“How Subarus Came to Be Seen as Cars for Lesbians,” Reading

Summary

In the 90’s, Subaru launched a marketing campaign targeting lesbians after finding a significant portion of their customers were lesbian women who felt the car fit their active lifestyles. At a time in which it was even more common for companies to not embrace or acknowledge LGBT people and issues, the decision was met with concern and backlash from the public. Despite this, Subaru felt committed to the project and began to advertise to lesbian audiences, primarily through campaigns coded with implicit references to gay culture (a strategy that reduced negative public reaction). Subaru also more openly supported LGBT issues by partnering with gay celebrities and charitable organizations. Subaru’s strategy seemed to pay off for them in terms of financial success and popularity. Subaru faced criticism from the LGBT community for only targeting gay people of privilege who were white and upper class, primarily for the sake of increasing the company’s profit as opposed to bringing about meaningful change to queer populations. Subaru dismissed these claims by saying their partnership with charities and overhaul of internal policies (offering employment benefits to those in same-sex relationships) were fundamentally progressive.

Outside Example

This article made me think of the discussion around “Pink Capitalism,” or how capitalism and corporations have co-opted the LGBT movement to create profitable new markets for queer people in a position of economic power, often under the guise of a progressive acceptance and embrace of sexual minorities. Examples include companies participating in pride parades, marketing campaigns targeted towards queer people, and the creation of LGBT tourism. Pink capitalism is often criticized for its failure to meaningfully address LGBT issues, and its tendency to push for conformity to a particular image of queerness that is predominantly white and affluent.

Reading Connection

Subaru’s strategy of targeting lesbian consumers, and the article’s portrayal of this strategy as “progressive,” can be viewed through a lens of pink capitalism. The company’s primary motive seemed to be increasing profit, rather than bringing about meaningful social change. The article even admits to how Subaru was ultimately reacting to a failure to increase sales through other marketing tactics, rather than the social issues faced by lesbians and LGBT people in the 90s. Each step Subaru took in procuring a lesbian market for their cars was carefully calculated for the sole purpose of increasing sales, from the revision of company policy to the selective use of coded messages.