Pride Parade

LGBT Pride Parade

LGBT Pride Parade is a festival that celebrates gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender culture.
This festival also acts as a demonstration for the rights of non-heterosexual minorities such as
registered partnerships or protection against homophobic violence. 
LGBT Pride Parades take place in the world annually and most of them are held in June as
a memorial of the Stonewall riots, the first impulse to the contemporary movement for the rights
of LGBT people.


History
The first protests of the LGBT community were noticed on 28th June 1969 in response to the police
raid in Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Stonewall Inn was a gay bar popular with marginalized
people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, prostitutes
and young homeless people. The Stonewall riots, in general, were considered as a beginning of the
contemporary movement for the rights of gay people as it was for the first time in history when such
a large number of LGBT people had to resist apprehension. A year after were realized first annual
gay pride parades as a memorial of the incident: 28th June 1970 in New York, a day before in Chicago
and the same weekend in Los Angeles and San Francisco. These parades were serious but also cheerful.
They maintained their annual regularity and step by step the number of similar events in other cities
and countries was increasing.  
Sponsorship
LGBT Pride Parade can be known as a march, festival, rally, event, cultural activity, art festival or
activity that is organized for people that identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
intersex or other emerging sexual identities. Sponsorship is a necessary and significant source of
funding for organizing festivals and events. As well as other festivals, LGBT Pride Parade has also
an increasing number of sponsors in recent years. 
Sponsorship can be defined as a business relationship between a provider of funds or other resources
and an individual, organization or event that in return offers certain rights and association that can be
used commercially. The most common reasons why businesses want to participate in sponsorship are:
  • building awareness of a product image and brand
  • competitive advantage
  • generating the public’s interest in trying a product, increasing sales
  • direct contact with the target group in a relaxed atmosphere and attractive environment

The first sponsors of LGBT Pride Parade were in the middle 1970s Hertz Corporation and Absolut
vodka. In the 1980s there was an increase of sponsorship at LGBT parades and festivals.  In the 1990s
there was a significant increase in sponsorship of gay parades by a large number of various industries
such as financial services, technology, telecommunications, travel and also furniture. In 2009, TD bank
in the United States and Canada spent annually $1 million on LGBT pride parades, events and festivals. 
LGBT Pride Parade in London
The last LGBT parade in London took place on 6th July 2019 with more than 1,5 million attendees.
It was also the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Pride in London website introduces 71 main
sponsors that are divided into 8 categories. The first and also the main category is called Headline
sponsors. This category is represented by sponsors Mayor of London and Tesco. The second category
is called Gold sponsors and has 4 representatives: Amazon Music, Barclays, Budweiser and CMS.
Silver sponsors are another category with two representatives of sponsorship Delta and PWC.
Next category was Bronze sponsors with eight patrons: Edwardian Hotels, Facebook, Just Eat,
NBCUniversal, Shaftesbury, Transport for London, WeWork and City of Westminster. The fifth
category is called Partners with 19 sponsorship representatives such as Asos, Arcadis, Barefoot,
Camden, Citi, Diva, Deliveroo, Enterprise, Foxtons, Harry’s, Jamming Events, Juice, L’ORÉAL,
London Stock Exchange Group, PlayStation, P&G, Prudential, PureGym and Scouts. The sixth
category with eight patrons is called Supporters and the representatives are Code8, Mehron United
Kingdom, Musicians’ Union, Phoenix, Pride in Music, Revlon Professional, Seventa Makeup Academy
and Ten Image Professional. Media partner is another category and has 19 sponsors that supported
LGBT Pride Parade. These are representatives in the seventh category: Able Hotel Media, Boyz,
Channel 4, Culture Trip, ECN, Exterion Media, Gay Times Magazine, Gaydar, Gaydio, Getty Images,
InLinkUK, Landsec, Ocean, Pinterest, QX Magazine, Secret London, Taxi Media, TikTok and Twitter.
The last category that sponsored LGBT Pride Parade in London in 2019 is called Digital partners.
The category has nine patrons such as 1Password, Contentful, Doist, Notion, Typeform, Zapier and
Zeplin. 
LGBT Pride Parade in Edinburgh
In Edinburgh, the last LGBT Pride Parade took place on 22nd July 2019. This parade had 36 main
sponsors divided into 10 categories. Headline sponsors is the first category that has three representatives:
MAG Manchester Airport, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays. Another category of sponsors is
Pride Scotia march and Ride with pride Co sponsors. This category has two sponsors: Kames Capital
and Aegon. Community Health and Wellbeing partner is suicide prevention in Scotland called
Choose Life. The fourth category Youth space partner represents LGBT Youth Scotland and
The Edinburgh Dungeon. Lothian Buses is in the fifth category Travel partner. The category Event
partners has eight sponsors: Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Life Aberdeen, HSBC UK Pride,
Cloudreach, Phoenix Group, Edinburgh Playhouse, Kimpton Charlotte Square Hotel and Fanduel.
Five Unique sponsors are LGBT+, Nationwide Building Society, Scottish Water, LNER and The Three
Sisters. The eighth category is called Community sponsors and has eight representatives of sponsorship
such as Arnold Clark, Capco, Costa Coffee, ScotRail, Marks & Spencer, Anderson Strathern, Unite the
union and Waverley Mall. The Street, The Regent, CC Blooms, Habana and Tokyo bar & nightclub
are patrons of the ninth category Scene venue rainbow flag sponsors. The last category is called
Rainbow merchandise sponsor and the only representative is My Pride Flag. 
Besides many sponsors, LGBT Pride Parade has a large number of donors from the public and many
volunteers that participate in the realization of the festival. 
LGBT Pride Parade and marketing
When the festivals time comes, most of the companies pull out their marketing tactics especially when
it comes to LGBT advertising. In recent years, many companies have identified themselves as LGBT
friendly. Over 45% of young people that are aged under 34 years said that they rather repeat business
with a company that is LGBT friendly than with other businesses that do not support LGBT rights.
Worldwide, there are numerous brands that promote themselves by creating campaigns that share
messages of diversity, inclusion and equality.
In San Francisco Burger King run campaign called Be Your Way. In this campaign, Burger King
introduced a burger named the Proud Whopper. The Proud whopper was actually the same burger
that Burger King sells since 1957. The difference was a rainbow wrapper that held a special message
for Burger King’s customers: “We are all the same inside”. This campaign received numerous positive
responses from customers. 

In 2017 in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, McDonald’s celebrated Pride month with an exclusive
rainbow fry box and showed their support to the LGTB community with their slogan “Lovin is Lovin”.
Oreo shared their first Pride cookies in 2012. The filling cream was adapted to all colours of the
rainbow. Together with this cookie, Oreo showed their support with a slogan “Proudly support love”. 
In New York, Uber run LGBT-friendly campaign called “Whatever Your Road, Ride with Pride”.
During the Pride Parade, Uber used cars with rainbow and showed its support to all people that can
feel different. Uber also shared a sentence that said “keeping the LGBT community moving in the
only direction we know - forward” that should inspire people to be honest with themselves and do not
be afraid to accept their sexualities. 
Nike made a campaign called BE TRUE that focuses on supporting the LGBT community. Nike’s
BE TRUE collection includes rainbow sneakers, socks and a t-shirt. T-shirts are wearing writing
“EQUALITY” written in rainbow letters. As a result of their support, Nike has become a brand with
a loving and compassionate reputation among people. 
In recent years, there are more and more brands such as Puma, Gucci or ASOS that are releasing
rainbow sneakers, t-shirts or ties and its profit donate to helplines, charities or associations.
References
OLSON, E., 2016. An exploration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride festival sponsors.
Journal of convention & event tourism. [online] October, vol. 18, pp. 60 - 73. [viewed 2nd December

SKINNER, B., RUKAVINA, V., 2003. Event sponsorship. [online] New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc. [viewed 2nd December 2019]

PRIDE IN LONDON, 2019. Support us. [online] [viewed 2nd December 2019]

PRIDE EDINBURGH, 2019. Sponsors. [online] [viewed 2nd December 2019]

THE MARKETING SOCIETY, 2019. Pride month branding. [online] [viewed 3rd December 2019]
Available from:

MARKETPLACE, 2019. From throwing beer bottles to rainbow beer bottles.  [online]
[viewed 3rd December 2019] Available from:

PALLIEN, V. 2018. Love, a movement: The top 10 pride campaigns and marketing lessons.  [online]
[viewed 3rd December 2019] Available from:
https://insights.digitalmediasolutions.com/articles/best-pride-marketing-advertising-campaigns

ANON, 2019. Pride Parade [online]. [viewed 4th December 2019]
Available from: 
https://home.bt.com/news/in-pictures/in-pictures-edinburgh-pride-parade-marks-stonewall-anniversary-11364371388473

ANON, 2019. Pride in London 2019 [online video]. [viewed 6th December] Available from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hiKhCgUPQ

ANON, 2019. Burger King serves The Pride Whopper [online]. [viewed 4th December 2019]
Available from:
https://fortune.com/2014/07/02/san-francisco-burger-king-serves-up-gay-pride-whopper/

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