Intuit’s Pride Month Win

Plus: Lance Armstrong resurfaces amid the Grimace Shake craze

Happy Friday! The Fourth of July weekend approaching means time for celebration and reflection. It also means the end of June, a month that was full of failed Pride marketing campaigns — and the occasional win. But first…

📡ON OUR RADAR

• Lance Armstrong has re-entered the chat just in time for The Tour de France next month. The American former professional road racing cyclist – best known for using performance-enhancing drugs and being stripped of seven Tour de France titles – took to Twitter this week to unironically share his controversial opinions on the topic of fairness in sports. While his resurfacing was not entirely unexpected, the overwhelming hypocrisy of his opinion has made it hard for anyone to hear what he has to say. 
• Despite weeks, months, and years of media and political messaging about the growing prevalence of crime in the United States, the national murder rate is way down for 2023. Murder is down nearly 12 percent in almost 100 cities that have released data for 2023, revealing a huge gap between the narrative and fact.
• Amazon Inspire represents the latest push from an e-commerce powerhouse to capitialize on the creator economy. Livestream shopping, which has taken China by storm over the past three years, is now a growing source of revenue for US content creators. As more and more influencers become known for their digital presence on Amazon, we’re curious to see how other platforms will pursue blending user experiences and paid partnerships budgets.
• To boost anticipation for next month’s premiere, the “Barbie” movie has been steadily launching a stream of head-turning brand campaigns. Most recently, AirBnb stepped in to share that Barbie's Malibu Dream House is now available for rent on their platform. Will Airbnb’s latest experiential marketing campaign be enough to mitigate the overwhelming social media slander that the brand now faces on the regular? Only time (and the numbers) will tell. 

💡ON OUR MINDS: Intuit’s Pride Month Win

• While companies like Target and Budweiser faced backlash from all sides for bungled Pride Month rollouts, companies whose position never wavered have shown what a true corporate ally looks like – during Pride Month and beyond. 
• Intuit was hailed for both its genuine actions and its kind words supporting LGBTQ+ employees. The financial software leader made it possible for trans employees to move cross-country when new legislation in their home state made them feel unsafe, providing coverage for team members who needed to incur travel costs to receive gender-affirming care. 
• Not only did Intuit provide that tangible support – but they dared to talk about it; doing everything from openly answering media inquiries about aforementioned benefits, to hosting a Trans+ Summit where top-tier executives were encouraged to simply listen to transgender voices.
• It’s not that Intuit doesn’t receive the kind of backlash from anti-LGBTQ+ groups that inundated the likes of Target and Budweiser. It’s that they just choose to stand firm anyway – even going so far as to respond to complaining customers with a reiteration of their beliefs.
• Positive coverage around Intuit’s approach to allyship just goes to show that a company’s stance on any issue should be a firm one. In the words of Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi: “Don’t hide who you are and what you stand for.”

🥊QUICK HITS:

In case you missed these reads.

• With an unavoidable swell of absurd TikToks, McDonald’s bizarre Grimace Shake has become the purple-colored, Gen-Z-approved drink of the summer.

• Between the whispering wealth of Succession to… whatever Carrie Bradshaw’s lavish wardrobe is doing in the new season of And Just Like That, the question becomes: do consumers care how the rich are presented? Or, does wealth never go out of style?

• Do you even lift, tech bro? Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s bench-press contest and the still-pending Musk/Zuckerberg smackdown suggest new heights of the tech bro persona.