Digital pet care startup, Supertails.com, has released a new thought-starter campaign, ‘A rainbow logo won’t change that’. It’s intended to be a commentary on how to negotiate rainbow washing by crafting an interesting way to open up conversations internally.
June saw Pride month knocking on doors but Supertails decided to only start this campaign at the end of the month- to address the elephant in the room i.e the need to live Pride 365 days of the year. Keeping the narrative experimental, they interviewed cishet Supertails employees with questions that their Queer colleagues face. But here is the twist- they subverted the questions and what followed were unbelieving laughs, raised brows and ridicule- and the understanding of how, some questions, are the problem. Refusing to do any Pride-themed sales event, the brand took to taking a stand.
Varun Sadana, Co-founder of Supertails comments, “As a pet company, it would have been easy to stay off this conversation and wash our logo with some colors. But we built Supertails to be about doing better. And we cannot do that by being compliant to the norm- so we opened up our platform to asking questions, albeit with a twist.”
To throw more light on to why and how the conversations remain black and white, an interactive workshop by the renowned Queer Rights activist, Priyank Asha Sukanand was conducted after these question-experiments to engage with understandings of effective allyship, the history of Pride and its continuing struggle and how Supertails can contribute year-long. And interestingly, Supertails hasn’t shared any pictures of this workshop on any of their social media platforms. In tandem with their initiative to not rainbow-wash, broadcasting the workshop would go against this very grain.
By targeting their own employees, the brand chooses to boldly set their foundation strong to go beyond ‘inclusivity’ as a buzzword but to really implement a cultural shift towards celebrating differences in a world of homogeneity. Closing on a very relevant insight from Varun Sadana, “We have to be better humans to be even better pet parents.”
