I’m exhausted by Pride.
I know, shocking.
Consider that Bospar has done more this month than simply changed our visual collateral or posted inspirational social posts. We represent San Francisco Pride, the nation’s No. 1 celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community. We launched the nation’s first gender fluid bar. We hosted the New York delegation of The National Association of LGBTQ Journalists. We hosted a pop-up bar to celebrate brands supporting LGBTQIA+ people, when brands have vacillated or retreated (ahem, Target). That effort was coupled with a survey of over 5,000 adults in five countries about their attitudes about brands’ support of minority groups.
Simply put, we have put ourselves out there as defenders of one of the world’s most maligned communities – a community that is seeing an uptick in attacks both physical and legislative.
There is a risk too. While an overwhelming majority of our business is deep tech and healthcare, one judge in a PR contest dismissed us as a “LGBTQIA-focused PR agency.”
That judge’s attitude suggests that to play it safe we should stick to our proverbial knitting.
As RuPaul would say, “gurl, please.”
We created Bospar Stands Up because we believe we cannot be bystanders in our world. We have to do something.
That something is taking the skills we have learned representing the best tech brands and applying them to some of the world’s biggest problems. Sometimes those problems are crackdowns on reproductive care. It’s also when AI threatens the livelihood of journalists. We can’t simply publish listicles on LinkedIn, patting ourselves on the back about our client work.
A moment in Cannes crystallized this commitment. A student from Asia (I’m keeping his home country out of this post) approached me, wanting advice on some of the biggest decisions in his life. You can already guess the narrative. Yes, he’s gay. Yes, he’s from one of those countries that makes that problematic. And yes, he wouldn’t have known who to talk to unless we put ourselves out there.
And yes, sometimes that’s exhausting. There’s something insulting and Sisyphean about asserting your right to exist every year.
But oh snap! That student put me in my place, and put my complaints in perspective.
Despite everything, we do have it pretty good.
Being tired is merely a metaphysical tax for being able to look at ourselves in the mirror.
