Apple named most gay-friendly brand

Anyone worth the cash they shell out on high-quality journalism like US Weekly knows that Justin Long, the Mac guy in those Apple ads, is dating Drew Barrymore (she was great in E.T., wasn't she?). But is there a little sumthin' sumthin' going on between the Mac guy and the PC guy, John Hodgman?

That's one explanation behind the Prime Access/PlanetOut survey, which says Apple is perceived as one of the most gay-friendly American brands. It's obvious why most brands in the survey scored well. Bravo, Showtime and HBO all have shows with credible and compelling gay characters. Levi's is well-known in the advertising community for producing a different version of a jeans ad to target gay consumers. Subaru creates ads targeted at gay and lesbian consumers. An L.A. Times Op-Ed columnist once missed out on a second date because he took one look at her Subaru Outback and thought she was a lesbian.

But Apple? Aside from selling some cool gadgets and having commercials featuring two men, there's nothing that seems to set Apple aside as a particularly gay-friendly company, although both its headquarters and ad agency are in California, which as of Thursday became known as a pretty gay-friendly state. More than 50% of PlanetOut subscribers and readers and 39% of the gay and lesbian population said they strongly considered the company to be gay-friendly. There must be something in the ads...

... that speaks to gay consumers. Advertising is the top way PlanetOut readers and subscribers determine whether a company is gay-friendly, according to the survey. And 71% of gay and lesbian consumers have a better impression of companies that feature gay imagery in their advertising.

The Apple ads are "meaningful to LGBT people in that they are about non-conformity," said Howard Buford, chief executive of Prime Access, the interactive marketing agency behind the survey. "And that's a core value of the LGBT audience."

The only other tech company to show up in the survey was Samsung, which only 4% of the gay and lesbian population perceived to be gay-friendly, leading the survey to label it gay-unfriendly. Not a good place to be, Samsung. More than two-thirds of gay and lesbian consumers said they are more likely to buy from a company they considered gay-friendly. The buying power of gay Americans is estimated to be around $485 billion, and they are 3.4 times more likely to have household income over $250,000 than the average population.

Lots of companies have jumped in the Subaru, including Southwest Airlines, which devoted a special section of its website to gay travel, and the city of Philadelphia, which last year launched a campaign called "Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay."

Will Apple be next? Will we perhaps see Apple's ads become more explicitly gay-friendly in the future? I'm thinking that after all their battles, maybe the Mac and PC guys will kiss and make up in the end.

-- Alana Semuels

Semuels, a Times staff writer, covers marketing and and the L.A. tech scene.