Pink Banana Media & LGBTBrandVoice.com

Community Marketing and their team ( Tom Roth and David Paisley ) held yet another successful all-day series of workshops, panels and seminars, helping to educate companies as to the "how's and why's" of marketing to the GLBT community, in this case specifically for the travel market. The turnout, despite the recession, was very good and incredibly, almost everyone stayed until the very end where myself, Thomas Boemke s and Serge Gojkovich spoke on GLBT online marketing in terms of more advanced social network marketing. The presentations during the day came from an incredible roster of speakers, including Martine Ainsworth Wells of Visit London , and Andrew Stokes of Marketing Manchester .  In addition, we got to hear from Andrew Roberts of Amro Worldwide Travel on the success and increased PR achieved through the "So Gay" campaign they did in 2008, together with Ian Johnson of Out Now Consultin g. Attendees included tourism folks from Sweden, Londo...

Updated presentation adds more detail on “touch points” and the power of influential contacts in your network Our company, Pink Banana Media, is taking our successful seminar series we’ve done in various cities over the past few years and bringing it online throughout 2009. Our presentation has changed these past few years, focusing on the various aspects of Social Network Marketing and helping to define just what is Web 2.0 and how does it fit in with a company’s overall marketing mix.  There are so many perceived options, including blogs, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and more, and our goal has been to both demistify this environment as well as break it down into what is most important for a company today when trying to promote their product or service in this new online frontiers. Key concepts have been “speaking with” your customer base rather than “speaking to.”  This is a big one, and underlies the fundamental shift in marketing overall, as the goal is now  to “enter into our custom...

New Webinar Series for 2009 Updated presentation adds more detail on “touch points” and the power of influential contacts in your network Be sure to watch for our freshly updated seminar and webinar series for 2009, covering the world of Social Network and Web 2.0 marketing to the GLBT?community. With almost 50% new material, focusing on new topics such as Power Influencers and how to connect with them, as well as expanding on the best Touch Points your company can have when making outreach in this new frontiers, this seminar/webinar series will show you both how to do it all in-house, as well as help bring some new concepts to your overall online marketing mix.... Recession, but no depression: LGBT media organizations are cutting costs, but weathering the economic downturn The current economy’s impact on the media industry has been well documented. In December, for example, Detroit’s newspapers cut home delivery to three days a week, printing smaller editions on the other days. In Ja...

Boston is ground zero for gay rights in the United States thanks to the Massachusetts legalization of gay marriage in May 2004; the GLBT community here is politically and socially active, and continues to grow. The epicenter of activity remains the picturesque South End, which enjoys the reputation of the country's oldest Victorian brick rowhouse district; pretty and distinctly quaint, it houses growing numbers of gays and young families. As real estate prices rose through the early 2000s, however, an increasing segment of the community has moved just south of the city to the burgeoning district of Dorchester. To the north of the Charles River, which wends its way from Boston Harbor westward, lies Cambridge, housing the state's two most famed universities, Harvard and MIT, along with the lesbian-ppopular residential streets of Somerville. Most of the bars and clubs still cluster around the city's popular Theatre District just east of the South End (Popular nights include De...

Just about everyone along the East Coast of the U.S. knows Atlanta is the queer 'Mecca' of the South. Gays and lesbians have flocked to this Southern metropolis over the years in droves - and for good reason.  Atlanta has one of the most progressive and largest gay & lesbian communities in the entire South, excluding Florida.  Anchored by Piedmont Park, north of the city, we start with the Midtown area of Atlanta.  In Midtown, the gay community is spread out all throughout this region, with clusters of bars, restaurants and other gay retailers including Blakes on the Park and Outwrite Books; Ansley Mall, north of Midtown on Piedmont and Monroe with Burkhart's Pub, Brushstrokes, a number of other bars and the famous Cowtippers restaurant halfway between Midtown and Ansley Mall; Cheshire Bridge Road with The Heretic and other bars; Woofs even farther north; east side of Piedmont Park with Big Red Tomato and Red Chair; and the Midtown Promenade with Hoedowns and other bars...