTQIA+ community to celebrate their identity and be celebrated by others.
Pride Month is a time of celebration for the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s a time to raise awareness of LGBTQIA+ issues, highlight progress made, educate ourselves, and show support to the community. It’s a time to demand positive change for underrepresented groups, and give back in support of charities and ally organisations working to bring about that change.
We celebrate Pride during the month of June, as it honors the Stonewall Uprising; a monumental and pivotal event for the LGBTQIA+ community that occurred in June 1969 in New York City. Stonewall is considered to be one of the main catalysts for the global gay rights movement, and many brands have embraced Pride Month as a modern-day show of support and solidarity.
From empowering voices within the community, committing to impactful change through diversity and inclusion education, to investing in philanthropy or community activation, your brand may be thinking about how they can get involved.
Engaging with LGBTQIA+ content creators during Pride Month is a great way to show your support. To help you run an authentic and impactful creator collaboration during Pride, here are three tips and some Vamp case studies to learn and draw inspiration from.
#1 Partner with diverse LGBTQIA+ creators
This goes without saying. Curating your squad in a way that adds diversity to an already diverse community of LGBTQIA+ creators is paramount. Not only will you be uplifting the voices and highlighting the experiences of those who identify with Pride the most, but your campaign will feel more authentic and relevant to your target audience.
Creators from within the community will have shared experiences, perspectives, and stories that can be showcased on your platform during this period and beyond. By sharing marginalised voices, you will not only be supporting Pride and the LGBTQIA+ community at large, but also showcasing brand values that are increasingly becoming more important to modern audiences.
Vamp’s platform gives you the opportunity to find the perfect creators at scale for your Pride campaigns. Connect with our diverse, vetted community, make your selection based on verified audience and performance data, and manage the entire campaign end-to-end on our platform.
Best practice in action
A great example of a successful Pride campaign would be the recent partnership between Wrangler Europe and Vamp. We worked with Wrangler to connect them with creators from the LGBTQIA+ community in Germany and Poland.
11 creators were tasked with creating high-quality and impactful Instagram content that showcased the collection, while promoting the fact that a percentage of the collection’s sales profits were being donated to ILGA World. ILGA World is a global voice of LGBTQIA+ networks, communities, and movements committed to shaping a world where everyone can live safely, equally, and be free.
Story links were used by creators to drive customers to the brand’s ecommerce site where the collection could be purchased. The campaign successfully drove over 165K organic Instagram impressions, reached over 156K potential customers, and generated over 18.1K organic Instagram engagements.
#2 Leave your brief open to tell more authentic and relatable stories
Creators are storytellers. They know their audience better than anyone. They also know how to captivate their audience and hold their attention long enough to get their message across.
Storytelling is a consistent theme of Pride Month—especially across social media. Giving LGBTQIA+ creators the space to tell their stories, celebrate their community, and detail their journey, growth, and identity is of utmost importance. Pride is about expression, so your campaign should offer a platform to underrepresented voices during this period, to allow for creative expression.
By keeping your brief somewhat open for interpretation, your creators will have the freedom to tell their most authentic and relatable stories. A strict brief can limit creative expression. So instead, use the Vamp platform’s briefing tools to engage your creators. We pledge to give all our creators freedom of expression, whilst also maintaining commitment to your brand message. Our briefing form is simple and easy to use, is already formatted for you, and is moderated by our team before it’s sent out to our platform.
Best practice in action
Vamp partnered with Tangle Teezer to celebrate Pride Month and raise awareness around the brand’s Rainbow Brush. Using core product messaging, 10 creators from the LGBTQIA+ community were selected by the brand to share their personal stories with impactful TikTok content, incorporating the #PowerToBeMe campaign message. Creators used their platform to speak about how their hair has played a role in their identity journey.
Creators had the option to produce one of two TikTok videos. The first one was a #StoryTime video, where creators shared positive and life-affirming moments from their self-discovery journey. The second option was to use TikTok’s green screen effect to share photos of their hairstyles from over the years and discuss how these played a part in their identity journey.
The campaign drove an impressive 1.5M organic TikTok impressions, reached over 1.3M potential customers, and drove over 278.1K TikTok engagements.
@santistorm_ I’m never complete without my wig!🎀 obsessed with these tangle teezer bushes 😍 @tangleteezer #PowerToBeMe #TangleTeezer
@anjalichakra my curly wash day with Tangle Teezer! the pride styler is out now & TT has partnered with the Stonewall Foundation to celebrate 🎉 #PowerToBeMe
#3 Show your support by giving back to the community
Partnering with LGBTQIA+ creators and giving them the space to share their stories are just two elements you should consider for your Pride campaign. Another involves showing support by giving back to the community. Utilising your creator campaign to raise money, awareness, or to educate are just some of the ways you can show your support during Pride Month, and on an ongoing basis throughout the year.
‘Rainbow washing’ is a harmful practice that some brands have been known for during Pride Month. It’s where brands plaster the Pride flag across social to show their ‘support’, without actually putting in the effort to bring impactful change for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Your creator campaigns shouldn’t perpetuate performative activism and use the Pride flag as a means to simply drive sales. Instead, you should collaborate with LGBTQIA+ creators to educate, raise awareness, and raise money to support relevant charities and organisations, in addition to building advocacy as you gain new customers.
Best practice in action
When Sally Hansen wanted to drive awareness, build advocacy, and create original content to promote their Pride range in partnership with GLAAD, the brand turned to Vamp. GLAAD is an organisation leading the charge to positively shape public perception of the LGBTQIA+ community. They do this by transforming cultural attitudes, sharing experiences, and accelerating acceptance for the community.
Vamp engaged seven LGBTQIA+ creators to produce bright, bold and authentic Instagram content. Using the brand’s Pride range, creators showed off their best nail art and designs while simultaneously promoting the fact that 100% of the range’s profits were being donated to GLAAD.
This organic Instagram campaign generated over 52.2K organic impressions, reached over 34.4K potential customers, and generated over 5K Instagram engagements.
It’s important to note that your support for the LGBTQIA+ community must go beyond just Pride Month. Whether you realise this or not, your brand is likely to be already engaging with LGBTQIA+ customers all year round. If you’re a brand that is fortunate enough to have this audience already on your side and can be an ally, use your influence to be a force for good. You can opt to follow some of the tips in our article, or simply start by actively listening and learning from your LGBTQIA+ customers in an ongoing show of support of their needs.
Get in touch with our team and start connecting with Vamp’s LGBTQIA+ creators today.
