Media
Q-NOTES • SEPTEMBER 24.2005
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GE cooks
with
male
couples
As if borrowing a page from the taste
making Fab Five of “Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy,” General Electric has gotten
the gay housekeeping seal of approval for
its high-end GE Monogram line of appli
ances in a new ad.
A real male couple who are home fur
nishings designers, John
Dransfield and Geoffrey
Ross, are featured along
with their black and
white Harlequin Great
Dane, Cooper, at their
summer home in a new
three-page print ad
campaign.
The first page has
them next to the pool and
hot tub in their back yard
with the headline,
“Hamptons beach house.
American abstract expres
sionist art. French and
Italian antiques. So what’s
cooking in the kitchen?”
Then a two-page
spread shows the happy
pair preparing a stir-fry and shortbread
with balsamic zabaglione dessert — sur
rounded by a Monogram stainless steel
stove, refrigerator and dishwasher in their
country-modern kitchen. (Cooper was
elsewhere.)
The ad is running in September issues
of Wine Spectator, Bon Appetit, Saveur,
Gourmet, Architectural Digest, Metropolitan
Home, and other top shelf home maga
zines, However, since gays aren’t specifi
cally the target, no gay media is planned.
The campaign from McCaffery, Ratner,
Gottlieb & Lane in New York, is three years
old and follows the format of featuring vari
ous real couples in outstanding homes
around the country — this is the first time a
same-sex couple appears in the series, and
the first ever from a GE-branded product.
Previous ads in the campaign have fea
tured a widow with her three granddaugh
ters, and another included Donald TVump,
before his successful ride with “The
Apprentice.”
“We didn’t go out to do this” with gay
men, explains Paul Klein, GE’s general
manager for brand and advertising, con
sumer and industrial, based in Louisville,
Ky. “It was a very organic process and it
just made sense.
“We wanted to communicate that
Monogram is the choice for people who
can choose anything,” says Klein. The
brand is targeted at mostly female home-
owners that are “extremely upscale, afflu
ent people in the top two percent to five
percent of the marketplace.” Indeed, the
line includes $ 1,000 food warming drawers
and $30,000 walk-in wine vaults.
John Dransfield and Geoffrey Ross
in the GE Monogram ad.
“'Geoffrey Ross, featured in
the ad, happened to be
friends with an executive at
the ad agertcy, who at dinner
in April spontaneously asked
him and his partner John
Dransfield to consider being
featured. After all, the pair
run a 14-year-old home furnishings design
company, Dransfield & Ross, and their
homes have been featured in magazines
before. “They thought John and 1 would be
perfect for the GE campaign,” says Ross,
“and we were already customers.”
After submitting photographs of their
kitchen for review, which already coinci
dentally included Monogram appliances,
the agency decided to include the men on
one condition — they had to switch out
their non-Monogram dishwasher with a
GE one.
Wondering if GE was
actually going to feature
them in its advertising,
Ross says, “I posed the
question to the ad
agency — is GE cool
with us being a gay cou
ple? He looked at me
with a blank stare. It was
a non-issue.”
The couple and
another house they had
previously was featured
in a m'agazine article
before, but being in the
campaign for GE was
special. Says Ross,
“Being photographed as
a gay couple for House
Beautiful was nice, but
in an ad for one of the
the world felt
in
being included
largest corporations
empowering.”
Siemens and Ariston dso reflect gay men
GE is not alone among appliance man
ufacturers being inclusive in ads. In
Australia back in 1999, Italian manufactur
er Merloni Elettrodomestici featured two
men cooking a pizza together for its
Ariston line of stainless steel ovens that
read, “I live with my best friend and we
have a whippet called Clint. We like break
fast in bed, lazy Sundays and freshly
cooked pizza.” It later adds, “Ariston is
interested in who you are and what you
want. This is a result of Ariston’s ongoing
research into changing needs and lifestyles
for a new tomorrow.”
That ad appeared in Australian maga
zines Elle Cuisine, Australian Home Beautiful,
Australian House & Carden, Marie Claire
Lifestyle and Vogue Living.
Meanwhile, Europe’s largest electron
ics and appliance company, Siemens,
broke a campaign for the gay market in the
May issue of OUT, as a co-op with retailer
Best Buy. Picturing a more middle-class
dishwasher and stove, the headline reads,
“It’s a facelift for your kitchen. (We expect
to sell a lot of these in California.)”
Ironically, Siemens has not yet introduced
the line into gay media in Europe.
Home appliances, both upscale and
midrange, is just the latest ad category rec
ognizing the diversity of the marketplace.
GE’s creative example is a great one to
follow — including gay people in ads nat
urally, as part of the diversity of society.
Not a punch line.