June has been dubbed Pride Month as a celebration of members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community. In June of 1969, the Manhattan Stonewall riots were a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States, now commemorated with celebratory and awareness invoking events including parades, workshops, marches, concerts and more.

Gay Pride is an integral part of our past, present and future narrative as a country – making it an important occasion for brands to participate in during June and every other month of the year. According to Gartner’s 2018 LGBTQ Community Survey, 85% of participants agreed that corporations that support LGBTQ equality are more important than ever. Today, brands are eager to participate in and support the Gay Pride Movement by releasing LTOs leading into June and beyond.

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The rainbow striped flag has become a symbol of the LGBTQ community – making the ROYGBIV a recurrent color scheme for pride LTOs. Each color of the flag has a special representation:

Red = Life
Orange = Healing
Yellow = Sunlight
Green = Nature
Indigo = Serenity
Violet = Spirit

According to Gartner’s Consumer Values and Lifestyle Survey (October 2018) the LGBTQ community ranked their top values – pointing to a desire for fairness and personal fulfillment. The top 5 values shared by LGBTQ:

With equality and inclusivity as key values within LGBTQ community, it’s important that a Gay Pride LTO stays true to the reality and concerns of the community. We’ve found that successful Gay Pride LTOs have partnered with notable organizations like Human Rights Campaign, It Gets Better Project, National Center for Transgender Equality, and the Harvey Milk Foundation, donating a portion of profits to the organization’s cause.

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We’ve compiled examples of well executed Gay Pride LTOs across beverage, savory and sweet categories in the slides below.

When most people think of seasonality it’s normally in preparation of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall; but when consumers, more specifically foodies, think of seasonality it is usually in anticipation of pumpkin spice lattes or breast cancer pink cookies. At Symrise we are constantly looking for ways to innovate and that means going beyond the scope of normal. It also means not only looking for inspiration within, but outside of the box — our box being the food and beverage space.

The biggest takeaway from our Seasonality Initiative is about novelty, flavor, functional benefit, association, excitement, and priming. It is also a reflection of our world — weather, time of year, ingredients, locales, cultures, etc. Seasonality can be a good product development tool with the right balance of market curation and experimentation. At the same time, it can be expensive and hard to pull off without a healthy balance of change and stability.

Within this initiative we’ve developed a framework to help our customers develop pipelines of new concepts and flavor ideas for the seasons and major holidays. If you have questions or would like to learn more about our initiative please contact us.

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_{This article has been republished from 06/11/2019.}