Dear brands, this Pride Month, instead of shouting, start to listen.

It’s Pride Month, so once again, we’re faced with companies scrambling over one another to change the colours of their logo and espouse from their corporate channels about how much they support the LGBTQ+ community. 

And greater representation and visibility is, of course, a good thing. Seeing companies outwardly speak about the LGBTQ+ community and sending a visual sign of support through their branding and messaging is both progressive and important. But it’s not enough. 

The issue for many LGBTQ+ people lies in the fact that being LGBTQ+ is nuanced, often at odds with the happy-go-lucky rainbow representation of pride. For one thing, it certainly lasts longer than a lunar cycle. 

Being LGBTQ+ is, quite frankly, tough. We face higher levels of bullying in schools and ostracism within a heteronormative society that teaches of Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. It leads to increased mental health challenges, including loneliness, social isolation and levels of homelessness. It continues into the workplace and beyond, stretching as far as equal access to healthcare and rights to start a family. And that’s just in the UK. Around the world, and especially for our trans siblings, our community faces increased verbal, physical and political attacks on our very right to exist. 

So we may be forgiven when your “Yas Queen” instagram tile or your rainbow branded pack of toilet paper doesn’t quite feel like the championing of the underdog you perhaps intended it to be. The lived experience of a community where one in eight of us aged 18-24 has attempted to end our own lives isn’t encapsulated in your “colourful” logo that you change for a week or two of the year. 

True allyship starts at the very beginning. As a business, that means starting with your own people before professing to represent the complexities of those who identify as LGBTQ+. Start with your internal practices, your own mental health support and your own policies for same sex parents or those who are looking to transition. Start with asking yourself what being LGBTQ+ really means day in, day out, not just here in the UK, but wherever you seek to do business. Start with meaningful discussions across employee networks who have that lived experience you seek to represent. Start by speaking to charities and community groups about how your business can make a tangible impact on the lives of LGBTQ+ people, rather than just outwardly appeal to them. And start from the understanding that simply slapping a rainbow flag on things isn’t the solution.

This Pride Month, commit to authentically and truly understanding the needs of a community who, unfortunately for your marketing team, aren’t easily representing by bright colours and a few unicorns. Instead of shouting, start to listen.