Happy Pride Month from the Kiwa Studio team! As Pride Month is coming to an end, we'd like to discuss the issue currently brought up in the beauty industry. Pride Month is a historical representation. June was made Pride Month to celebrate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969. It led to a national firestorm of activism and elevated the fight for LGBTQIA+ equality.
At Kiwa, we wanted to remind our community to re-think how we can participate in this movement together.
You may know a rainbow as being the symbol of Pride Month. The question is how do you know about this? Perhaps it's from the social media or your favorite influencers, the package the brand created, etc. Vogue Business published an article and pointed out the marketing way of Pride Month within the beauty industry became "Too much rainbow" and Gen Z and Millennials are ready for deeper engagement.
"However, some marketing experts argue that too many beauty brands are adopting a surface approach based on rainbow-colored packaging. They say that millennials and Gen Z consumers are ready for deeper engagement and more wholehearted commitment." - Beauty weak spot: Why marketing still has an LGBTQ+ problem
As much as we'd like to support and join this movement as a clean beauty brand, we also don't wanna push it to be "the trend". Being on the wave of trend is important in a marketing way but on the other side, once it became the trend, it is also hard to keep informing the audience on the real meaning and importance of the issue.
There is a new finding from the data. While the "Gender-Natural" beauty content goes viral, the engagement has been dropping.
“The gender-neutral position is... a superficial baseline that enables brands to start talking about gender issues. The expectation from the consumer has grown in a way that is not linear in the past 12 months.”
Brent Miller, P&G’s senior director of its global LGBTQ+ equality program says,
“In the US, UK and parts of Europe, we can be much more visible and direct in our intent in supporting the LGBT+ community, because those people are protected more broadly through inclusive laws. In other markets, we need to dial it back because those countries may not be ready for those conversations.”
“It’s not about putting a pride flag onto a shampoo bottle but about reflecting that experience.”
So what we could do as a brand?
Supporting the NPO, LGBTQ+-owned brands and the community by donating and spreading their information are among a few of the ways. But most importantly, speaking up as a brand is the most efficient and effective way to move forward this movement and show strong support to the community.
As community care is our core, we'd like to keep informing and show our love to each community year round. Kiwa Studio is a proud donates a sum of our profits to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, an amazing non-profit organization that protects the human rights of Black transgender people.
Find out more about what you can do and which NPO you could participate in from Sustain The Mag.