People don’t only get sick one month out of the year, so it makes sense that the LGBTQ+ community is a little over being courted by pharma only during Pride Month.
A new study by WPP ’s healthcare communications specialist CMI Media Group, conducted in partnership with LGBTQ+ research firm Community Marketing & Insights, shows this cohort is far more complex and varied than it's being treated by marketers.
“For internal purposes, this is really helpful, and all the research and POVs we produce are very helpful for helping our clients understand the business case for being inclusive,” Amy Litt, CMI Media Group’s vice president for communications planning, said in an interview. “It’s not just about, ‘it's a nice thing to do, it’s the right thing to do, everybody else is finally doing it, you should do it too;’ there's a really strong business case.
"So helping our clients understand that there is this huge and incredibly diverse population—any group of people any demographic is not a monolith.
"There is a tremendous amount of diversity and complexity, and intersectional identities within any kind of demographic circle you want to draw around any part of the population. Regardless of that complexity that we are constantly trying to dig into and unpick further and make comprehensible to our clients and their plans.”
The report, which can be requested here, is broken down into three areas: skepticism, representation and whole-self.
Some of the takeaways are more obvious such as the earlier mentioned pride push, but some of the results were surprising even to the team. Of the three age groups—18-34, 35-54 and 55-plus—the youngest group were least likely to be “out” to their HCP (75% replied that they were), while the other two older groups both came in at 87%.
And while HIV and prevention PrEP drugs get a lot of attention, it’s actually mental health that tops concerns among the three groups of Cisgender Lesbian and Bi+ Women, Cisgender Gay and Bi+ Men and Transgender and Nonbinary.
The age divide also comes up at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. For the younger generation, 60% of 18- to 34-year-olds think a rainbow logo is pandering compared to 24% of those 55-plus. But the good news is this actually creates space for companies to go further than just a rainbow flag next to a logo in June.
The report is just the beginning. Liz McShea, group VP of audience intelligence, CMI Media Group, sees this all as an opportunity.
“I see this next iteration to continue this research—let's evaluate what the actual healthcare experience and HCP interactions look like for people in this group. That's really the next step, digging deeper to not just, ‘what do your perceptions of pharma look like?' but ‘what does your actual healthcare experience look like?'
"How are you being treated? How do you feel about the communications with your HCP? What do you wish they had more Information on so that we can even further the education efforts that are made to have in educating the healthcare community to better serve the LGBTQ plus?'”