Why GLAAD is going global and why it’s starting in the UK
GLAAD, the US organization for LGBTI representation in media, is going global, investing $1million (€900,000) of its funding into international expansion.
It is starting with the UK but will not have staff in the country immediately – the first full timer working on the project will be in their New York office for now.
Even before the formal announcement today (1 October), gossip had been spreading among LGBTI campaigners and business people in London.
GSN spoke with Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD’s president, to find out what she is really planning – and, just as interestingly, what she isn’t.
Why are you doing this now?
It is our moral imperative at this stage to expand globally and lock arms with our brother and sister organizations around the world.
Having acceptance move forward in the US and having equality move forward, and in GLAAD’s 30th year, it is the right time.
What international work have you done before?
We have had a very robust Spanish and Latino media arm and we have done work in Chile and Brazil and a number of places.
One of America’s biggest cultural exports is entertainment so we have worked very closely with Hollywood on that and we are going to deepen that relationship from a global perspective as well.
We have been doing quite a lot of work with activists on the ground and that’s where we are putting more resources.
How do you work with those activists?
In response to activists requests we media train them, we share our best practices – how to shape a narrative, what are the best messaging strategies.
We worked with the Irish activists around the popular vote [same-sex marriage referendum], we are talking to Australians now about their popular vote.
We are working with China activists who are replicating GLAAD’s media awards. We have worked with Nigerian activists to help them replicate a cultural study we did in the United States on where hearts and minds are.
The UK media isn’t perfect but it’s more inclusive than most countries. Why start in London?
The UK is a cultural epicenter of the world. Our job is to move culture forward. Being able to have access to the rest of the world through the UK is a really important piece of the work we do.
As we are expanding and you are dipping your toe into an expansion, being in an Anglo-speaking country is really important.
In the US you have a big supporter base. In the UK people many have heard of GLAAD but you don’t have that base yet. How are you going to build it?
So much of our work is done behind the scenes. Brand recognition is important but really our role is as a support for the activists who are doing the work here.
Building a groundswell is not something we have high on the priority list. We are media and messaging experts in the US so bringing that expertise and sharing it is really our role in the UK.
But don’t you need to ensure your campaigns are what the British LGBTI public wants?
I don’t think our role is to shape that narrative. Our role is to give the activists who know or should know their constituency the tools to shape that narrative. It really does come back to sharing our best practices and enabling the activists.
Ireland is a great example. What we did is talk to them about messaging strategy. In the US what had worked really well was talking about love and family and not talking about protections and equality and policy. Policy doesn’t resonate but love does.
They took that and blew it out of the water with their campaign and did a phenomenal job, probably better than we did in the United States with it. Our job was to share and let them adapt that to their culture.
Where we will continue to shape the narrative is through Hollywood and what they export. We are looking much, much closer at that and are hopefully going to be getting to a level where we can produce a report on what they are exporting.
Beyond Hollywood, how do you work with media that didn’t exist when GLAAD started, like gaming or digital?
We are working very closely with the gaming community. There are some that are very progressive and some that are very behind.
On the digital front we are embedded in Silicon Valley and working very closely. We worked with Facebook last year when they expanded their gender options. Google is one of the biggest funders of our global work.
GLAAD is famous for its glitzy media awards, with a-list celebrities onto your red carpet. Can Britain expect some of that glamor?
That’s what everyone says, they all want the UK Media Awards. We don’t have any short-term plans on that. That is a huge undertaking. The Media Awards in New York and LA take six months of hard work but they garner 5billion media impressions so they are a huge platform to get a message out there and we have done that very strategically.
I think if we looked into doing something like that we would really want to do it on a global level. Culturally it is so nuanced that to do it on a global level may be challenging but it is something we are looking at.
Spirit Day is coming up on 15 October (GLAAD’s anti-bullying action day). What are your plans for that?
Because it’s a digital campaign, Spirit Day is global by its nature. But we are putting way more emphasis on that. We have translated our tool kit into six different languages.
We know bullying of our LGBT youth is an international problem. By building awareness and wearing purple on Spirit Day it helps to ease that.
What do you want the international LGBTI community to know about GLAAD’s expansion?
What’s really important is we are committed to being a cultural change agent, accelerating acceptance for the LGBT community.
Acceptance is the greatest safeguard for the community – you are safer on the streets, safer in your job, safer in your family life. It’s really important for us to support these organizations and help accelerate acceptance globally.
The post Why GLAAD is going global and why it’s starting in the UK appeared first on Gay Star News.
Tris Reid-Smith
www.gaystarnews.com/article/why-glaad-is-going-global-and-why-its-starting-in-the-uk/
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