Subaru Case Study - The Arthur Page Society

Two days later, Ford announced plans to promote all eight automotive brands in
corporate ads to run in gay media, as a sign of Ford’s long-standing support for the
communities. 232 Ford’s VP of Corporate HR, Joe Laymon, professed, “It is my hope that this will
remove any ambiguity about Ford’s desire to advertise to all important audiences and put this
particular issue behind us.” 233 Ford’s announcement was met with fervent support from meeting
attendees such as Neil Giuliano, President of GLAAD: “Ford did the right thing here, both for its
brand and for its bottom line.” 234
Upon hearing about Ford’s change of mind, Rev. Wildmon threatened to reinstate the
boycott, 235 claiming that Ford had dishonored its November 2005 agreement. 236 Rev. Wildmon
drafted a letter to Chairman Bill Ford, signed by members of 40 d self-labeled “pro-family”
organizations, and requested that Ford respond to the groups’ demands by January 20, 2006; 237
upon receiving no answer, the boycott was reinstated on March 13, 2006. 238
One month later, AFA issued a media release claiming that the boycott was proving
successful, as Ford’s stock price had dropped and sales declined. 239 Rev. Wildmon repeated
sentiment of AFA’s success again in seven media releases issued between September 2006 240
and January 2008. 241 Ford labeled Rev. Wildmon’s claims as false, 242 but the company did not
issue media releases of its own to address the boycott. On March 10, 2008, Rev. Wildmon
announced the boycott would be “suspended,” due to the success of AFA’s negative impact on
Ford’s sales (see Appendix VI). 243 AFA has not released statements about the Ford boycott since
that date.
CONTRASTING SUBARU AND FORD MOTOR COMPANY
Both Subaru and Ford Motor Co. have had meaningful relationships with their gay and
lesbian stakeholders for 14 years – significantly longer than all other automotive companies –
and continue to strengthen these relationships today. It is precisely because of these strong
integrated marketing communication-anchored relationships, which have run in parallel to sales
increases for both, that the two automotive companies were examined in this case study.
However, Subaru and Ford Motor Co. have communicated with and demonstrated their support
of the communities using diverse communication tactics – and faced different repercussions as a
result.
When Subaru sponsored the Rainbow Card and Ford created GLOBE in 1995, public
opinion of gay men and lesbians was mixed: 50% of the U.S. population stated that
homosexuality should not be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle, and respondents were
evenly split on whether homosexual activities between consenting adults should be legal. 244
While companies such as IKEA, AT&T, Mazda, and John Hancock received various forms of
consumer backlash for their marketing efforts, including threats of violence, it was not until
nearly one decade later that Ford was boycotted by AFA. Subaru, however, has never been on
the receiving end of a boycott and has received extremely minimal backlash. 245
To understand why Ford was the target of a boycott while Subaru – with an equally long
and diverse history of reaching out to gays and lesbians – was not, four factors should be
d 
Eighteen of the 40 signatories joined the AFA boycott.
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