SXSW 2022
Bringing Brands Out of The Closet
Description:
Where are the queer brands? We seem to have a ton of queer representation lately: queer football players, queer politicians, queer CEOs, queer films winning Oscars... media is saturated with 1000 forms of queerness, yet, when it comes to companies and brands themselves, they are, for the most part, in the closet. The signifiers of queerness are completely absent from mainstream brands but, more worrying, unless we're talking about a product aimed directly at an LGBTQ+ audience, up and coming, queer-owned brands and startups can't run away fast enough from their founders identity. We celebrate, and rightly so, women-owned businesses, Black-owned businesses, immigrant-owned businesses, but the conversation about queer-owned businesses as a point of pride and as having intrinsig value is moot
Additional Supporting Materials
Takeaways
- Portrayals of queerness on the media still fail us by painting an incomplete picture that tells us that the battle is over. It is not.
- There's instrinsic value to queer-created enterprises/brands in the same way there is value in women-created, Black-created or immigrant-created ones.
- It is a mistake for any founder/creator to name "everyone" as my user/customer. Queer founders are conditioned to be particularly biased towards this.
Speakers
- Hans Schrei, CEO, Wunderkeks
- Luis Gramajo, Chief Communications Officer, Wunderkeks
- Anthony Ramos, Head of Talent, Glaad
- Samantha Costello, Chief of staff to Senior VP of Marketing, AT&T
Organizer
Hans Schrei, Ceo, Wunderkeks
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