Telus put feet on the ground at 13 Pride festivals across the country this summer, stretching its LGBTQ marketing from coast to coast.
The wide-sweeping effort included in-store signage at 150 Telus stores, food trucks handing out free juice in Toronto and Vancouver, employees marching in multiple parades, and sponsor status at Pride festivals in Halifax and Prince George, B.C.
As Pride passed through Vancouver last week, where Telus is headquartered, the company released a video that’s emblematic of the brand’s overall approach to Pride marketing. In the video, local members of the LGBTQ community in Vancouver shared their own experiences and explained what Pride means to them.
Ryan Bazeley, senior communications manager at Telus and a member of the company’s Spectrum LGBTQ resource group, stressed it was important to him the video not be a typical Telus ad. Rather than weaving Telus into all the messaging, the company used itself as a platform for LGBTQ consumers to tell their own stories, then closed the video with Telus branding and its Pride season hashtag #ShareLove.
The video was produced in-house and is being promoted online through YouTube pre-roll and promoted posts on Facebook and Twitter. Cossette Media handled the buy.
Telus has a long history of promoting itself as a gay-friendly brand.The company has been sponsoring Pride parades for at least a decade and has launched a number of LGBTQ-focused initiatives over the years, including the creation of its own queer-friendly retail brand, Caya, back in 2010.
Though Telus is putting media dollars behind its Pride messaging, Bazeley told Marketing he saw the brand’s activations as community building initiatives rather than traditional marketing. “Our goal is to build meaningful and authentic connections with the LGBTQ community,” he said. “We really don’t look at that as a marketing exercise, but as a way for us to build really authentic relationships.”
The community approach, Bazeley said, started in the workplace, where Telus has teams such as Spectrum to ensure LGBTQ employees feel safe and welcome. The company is now encouraging others to do the same with the release last week of a study it commissioned about workplace safety for LGBTQ employees. According to the study, one third of Canadians said their workplaces was not safe and inclusive for LGBTQ employees and nearly half (45%) said their workplace was not safe and inclusive for transgender employees.
As part of its effort to deepen its relationship with LGBTQ consumers, Telus has contributed $3.5 million dollars to LGBTQ-related causes in recent years. Bazeley provided a list of organizations the telecom had contributed to across Canada including Out In Schools, CampOUT, YouthCO, Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and AIDS New Brunswick.
When Pride season ends, Bazeley said these contributions, along with “thousands” of volunteer hours by Telus staffers at LGBTQA organizations, help prove to the LGBTQ community Telus sees the group as more than just a target demographic.
“When it comes to supporting the LGBTQ community, obviously attending Pride is great. It’s awesome to see more and more brands coming out and supporting Pride,” Bazeley said. “But, really connecting with the LGBTQ community means showing up the other 364 days a year as well.”
