LGBTQ+ Advertising and Community

​Adverting in the diversity Space has become increasingly more difficult.  Especially around LGBT or diversity hiring events.  As a protected class, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folks see more discrimination in the workplace than their allied sis gender and heterosexual counterparts.  Forms of bias are commonplace in everything we do on a daily basis.  Implicit bias, explicit bias and in some cases outright discrimination. 
 
Advertisement placement policies that don’t allow for the opportunity to narrow down by demographic are an outright discriminatory practice from advertising platforms.  By not allowing the narrowing of audience to include exclusively LGBTQ folks, advertising platforms are opening protected classes to discrimination based on bias of the general population interacting with those advertisements. This occurs with overt negative comments and reactions to the advertisement that detract from, rather than benefit LGBTQ folks.  
 
In the past month, here are some examples of advertisements placed by Chaleur Creative that have come under fire by the general populous.
 
Advertisement:
“Is your company LGBT inclusive? Register your company for the Chaleur Creative LGBT Career Fair in Boise Idaho today.  Chaleur Creative is connecting LGBTQ+ individuals with companies that have LGBT inclusive policies.” [Images]

Targeting: 
Boise, Idaho and surrounding areas. Age: 18-65+. Not allowed to narrow targeting by demographic to include the LGBTQ population.  
 
Responses:

• “This evil needs to stop. Perversion is not something to embrace. These people are needing psychological treatment, not inclusion.”
• Greater than 90% of reactions negative to the advertisement
• “Shouldn’t LGBT be inclusive of S- Straight people if they themselves want to be included? It seems as though straight people have more acceptance among the LGBT than bisexuals, who by nature, are polygamous, and that’s just disgusting in the eyes of two happily *married* men.”

 
These are just a few examples of the overt discrimination that LGBTQ+ people face on a daily basis in person, online and throughout their job search.  Imagine if the people posting these comments are the hiring manager for an LGBTQ+ person.  Imagine if the people posting these comments have the ability to influence the hiring of an LGBTQ+ person in any way.  The ability for that LGBTQ+ person to be hired would be greatly reduced. 
 
Our advertising mix at Chaleur Creative has changed to reduce the use of larger platforms in favor of smaller platforms that provide content and a sense of community to the LGBTQ+ folks we are looking to engage with.  We have also initiated our own platform for connecting with our resources like "20 LGBT Career Fairs in 20 Cities" and our LGBT Career Fairs and Educational Events.   
 
Join our community of LGBTQ+ folks and allies looking to connect LGBTQ+ folks with LGBT inclusive companies.  Please join us as a new member and share in the experience of connecting folks with their next big career move!

Find our online community at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1043226086017763/

Making real connections with real people,

Chris Brown
Founder
​Chaleur Creative