Pride At Confections: A Story Of Rainbow Heart Cookies, A Social Media Brand & Love Over Hate

Once upon a time, the LGBTQIA+ community was subjected to ample hate… Fast forward to 2021 - the chronicles of bitterness continue, but now it cannot overpower love. This is a modern-day tale of an upcoming local brand, Confections, and how love won over hate with rainbow heart cookies and social media. Here's how Pride at Confections unraveled...

Pride campaigns and creatives by social media brands endorse unity over division, but often bear an outcome different than what was intended, let's explore how Pride At Confections turned out.

The Story

If you stand for something you will have people for you and people against you. But if you stand for nothing you will have nobody for you and nobody against you.

Maurice Saatchi

Pride Month, the universal celebration of every individual's dignity, identity, and sexuality generates copious amounts of love around the world but is also often subjected to tons of hate, and a social media creative by Confections, a small business serving baked goods, featuring the rainbow heart cookies greeting the LGBTQIA+ community has not been indifferent to the dichotomy.

The social media post resulted in plentiful backlash, a significant amount of loss in follower count, a cancellation of a large order due to the post, and shelves full of unsold cookies.

Social media brands have been at the forefront of a hypersensitive environment, and several groups of users have a tendency to resort to digital slurring. The use of derogatory terms in hateful messages against campaigns that feature folks from the LGBTQIA+ community is unfortunately fairly common.

Brands often have to deal with such hate with calculated steps, as further communications can fuel a fire, and more often than not, several brands resort to maintaining silence as a sensible move. But, Confections acknowledged the circumstances, maintained their stance, and informed their followers of the turn of events.

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The good old honest brand communication and affirmation over their support for the LGBTQIA+ community resulted in a turn of events. The small business gained support from various online communities and numerous social media users, and 2.5K new followers, a long line outside their store, and sold out all their baked goods.

The co-owner also mentioned that this instance was first-of-its-kind, never seen before in the eleven years of the business' existence, and it also fostered a substantial amount of goodwill.

The small business also gained a large amount of attention. This story was widely shared and discussed online and crossposted to different platforms. The posts that shared the story on several subreddits (online communities on Reddit) garnered engagement by tens of thousands of users, resulting in an elevated spike in brand awareness.

Moral Of The Story

Brands do not need to be moralistic, or preachy with their brand communications, but they can show support for causes and communities that they genuinely care about, and stick by it. As brands use mass media for promotional purposes, they also have the potential to send forth a message in the interest of the well-being of society.

The instance is also an example of harnessing the hate, positively. More often than not, brands tend to give in to the hate and backout of their stance, even when the intention or the message is not wrong. But supporting the right notion is always helpful in the long run and consumers appreciate honesty and brands that care about the consumers, and not just their profits.