10 Most LGBT Friendly Brands

In honour of August being Pride month in both Montreal and Vancouver, we thought we’d feature a post in celebration and support of the LGBT community. Diversity and inclusion are the cornerstone of our CSR business mandates. In June, our hometown of Toronto had the honour of hosting the first North American World Pride and we featured a number of LGBT-positive posts like Toronto #WorldPride Month Kicks off with #ProudToPlay, the 10 Most Gay Friendly Countries in the World, the 10 best cities for LGBT 20-Somethings, The It Got Better Docuseries looks at the other side of It Gets Better to inspire LGBT Youth and Marriott and Allstate Celebrate Inclusion with #LoveTravels and #OutHoldingHands Campaigns. Today we are highlighting the 10 most LGBT friendly brands according to YouGov BrandIndex‘s Buzz.

To compile this list, “All 1,400 brands in the YouGov BrandIndex brand universe were measured with the company’s Buzz score, which asks respondents “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” All results were filtered for respondents who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender. Scores from April 1st through June 10th were averaged to create the ranking. Those scores were compared to scores from the same period one year ago to calculate the top movers list.” In the end, each company was assigned a score between 100 and -100, a zero score meaning an equal number of positive and negative feedback. Based on the data collected, the 10 most LGBT friendly brands are:

1. Costco – Score: 27.0
2. Netflix – Score: 22.9
3. Panera Bread – Score: 22.6
4. Trader Joe’s – Score: 21.9
5. YouTube – Score: 21.3
6. Amazon.com – Score: 21.0
7. PBS – Score: 20.4
8. Ace Hardware – Score: 19.8
9. Samsung – Score: 19.7
10. Apple – Score: 19.5

This year’s leading company, Costco, moved up significantly because last year they ranked 14th on the list. Costco has been acknowledged by other bodies, namely the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index where they received a score of 90 out of a possible 100. This score was based on how inclusive they are to LGBT employees, their benefits and their overall treatment. Ace Hardware made it’s debuted on the list this year with its 8th place finish. Also, Apple re-entered the list after not making the top 20 last year.

The biggest moves on the list were by Carnival, Walmart, Exxon, BP, and Abercrombie + Fitch, though none of them were in the top 10 and all still have negative scores. This does highlight that the companies are improving at a fast rate, but they have a long way to go to compete when it comes to public perception.

We take being a good corporate citizen seriously and we’re always happy to highlight companies who share those values. The companies who have earned a spot in the top 10 have worked hard to cultivate a positive public perception when it comes to inclusion and their brand amongst all their consumers.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions  and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.