Observations on advertising

For a few days it looked like another victory for the American religious right, and certainly the right was celebrating in those terms. Now, however, it is revealed as something like the opposite: vivid proof of the power of the gay dollar.

The Ford Motor Company, which last month announced it would no longer advertise its Jaguars and Land-Rovers in the gay media, has done a U-turn, saying that, on the contrary, it plans to promote all of its brands in gay publications.

The big loser here is the American Family Association, a Christian non-profit outfit "for people who are tired of cursing the darkness and who are ready to light a bonfire". The AFA runs boycotts of corporations it perceives to be furthering a "homosexual agenda", and it has been hounding Ford for some time.

When the car giant made its first announcement, therefore, the association was jubilant. "They've heard our concerns; they are acting on our concerns. We are pleased with where we are," declared the AFA's chairman, Don Wildmon.

Ford insisted it was purely a business decision, resulting from budget and marketing changes, but the move was widely seen as a victory for the AFA, especially as the firm and the lobby group had been in talks.

Barely a week later, however, the AFA's delight turned to disgust and Wildmon was complaining: "We had an agreement with Ford, worked out in good faith. Unfortunately some Ford Motors officials made the decision to violate the good-faith agreement."

For the Human Rights Campaign, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organisation in the US, the U-turn was "an unequivocal reaffirmation of Ford's historic commitment to our community and the core American values of fairness and equality".

Again Ford insisted it was acting from business motives, but it was surely significant that it was to a coalition of LGBT groups that Ford addressed its letter restating a commitment to advertising in gay- and lesbian-targeted publications.

The real moral is this: unfortunately for the AFA, gay advertising happens to be big business in the US. Last year the country's two main gay media companies, LPI and PlanetOut, merged in a $31m deal, creating a single platform giving advertisers access to gay and lesbian publications and websites. PlanetOut's business had grown by almost a third in the previous year.

It seems this is one arena of the culture wars in which the conservative right cannot produce the genuine influence to support its sound and fury. Far from "starting a bonfire", the AFA would appear to be playing with damp matches.

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