Introduction

Ahead of today’s episode, please be aware that the show contains discussions of a sexual nature that may not be suitable for all audiences. If you’re listening around young ears or may be offended by this, please feel free to skip this one.

This is “What Just Happened?,” the podcast that looks at the biggest brand crises of our time, what they meant for organisational strategy and behaviour, and their lasting impact on our approach to crisis communication.

I’m Kate Hartley. And I’m Tamara Littleton. And together, we’ll delve into what happened, why it mattered, and whether it could happen again.

Episode 

Tamara Littleton: Welcome back to What Just Happened, and this episode of the podcast is one that is particularly special to me and Kate, so Kate, what are we talking about today?

Kate Kartley: So it’s Pride Month, or it’s the end of Pride Month. So inevitably this month we’ve been seeing rainbow flags and lanyards everywhere, and there are even, or there were rainbows on the handsets of my local Sainsbury’s.

Although I went there this morning, it’s the end of Pride Month, we speak, and apparently we’ve been usurped. It’s now football month, so Pride Month ended earlier at Sainsbury’s. Anyway, but a lot of brands have been pulling back from Pride campaigns. We thought we’d take a look at that.

TL: And, like I said, this is something that is close to both of our hearts. And if you took your view from the media, you’d think that no one was doing anything for Pride, and everyone is playing it safe and dialling back because they want to avoid backlash, but a few have leaned in, and then inevitably there has been a backlash from some people, so we wanted to look a little bit at the brands who have been brave and stood by their inclusive values.

KH: And also look a little bit about what happens in a backlash, so maybe touch on how to handle it and what it means if you cave in, if you give in to the negative.

TL: So we’ve talked before on this podcast about the backlash to Bud Light, when the brand worked with Dylan Mulvaney, and in our view, how badly the brand handled it, including how little care and safeguarding they showed for Mulvaney, but we won’t go over that one again. You can listen to that previous episode, which goes into more detail, but the campaign that got us thinking about it all this year was HelloFresh, which divided opinions and got a massive amount of coverage for basically a couple of Instagram posts. Kate, can you talk us through it?

KH: So, yeah, thanks for making me explain it to Mara. So, HelloFresh posted an official statement, and that’s in quotes for Pride, that said, we know eating isn’t always a top priority this month, we respect that, but for those of you who are.dot.prepping.dot.we have an extensive lineup of high fibre recipes available at Happy Pride. Now, this is a bit of an if you know you know thing, and I’m not going to go into massive detail, so for any easily offended listeners, you might want to stop listening at this point, but the short version here is referring to gay men prepping for sex.

TL: And it was essentially a conversation for the community within the community, exactly.

KH: And then somebody within that conversation suggested a Pride Month discount code using the phrase bottoms up, and HelloFresh responded, saying, “You ask, we deliver literally with the discount code bottoms up, which I thought was kind of, you know, kind of cute.

TL: That is reactive social media at its best, exactly, and lots of people loved it, saying this is how you do a Pride post. It was bold, it was cheeky, but fun. It was amazing allyship, but of course some people really didn’t like it. And the New York Post, which is a notoriously conservative and anti-LGBTQ+ tabloid, but also known for its gossip columns, they said that HelloFresh should take notes from Bud Light, embracing pride typically precedes a business free fall, and it talked about vulgar sexual innuendos.

KH: And then there was a backlash by some people in the community as well, saying it reduces gay men to being defined by sex, and others, other people were saying this isn’t the only month we have sex, and lots of people said it excluded women and other genders as well, and of course there was a massive backlash from people who just hated it and started posting goodbye fresh.

TL: And I don’t suppose there’s any way of knowing whether those people were actually subscribers, of course, and the media response was largely divided, as you’d expect, so Fox News, Christian Publications, most people on X, The Spectator, they all hated it, but I think we should mention that they all said how shocking and vulgar it was, and that all said no one wants to know about that, but then they all repeated the campaign and what it meant, so make of that what you will.

KH: I think it’s hilarious when the papers do that, and they’re on the slightest side. The Telegraph used to have a bit of a reputation for doing pieces, saying this very, very shocking thing has just happened, particularly if it was a picture of a celebrity.

And just so you can see how shocking it is, we’re reprinting the very, very shocking photo that nobody wants to see and should never have been published. It’s just they just used to all the time. It was hilarious. Yeah.

TL: But a lot of the queer media, lots of people in the community loved it, and it was bold, and it was obviously driven by someone from within the community, or a diverse team coming up with that idea, and it was kind of an inside joke thing, really.

KH: It was fresh, even you could say I thought it was funny, and I thought it was a passing thing, really, that attracted a disproportionate amount of attention in my view, but what was your view, Tamara?

TL: Okay, so full confession time, I got it, and I laughed, and then when I went to the comments, I went through that feeling of wait, did I actually not get the joke, because loads of the commentators were getting furious about dieting during Pride, and how bad that was for body positivity, and that HelloFresh was insinuating they should lose weight, so a lot of the outrage was misplaced, but yes, it was funny, and, and I do love a good, if you know, you know, queer joke, but whatever you think about it, it’s it definitely made HelloFresh part of the pride conversation, and presumably without a big budget being spent, although I suspect the social media team was busy.

KH: I bet they were, and that lack of budget thing has also led some people to have the view that, you know, maybe this was performative, and I think that’s a legitimate thing to look at. So we all know that brands need to do more than just make us laugh or insert themselves to the debate. They need to engage all year round, not just during Pride.

They need to show real commitment, and just to be serious for a minute, especially now when you know our rights are more under threat than ever. In the UK, we’re seeing councils banning pride marches or trying to take down pride flags. We’re even having conversations about rolling back marriage rights, and of course, that’s happening in the US as well.

Trans people are being persecuted and having fundamental basic human rights, like the ability to use a bathroom, taken away, and in the US, of course, the rollback of DEI initiatives is well documented, but the thing is, HelloFresh does do a lot for the LGBTQ+ community, from what I can gather, and it doesn’t necessarily do it with the fanfare of some other brands who just do this during Pride Month, so it starts with it with its employees, and this is something we always say a brand should do, and it does it all year round. So, a couple of things it does, I think, are worth sort of looking at.

So, it has a fresh Pride employee resource group. Well, that’s, you know, perhaps what you’d expect, but it also has initiatives to support queer staff. So, it has a programme to break the queer glass ceiling. It has a system called Just Queer Ears, which is a psychological safety initiative, so employees can share their experiences or escalate any kind of culture concerns within the organisation, and then it supports local community initiatives like the Lesbian Bar Project to support community spaces in the US, which at the moment I think is something that we should applaud.

TL: Definitely. And now we should also say that HelloFresh operates in countries where LGBTQ+ relationships are recognised in law, so it’s relatively easier than for other brands, but it does operate in the US, and as we know, there’s a huge pushback on DEI campaigns there, as there is in other parts of the world, including Europe and the UK. So, do we happen to know what the impact has been on sales?

KH: We don’t, and honestly, I don’t suppose we ever will, because I think a bit like Bud Light sales of HelloFresh were really suffering before this, so it’s going to be very difficult to pick out, you know, what might be caused by that and what be caused by this particular post. So revenue fell 11% in 2025 HelloFresh grew massively during Covid, as you’d expect, but sales have definitely suffered since then, and they’ve already said that they expect to see a fall in revenue of another 6% in 2026 Now that’s mostly driven by manufacturing problems in the US, so customers are down in the US by around 17%.

TL: So, let’s talk about their response. They stuck by that post, and they responded really bravely, and they refused to apologise, and quite frankly, why should they? So, what was the statement that they put out?

KH: So, what they said was, and I’m going to read this out and quote it at HelloFresh. We’re proud to celebrate the diverse communities we serve.

The recent Pride Month post from HelloFresh US was a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek nod to a familiar conversation with the LGBTQ+ community. We stand for home cooking, and we celebrate diversity just as we celebrate global flavours with high protein and fibre. We remain committed to keeping mealtime fun, inclusive, and tailored to everyone’s lifestyle.

TL: And I like that, and I like that they moved it on and talked about celebrating diversity, and they put the post in context, a post which was a nod rather than a campaign, and then also we know that a competitor got in on the act with a bit of brand jacking as well, because a company called Blue Apron mimicked HelloFresh with a post that said, while eating out can be exciting, there’s something to be said for diving head first into a satisfying box at home. Happy Pride to everyone who appreciates a good box.

KH: Sorry, I’ve got the giggles.

TL: I think I’ve got a second career in voiceovers. I really.

KH: Hope no one else is to explain that one, but again, so that’s, I think, also really funny, although obviously derivative at this point, but it still makes me laugh reading it again now.

TL: So, let’s talk about what happens if you’re not brave and. You pull back from your DEI initiatives, because it’s tempting for organisations to pull back if they’re under attack, but it’s not usually the right thing to do, and definitely not what we recommend. There is research that shows that if you pull back on your DEI efforts, you’ll get a backlash from LGBTQ+ consumers.

KH: Yeah, and it’s worth looking at that, I think. So, the Human Rights Foundation has found that LGBTQ+ consumers are moving away from spending with Target, Walmart, and Amazon, those are the top brands who’ve kind of moved away from from these initiatives, and 72% of LGBTQ+ people report buying less for these brands that they see as not supporting diversity.

So, I think it does have an impact the other way as well, and those same consumers have increased their spending with brands that stick to their guns on diversity, so notably Apple, Ben and Jerry’s, and Delta Airlines have all stuck to their DEI initiatives, despite pressure to drop them in the US. So, I think that can be a significant spend. So, in the US, the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce said that LGBTQ people represent more than $1.7 trillion to the US economy, so that’s a, that’s a sizable amount of money.

TL: Definitely not small change at all. So, let’s look at Target, because it’s an interesting one. I think it, it had a massive backlash in 2023 when people objected to its Pride merchandise and clothing lines, and Target scaled back those lines for safety reasons, because there were literally people attacking employees in stores.

KH: Awful.

TL: But of course withdrawing that support has another impact, which is that left-leaning shoppers pulled back their spending with Target when it rolled back its DEI programmes.

KH: And I think I read that the net benefit is about neutral of those two things happening.

TL: Now I know we said that we’re not going to go into Bud Light, and I was on another podcast, but I’m just going to mention it briefly, because Anheuser-Busch, who are the makers of Bud Light, have withdrawn completely from Pride sponsorship after the Bud Light fiasco, and what’s really sad is that other beer brands have too, so particularly in the US, maybe from fear of what happened to Bud Light, but I believe some of them are doing very local things, but steering clear of the big sponsorships.

KH: Yeah, and I think in the US, I think it’s worth looking at the US specifically, because there has been a move to completely neutralise Pride in some parts of the country, which I think is really sad. So I was reading that in Indiana and Tennessee, in the US, for example, there have been moves to rebrand Junior’s Nuclear Family Month, in quotes, and of course, by Nuclear Family, that means specifically a husband, wife, and children, but there are other brands that are really leaning in, and this is where I think we take the hope. So, Levi Strauss is one of them, which is an amazing brand. I think a lot of people will think of Levi’s as a kind of all-American brand in some ways, but it’s also got a really long heritage of supporting LGBTQ+ communities.

TL: I mean, these are like the genes of San Francisco in the 80s, Freddie Mercury and Elton John, and of course the really famous 501 ads, which, although they weren’t queer specifically, they did push some boundaries, and there was the one with Nick Kamen in the laundrette, stripping off and stone washing his jeans, for example.

KH: Yeah, I remember those so well. There were some amazing ads, I think, but in looking at some of the stuff they were actually doing back in 1992 it was Levi’s was offering equal health benefits for gay couples way before it became law to do that.

They supported same-sex marriage, they actively supported people with HIV right back to the early 80s, and then the Levi Strauss Foundation has campaigned against discriminatory policies that target a range of people, including refugees, minority groups, and trans people, and again, that’s pretty brave thing to do in the current climate. I would say so. Levi’s has a Pride collection that draws inspiration from queer biker clubs, and it talks about the fellowship, mutual protection, and defiant joy for LGBTQ+ people, which I love, and the collection kind of pays homage to that spirit, so it’s, it’s developed for the community, from the community, is the way it describes it, and it contributes annually to Outright International, and that’s an LGBTQ+ campaigning organisation, and in the UK it supported the opening of Queer Britain, which was the UK’s first LGBTQ+ museum.

TL: And if you haven’t been, please make sure you go there, it’s absolutely brilliant. So, of course, there’s been some backlash from ultra-conservative commentators who talk about fetish culture.

I presume they just can’t handle all of that leather, but Levi’s has stood firm, and as you say, it’s always done it, and maybe that’s the really important point here, because these are brands who have done more than an annual Pride campaign. They’ve earned the right to promote Pride collections or post a cheeky, no pun intended, Instagram post, because they support the community, and they always have done so. The people who love the brand will know that, and the majority of people who are anti-LGBTQ+ will probably never have bought from them anyway, and will just move on to be outraged by another brand stoked by agitators.

KH: And probably bots as well. And so we’ve said this so many times on the podcast, but it all comes down to the company’s values, doesn’t it? If you’re being attacked for supporting a group of people, but the support for those people, whoever they are, is embedded into your culture.

How can you roll back on that support? You can’t just abandon your employees or your customers, and potentially even your shareholders, but if that support is performative and you only show it for publicity in the way that Bud Light did, for example, then it’s just not worth anything, is it?

It’s nothing substantial there. So, you’re likely to give into pressure, and it’s easier to do that. And long term, I think that will show you up as never really having had any depth of real support.

TL: There’s so much to talk about here. And after the break, we’re going to talk to an amazing expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion about how to be brave and show up for your communities beyond pride, and what to do if you are at the centre of a backlash.

Break

TL: Welcome back. We’re joined by Ashley Alleyne, who is a structural DEI consultant with over 15 years of experience across social media, digital strategy, crisis management, and DEI facilitation.

Ashley is great to see you again. Great to have you with us. And I’m going to jump straight in. I’d love your opinion. What did you think of the HelloFresh post?

Ashley Alleyne: I thought it was funny. I thought it was funny, and I thought it was.

I mean, I thought it was a little corny, which, which it should be. It’s a single, it’s a one-off post about pride, you know. You’re never going to get like the whole gamut of a response in one little post, but it was a great in-joke, so I quite liked it. Obviously, we’re here to have a bigger conversation about it, but I think.

TL: Yeah, end of interview. Great, thank you. Coverage done, but it got it got international media coverage, and do you think the actual response was disproportionate? Then.

AA: Do I think it was disproportionate? Yes.

Do I think that was unexpected? Absolutely not. I think there’s always a level of interrogation and scrutiny when you talk about sex, even in explicit or in implicit ways, and then this is sex and LGBT sex and gay men and gay men who are bottoming, so.

KH: I mean it’s a lot that’s niche.

AA: You layered in a lot of things that certain people might take umbrage with, and so I think the fact that it’s sort of snowballed from one conversation into another conversation was pretty expected, and particularly now I’ve, I’ve sort of grounded this in what the post actually is, but I think it’s also important that we look at the context of what’s happening in the world, and I think now, as, as anti-woke “quote”, and I’m air-quoting this for anybody who can’t see it, as anti-woke sentiment rises, and people feel more emboldened to push back on anything that they deem weird or fringe, or that they don’t think should be in the public space. This thing, all that also adds, I think, to the size of any pushback that you might feel around, around a topic like this.

TL: And I mean, I know what I’m sort of seeing, but are you seeing brands roll back their DEI initiatives generally, and, and you know, supporting Pride, or are they just being a bit quieter about their support?

AA: I’m seeing a bit of a mix, I think. Yes, I am seeing organisations roll back on some of the more public-facing support that they’re offering, almost all communities, but for quite a few of them, I’d say for a solid 60% it’s triggering a better question, you know. I think I’ve seen lots of organisations want to get their houses in order.

There was a long time where, and it’s maybe a bit shrewd to say this, but inclusion was a trend. Inclusion was a thing that marketing companies did, or for their clients. It’s a thing that brands did for themselves, and because people haven’t seen the downsides of it, they just thought it was all possible.

It was like, fine, this is going to be great, but I think having a little bit a less inclusion-friendly environment, I think, pushes people to ask the big questions, like, what happens if this goes wrong? What do I do?

How prepared are we? What happens if people lift the lid on this? Because I think sometimes there’s this two-pronged thing where an inclusive campaign will go out, and then you’ve got detractors who go, you know, who start booing in large volumes, but then you’ve also got people in the community going, “this is performative” or “this isn’t enough, you know, or have you got anything? Are you doing anything internally that matches this?

TL: Yeah, the rainbow washing kind of accusations, and everything exactly.

AA: So, I’ve seen a lot of companies pull back from public activation and go, right, what are we doing? Where are we spending our money?

What situation have we created for the community we actually control, which is our employees? I think that’s a good, solid thing, even if it means that there’s less sparkle. The outside.

KH: I think, when we talked a couple of weeks ago, actually, we talked about you talked about a fair workplace, which I think is a really interesting term. So, this is, as you say, it’s not performative, it’s just bringing fairness into the workplace.

AA: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think this is necessary. Actually, I think times like this refine people, and they show people that when you advocate or platform for a marginalised group, you experience a level of the discrimination that they experience.

If you put a queer couple on your campaign, if you put a trans person in your campaign, you will start to experience homophobia and transphobia, and that is kryptonite to performative behaviour, and it means that you can’t just go, oh yeah, we’re for the community. You actually have to understand EDI and inclusion can’t just be a way of thinking, it needs to be a way of working. So, what happens when we get this inevitable backlash? Well, you know, what responses do we have, what protocols do we use, and that’s when inclusion is baked into how your business works, and that’s the sort of thing that I think marginalised communities really respond to.

KH: That’s a real light bulb moment for me, that actually, that actually you’re just asking organisations to experience some of what the communities experience themselves, and if they can’t handle it, why on earth are they pretending to be for the community, that’s yeah, that’s brilliant.

AA: Exactly, because that’s where the rubber meets the road. I think everybody can throw a pride flag on their campaign, but if you watch, I think if queer people, if LGBTQIA+ people watch a company experience what they’ve experienced during their lives, and the company goes, “No, actually, diversity is a market reality, it’s a global reality, and we are not a straight people business. We are an everybody business, and LGBTQ people are part of that. Everybody, then you go, ‘Aha, they get it.

You know, and that breeds safety. I think that breeds like to get a bit sort of brand. Can I. Can I say, brand-wanky?

KH: Yeah, go for it. I mean, we’ve talked about bottoms, right? I think we’re fine boxes.

AA: But it is. I think that’s the sort of stuff that raises trust, that raises brand recognition, that raises commitment, dedication. It raises your profile as an employer brand, because if I saw that from the outside, that becomes a place that I’m interested in working, or I feel like I might be safe working.

KH: Yeah, and that brings us on, I guess, to the next question. I think I know the answer to this, but you’re going to see a backlash if you, if you run a campaign, a campaign – it was a post, wasn’t it? But you know, if you run, if you get involved in this conversation, there’s going to be a backlash, as you said.

Is there ever any justification for apologising for upsetting people? I think about the what Bud Light did, and we did a whole other podcast on Bud Light. When Tamara and I have absolutely no support for Bud Light, Bud Light’s response on this, I would say, but is there ever a justification for apologising? Do you think, or rolling back?

AA: This was a good question, and I sat with this question for like 40 minutes yesterday, because it was good. It was like, is there ever a justification?

No, my brain was like, is there, but actually I think I put a container on it, which is, if a cursory mention of the reality or existence of another type of person on this planet upsets somebody, no. Don’t apologise for that. Queer, queer people exist, and sometimes they have sex, and that, that is not. I don’t think that’s something that a brand should, should start weeping in the streets over, especially if they were willing to collect your coins on that very same sentence.

KH: Love that. I absolutely love that. Yes, that’s a very neat summary of your 40 minutes ago. Thank you.

TL: Ashley. Going back to something you said before about companies perhaps looking internally about what they’re doing, so I’m just interested to know, like, if you were perhaps a newer brand or a newer company, and you wanted to embed inclusion into your organisation, and maybe doing something like a culture review, and perhaps it hasn’t been great in in the past. Where do you start to do that turnaround? I.

AA: Think the value chain, realising that EDI isn’t an add-on to the end of what you do, it is an operating lens for meeting the modern market. It’s how your business should be organised, from the way that you gather data to the way that you brief each other, to the way that you sign off ideas, to the way that you build crisis protocols, to the way that you vet and validate ideas and the partners that you work with, all of those things help you avoid an EDI crisis, because you’ve been prepared every step, instead of trying to make an end point adjustment. It’s really hard to make a chocolate cake after it’s baked, I.

KH: You clearly have never experienced my cooking.

AA: But I think embedding EDI as a horizontal consideration means that what comes out of the pipe is a bit more inclusive, and it stops any one part of the business having to bear all the weight of it, you know, and also it stops it being so stressful, I think, because I think the paradigm, that paradigm is also a bit of a blocker, you know, people think there’s business and then inclusion that sits separate.

And yeah, it definitely, it’s it’s flour more than icing to go back to a cake metaphor, that will be the last one, I’m sorry, everybody.

KH: That one’s gone straight over my head, so I’ll trust you on our.

TL: I’m just getting hungry now, and I guess on the back of that, you know, obviously employees are a big part of that, and you know, you have to get employees on board with what you’re doing. So, how do you manage sort of division within your employees?

AA: That can be trickier, I think. That can be trickier. One, I’d say being really clear on what the business is and isn’t.

Everybody is entitled to have their views, and no business is telling you to change what you believe, but every business, any business I’ve ever met, is pro-social, and in the same way that a business asks for your most professional self. It also asks for your most pro-social self. And I don’t think businesses should be embarrassed about saying that. Like, it’s great, we welcome everybody on the boat, but don’t shoot holes in the bottom of it.

KH: Yeah.

AA: I think that’s totally fair. But I also think then people need space and time, and typically what the approach that I’ve had is discussing EDI in three different ways, which is the ideological, the operational, and the commercial, because different people will have different levers, and I think it’s sometimes short, sometimes short-sighted, and sometimes ineffective to try to leverage one argument with loads of people who might be standing in different ways in different places, or have different perspectives on the thing, but I think the ideological argument, which is this is the right thing to do, works with some people, with people who agree with you.

The operational argument, which is it’s the easy thing to do, actually, no business is just a business for people like us, and diversity is the nature of the world and nature of this business, and so us being able to navigate that diversity adequately and being able to get the best out of many segments of people is better for the business and better for us. So this is a core competency thing rather than an ideology thing, is is important, but then also the commercial bit of it, which is why would we block ourselves off from other audiences, from other people who we could be meaningful to, for other people that we could help or serve or be something for, and I think that covers sort of the gamut of people who agree with you, people who are largely indifferent, there are loads of those people, there are loads of like, yeah, I’ve got no real problems, but if it makes my job really difficult, because I don’t know any of that stuff, then suddenly the operational argument becomes quite interesting, and then there’s supports and ways that you can sort of leverage that and support people in that, but then the commercial one is sort of your bottom line one, which is like, we’re a business, we’re a business, we want to make money, and being good for as many people as possible, is making money, so.

KH: Best way to make money. Yeah, exactly. Interesting.

And you touched then on people standing in different places. I mean, cultural sensitivities is nice, sort of couch, you know, catch-all phrase, but it is difficult, I guess, when you are an international business and you operate in parts of the world where, for example, it’s illegal to be gay, or same-sex relationships are illegal. This is probably a massive question to ask in the last kind of few minutes, but how do you start to navigate that if you’ve got inclusion embedded in your HR policies, for example? But how do you then, and you know, you run a Pride campaign in the UK and the US, how do you deal with that when you’re in Saudi Arabia, or you know, other parts of the world where perhaps it’s harder.

AA: So, if the other one had me there for 40 minutes, I’m sorry, we did this. This is a big one. So, I would say companies are big in the world, it’s complicated, but I think ultimately it’s about what you do and where your impact is felt, and this is where I think the performative thing comes into play, because if you are only, for example, if you’ve got an LGBT marketing campaign and you can’t air it in certain areas because of the legal or political or social realities of that place, and you pull that back, then no LGBT person in that area is seen supported, represented at all.

But if you take a map of the world, right, and you grade them on legal versus societal realities, is it illegal? People to be queer, here is it frowned upon? Would it result in harm for this community?

And I think that’s the key point for me, harm reduction, and that’s where we start to like unpick the performative nature of this, because one of the campaigns I always talk about is I can’t remember who did it, and I had no idea I was going to reference this, otherwise I would have found all the details, but it was a campaign in America where a very sort of, you know, liberal, well-meaning, quote-unquote, agency made a poster that had massive script in Arabic, and I think it said something to the effect of, you know, if you’re scared of this, you’re the problem, but what it did was it drove hate crime against Muslim people in the area massively. So, this point that people were trying to make about inclusion actually materially harmed the people that they were meant to be standing in allyship or solidarity with. And so, I think, like, that’s where harm reduction really comes into it, and you go, Who is this for?

What might happen with this campaign? And then, how can we support people in other ways? So, even if you’ve got a map of the world and you understand that, okay, in this area, actually, we can launch this LGBT campaign, but in this area, we can’t.

But what else are we doing to materially improve the lives of people in that area, who might need it, is there a fund that we can donate to? Can we take some of the profits that we’ve earned from this campaign in this area and start donating to global funds that work for LGBT rights around the world, and that can only be answered if you don’t think that the poster is the only thing you can do, that’s the sort of thing that can only be manifested if your business sees EDI as a way of working, and there are channels and ways that you can exercise a praxis like that. And I think that’s the key word – it’s praxis, not just performance, but what you’re doing, what the impact of these things are. I think that is the key thought that I always try to admit, which is it’s great, it’s great that you feel this way, but what we doing, and what does that mean for people, and what happens, what practice have we got.

TL: And there’s there’s been obviously so much talk about, and we, we’ve thrown some big questions at you, Ashley, and really appreciate all your answers, and perhaps sort of just going back to HelloFresh, or just sort of thinking about what we’ve discussed. Any closing thoughts from you?

AA: I think do more of it. I think brands, companies, organisations, as these massive mouthpieces in culture, in the way that we navigate the world, they set precedents, and I think it’s quite important that people know that you can’t just switch off queer people, we can’t just decide that we don’t belong in public life anymore, and actually we’re here, and we’ve always been here, and I think again it’s the praxis thing, it’s not just about messaging and signalling, it’s also about safety for LGBT Q people, and knowing that we live in a time that is resilient to our realities, and it doesn’t matter how many people are upset by the fact that we exist in ways that they’re not happy with, we still deserve a place in public, in platform, in space,

Outro

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