June is Pride month for the Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transgender (LGBT) community and yesterday Oreo celebrated it with a Facebook page post and tweet. Both posts included a festive and fun picture of a rainbow Oreo cookie. For the Facebook post, the status update on the post read, “Proudly support love!” and the tweet read, “Celebrate your pride for love! #dailytwist http://pic.twitter.com/ryqS3HyK.” 

The Pride image is part of a bigger campaign to celebrate Oreo’s 100th birthday. An Oreo representative provided a statement about the campaign to Mashable, which Mashabale included today in its post about Oreo’s Pride post:

In celebration of the 100th birthday of Oreo cookies, the brand is creating a series of daily ads reflecting current events in a fun way using images of Oreo cookies and milk. These ads are in the same style of the print advertising campaign for Oreo’s 100th Birthday that launched earlier this year. The new campaign will bring to life trending topics, pop culture news, milestones or celebrations using images of the iconic cookie and milk. In recognition of Pride Month, Oreo created an ad depicting the Rainbow flag with different colors of Oreo crème. We are excited to illustrate what is making history today in a fun and playful way. You can follow Oreo on Facebook to see the daily ads.

As a company, Kraft Foods has a proud history of celebrating diversity and inclusiveness. We feel the OREO ad is a fun reflection of our values.

As of this writing the Pride tweet has garnered 1,338 retweets and 440 favorites and the Facebook post has garnered 173,403 likes, 51,219 shares and 23,863 comments. The Pride post’s engagement is higher than the average engagement on Oreo’s other posts and it will certainly help Oreo’s EdgeRank, as well as its reach.

The public may be divided on some LGBT issues, such as the right to marry, but despite the politics around such controversial issues, many consumers support the LGBT community and will rally around initiatives such as the Oreo Pride post or the recent Gay Father’s Day ad by JCPenney. Plus, the LGBT community may only make up a small percentage of the population, but they’re organized and vocal and can garner a lot of support. And let’s not forget that many LGBT consumers have lots of disposable income, something very desirable to brands. 

Of course there will always be those consumers who take offense and call for a boycott, so brands do risk losing some customers. However, in many cases, companies gain new customers due to the attention a campaign receives and brands also gain stronger brand support from existing customers.

I think it’s smart for companies/brands to support the LGBT community and find creative and fun ways to celebrate Pride, such as Oreo did. Sure, there will always be some haters who disagree, but most people rally around companies/brands who take a stand in support of the LGBT community. Hats off to Oreo for it’s Pride posts and support of the LGBT community! 

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