Think “car” and “lesbian,” and chances are, you’ll think “Subaru.” The latest episode of NPR’s Planet Money podcast explains how this came to be and how targeting lesbians “may have helped save the company.” For bonus points, they start and end the episode with a vignette about a lesbian mom.
In “When Subaru Came Out,” Planet Money hosts Stacey Vanek Smith and Noel King tell us that in the early nineties, “Subaru was in trouble.” Their cars were fine, but sales were slumping compared to those of Toyota and Nissan. In doing some market research, a Subaru marketing executive got a hunch that lesbians bought a lot of Subarus, and hired a small Manhattan ad agency focused on gay and lesbian consumers to confirm this.
The agency did so, and convinced the company to launch an advertising campaign. “About two years after this campaign started, Subaru’s sales started growing,” Planet Money says. Eventually, they got Martina Navratilova to be a spokesperson and arranged Subaru product placement on an episode of The L Word. The end result?
By about 2006, Subaru had grown into a very steady success. It wasn’t Toyota. It wasn’t Ford, but its numbers were going up. And when the recession hit, Subaru was the only car company in the U.S. not to lose market share.
Were lesbians alone responsible? Probably not, but listen to the episode and decide for yourself. At the very least, we can say they made a significant contribution to sales (and brand loyalty) at a time when the company needed it. It’s an instructive tale at a time when even a big site like AfterEllen was gutted because the parent company felt AfterEllen’s audience of lesbians and other queer women wasn’t profitable enough.
Today, several other car companies are marketing to the LGBTQ audience. (I’ve worked with Chevy myself as part of their outreach to the LGBTQ community, and happily drive a Chevy Traverse.) Subaru was the first, though, and should always make our hearts rev a little faster because of it.