When Will P&G Finally Air This Tide Commercial With a Gay Couple in the U.S.?
Adweek:
After two decades of supporting its gay employees internally, Procter & Gamble publicly came out in support of gay marriage late last year. The packaged goods giant reiterated that position with a tweet in June celebrating the Supreme Court's decision guaranteeing a nationwide right to same-sex marriage:
The company has been slower, however, to feature gay couples in its advertisingsitting by as Honey Maid, DirecTV, Hallmark and other brands lead the charge in normalizing images of such families in ads. And in fact, P&G appears to have hedged its bets recently when it did finally produce a commercial with a gay couple for Tide laundry detergent.
The spot, which you can see below, was created by Saatchi & Saatchi New York for the North American market, but so far it's aired only in Canada. This delighted P&G's Canadian execs, who told Marketing magazine back in January, after it started airing, that they were excited to get the spot first.
"We're addressing the diversity, the different kinds of families that love and use Tide everywhere in Canada. We want to reflect this in who we talk to and the way we talk to them, so that they feel included in the messaging," said Manon Lapierre, a rep at P&G in Montreal. "In this particular ad, it's a way to talk to gay couples and gay consumers out there. Hopefully they feel we are talking to them directly."