Have you seen the new IKEA commercial
featuring two men, their young daughter and the family golden retriever? Scroll down to click
on the first video below and you can watch it.
The
Commercial
Closet Association (CCA), the nonprofit
group that monitors how GLBT people are portrayed in advertising, reminds us
that it's been 12 years since the Swedish retail giant first made waves with a
TV commercial that showed real live gay people: The first
Ikea spot with a white male gay couple, also from Deutsch [ad agency], was
groundbreaking. It was part of a series showing non-nuclear, non-traditional
families, including a biracial opposite-sex couple and a single mom. The male
couple ad showed them shopping together and discussing how they met, with one
finishing the other's sentence like married couples do. One of the two actors
was even actually gay, but it aired only once before being pulled -- for safety
reasons. One of its American stores received bomb threats due to the
commercial.
You can watch the original ad from 1994
in the second video below.
Michael Wilke, who heads CCA, wrote in his
column several weeks ago
that IKEA has produced over 20 ads with gay and trans themes:
In 1999, a remarkable Spanish Ikea spot depicts a woman in a hospital who has just undergone gender reassignment surgery from being a man, with the theme "Redecorate Your Life." [Click links to watch videos.] The same year in Germany, a fold-away couch is opened to reveal two men in bed together. In 2001, a stereotyped male couple fights War of the Roses style in a British spot, while an American spot shows a man opening a fortune cookie that says love is in front of him -- an overweight man.
While not all of IKEA's ads have received positive ratings from CCA, it's cool to see how their ads have developed over time. They know lots of gays love their store, but so do they love lots of other retailers whose ads never show gay folks as part of their loyal shoppers.
Now if IKEA could just make it possible to go in and not have to spend two hours walking through every showroom when all you want to buy is one cardboard storage box. I know -- I could go elsewhere, but I just love that blue.
IKEA 'Living Room' (2006)
IKEA 'Dining Room Table' (1994)
3 comments:
I love it, love it, love it. And while we're on the subject....it's all about love. Let's be open and honest and tolerant of someone who is not exactly like us. We are not clones. I want to see more of these IKEA ads. I am a white, heterosexual woman, middle-aged, madly in love with my husband.
I am absolutely going to make the effort to buy more from IKEA. It's time gays supported companies that support us.
I love IKEA, and I love the fact that they could care less about what the media has to say they show real life families and that makes me love them even more they will always have my vote.
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