In the 1990s, Subaru’s unique characteristic was that the company increasingly made all-wheel-drive standard on all its cars. “I’m always amazed that no one copied it.” Instead of fighting every other car company over the same demographic of white, 18- to 35-year-olds living in the suburbs, Subaru would target niche groups of people who particularly liked Subarus. “That was and still is a unique approach,” says Tim Bennett, who worked as Director of Advertising. After attempts to reinvigorate the company’s declining sales with a sports car and a hip, young ad agency failed, they turned to their niche marketing strategy.
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That was the question faced by Subaru of America executives in the 1990s. How do you advertise a car that journalists describe as “sturdy, if drab”? It’s that Subaru cultivated its image as a car for lesbians-and did so at a time when few companies would embrace or even acknowledge their gay customers. If you’ve ever wondered why people joke about lesbians driving Subarus, the reason is not just that lesbians like Subarus. It was such an unusual decision-and such a success-that it pushed gay and lesbian advertising from the fringes to the mainstream. Yet Subaru decided to launch an ad campaign focused on lesbian customers. A Democratic president had just passed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and after IKEA aired one of the first major ad campaigns depicting a gay couple, someone had called in a bomb threat on an IKEA store.
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Did the company want to make advertisements for gay customers? At the time, in the mid 1990s, few celebrities were openly out. But Subaru had been looking for niche groups like skiers and kayakers-not lesbian couples. This was the type of discovery that the small, struggling automaker was looking for. Lesbians liked their dependability and size, and even the name “Subaru.” They were four times more likely than the average consumer to buy a Subaru. This search for niche groups led Subaru to the 3rd rail of marketing: They discovered that lesbians loved their cars. Rather than compete directly with Ford, Toyota, and other carmakers that dwarfed Subaru in size, executives decided to return to its old focus on marketing Subaru cars to niche groups-like outdoorsy types who liked that Subaru cars could handle dirt roads.
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The new approach had fallen flat when the ad men took irony too far: One ad touted the new sports car’s top speed of 140 MPH, then asked, “How important is that, with extended urban gridlock, gas at $1.38 a gallon and highways full of patrolmen?”Īfter firing the hip ad agency, Subaru of America changed its approach. To reverse the company’s fortunes, Subaru of America had created its first luxury car-even though the small automaker was known for plain but dependable cars-and hired a trendy advertising agency to introduce it to the public. It was the mid 1990s, and sales of Subaru cars were in decline. This connection arises from a perverse sort of simpatico: Queer people have long been demonized by Anita Bryant-types as horrific aberrations, a dark force working to corrupt the polished sanctity of the heterosexual family.Subaru’s marketing strategy had just died in a fit of irony. This is especially true of works involving darkness, pain, and horror: See, for example, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (which has become part of the midnight screening repertoire), or, my personal favorite, the Hellraiser series.
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With the help of camp, queers have long made a habit of appropriating and adapting straight cultural products (which historically excluded us) for our own enjoyment. Tops and merch for sale! Link in bio ? #draw #drawing #sketch #sketching #illustration #illustrator #art #artwork #artist #instagay #gay #gayart #comic #comicbook #comicart #ink #hero #drag #dragqueen #toon #instaart #babadook #gaypride #vogue #voguing #prideĪ post shared by Phillip Orozco on at 3:09pm PDT