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September 2004 - With all that lumber and hardware kicking around, Home Depot certainly has the resources to have built the dog house it now finds itself in. On September 6, 2004, the Human Rights Campaign announced that Home Depot would receive a failing grade on the HRC Corporate Equality Index, a measure of how equitably companies treat their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. The reason was fairly straightforward: while the giant hardware company was offering pet insurance to its workers, it wasn't offering its employees domestic partner benefits. Within a day of the story breaking, Home Depot reversed its position, stating it would be offering health coverage to the partners of its unmarried workers including gays and lesbians. End of story. Lesson learned. Right? Not quite. The larger lesson for marketers, whether diversity marketers or not, is not about Home Depot. It's about communications and public relations gone horribly, horribly, possibly indeliby wrong in the Internet Age. That Home Depot wasn't offering health coverage relative to its gay employees was probably a sorepoint to its gay employees, and certainly to the HRC. But the reality is, it wasn't something that a lot of people, including the company's gay consumers, were aware of. And now, well, no fewer than 16,000 web sites covered, reported or commented on the story, from gay web sites to news web sites to blogs, to wire services. While the story will inevitably and eventually fall from the pages of your morning newspaper, not so with the Internet, where stories tend to be published and forgotten about. But they don't necessarily go away, enduring, sometimes for years, long afterwards. In fairness and in fact, Home Depot wasn't the only Fortune 500 company offering to take care of pets but not partners. Sprint, Ecolab and Waste Management were also cited by the Human Rights Campaign. And in the end, isn't it a little bit ironic that gay demographics research has shown a higher incidence of pet ownership among the gay population than the general population. It's this little tidbit that's led companies like Eukanuba to start advertising in gay publications and sponsoring gay events. Who knows, maybe pet insurance companies will follow suit. About Wilde Marketing Wilde Marketing is a gay marketing consulting agency offering comprehensive advertising, marketing communications, strategic and public relation services to companies who understand the value of engaging gay consumers in this country. The company is located at 2722 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4N 2H9, 416.821.3074 phone, 416.483.3513 fax. For more information, email Wilde Marketing. |
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© 2004 Wilde Marketing - Gay Demographics |