Are corporations exploiting Pride?

One of the biggest things happening this month around the world is Pride Month, where the LGBT (that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual for you know don't know what it stands for) community get together to celebrate. It's a worldwide celebration, with every city holding its own parade celebrating same-sex love. 

The history of the marches themselves goes back to the Stonewall marches when gay persons who stayed at the LGBT-friendly Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969 got fed up with police raiding their hotels and others like them which were gay, bi or trans-friendly rioted against the persecution by police. There were injuries and arrests. In 1970, there was the first Pride March. 

Fast forward to the start of July 2019, where there's a Pride march in London. The London Pride March will explode into a mass of colour, an awful amount of PVC and leather on show in uncomfortable places that wouldn't want me to hit up my local Ann Summers anytime soon, and lots of people celebrating same-sex love in other shapes and forms, including the continual blast of 'YMCA'. 

Listen, I don't hate rainbows. I saw a lot of them at Pride, and I quite like them. I want to know what's over one, and I like to think that one day I'll drop into a pot of gold. The flags are really cool too. Well, some of them. The rainbow flags I despise are the ones with the corporate logo on the front. And at the Pride London parade, it seems like there are thousands. 

 

Suddenly everyone from Apple to H&M to Nike felt it was important to tell people how open they were to the LGBT world. 

This might be me being cynical, but I don't think I saw big corporations do it between January and end-May, or August to December, but that might just be me being blind. After all the Apple adverts with female couples cuddling each other watching Netflix on a Macbook or strong athletic men holding hands wearing Nike stuff, are everywhere all the time, right?

Er, I don't think so.

Because as much as the Pride festivals across the world is a great opportunity for 'the community' to celebrate itself, it's also a fantastic opportunity for marketers, too. And they - as every year - see a bonanza coming. After all, 'the so-called 'pink' dollar's buying power was over $917 billion in 2017. I mean, who wouldn’t want a piece of that (financial) action? 

I mean, some corporations do give back. There are the likes of Levi’s, Converse and American Eagle who donate 100% of the net proceeds of rainbow-coloured sales to LGBT-related charities. But for other corporates, it’s a lot less than that. And Nike says that it’s given $2.7 million to LGBTQ charities, but won’t release financial records of how profitable its Nike BETRUE collection has been for them. Apple likes to use the words “a percentage” of its rainbow coloured watch band sales (retailing for a tidy £29.99 in the UK), but doesn't release the actual finances. 

But then there’s pharmaceutical company Gilead. Gilead makes an anti-HIV medication called Truvada which will cost over $2,000 – A MONTH – to the uninsured. Lobbyists want them to give their patent away so that generics can get a hold of the product, produce it more cheaply, and that gets handed down to the customer, potentially saving them thousands. Bearing in mind Truvada comprised 20% of total Gilead sales in 2018, it doesn't take a Warren Buffett to work out why they are unwilling to do that (but the patent will run out in 2021 regardless). But here comes the twist: Truvada might never have existed or been marketed unless two federal agencies and the powerful Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hadn't lobbied the FDA for initial approval for its treatment of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a regimen that is highly effective at reducing the risk of HIV infection if taken regularly. 

Anyway, despite not listening to the campaigns, Gilead was still one of the prime sponsors of New York City Pride this year. With 1.1 million people are living with HIV in the USA alone, the sponsorship was a way of Gilead saying ‘thank you’ to loyal customers, in the way that British Airways sent my father an email for his years of flying with the airline without even offering him money off, you know, a flight. 

Speaking of loyalty, customers, marketing and New York City (via Minnesota), we couldn’t help but notice that mortgage-backed securities are back and getting cooked up again by the financial houses.

Why Minnesota? Because that's where TCF Corporation – who was bailed out for the fine sum of $361 million in 2008 (it paid it back)– probably due to the sales of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Freddie Mac going down the drainpipe (in 2007 it lost $16.7 million on them but gained it all back and more in 2008 by going ‘against the herd’) - is based.

Eleven years on, TCF has packaged a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), which were one of the causes of the financial hellhole in 2008 (relatively minor, but still a cause!). But this time, it’s not handing out 125% home equity loans willy-nilly on the basis that the market will continue going up like the old days. The average customer has 35% equity down instead of the good old days of 0% down, they say. Anyway, they’ve sold on the packages to private equity firm Cerberus, who is then selling it on to the banks.

It hasn’t started well, with little interest. But if there is interest, then you can be sure that the 'safer mortgage-backed security' market will get larger and larger. And then there will be the 'less safe mortgage-backed security', because investors and the financial world have as much memory for stupidity as my dog, Welby, who we recently took to the vets because he'd eaten something he shouldn't have, costing me £3,000 in vet's fees for getting his stomach cut open.
 

But hey, in the meantime, maybe people can be proud to be financial folk again. Maybe they can have a float. Sponsored by Patagonia or North Face, of course.