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In this age of individualisation, multiple identities and manifold preferences, segmenting your services is always a smart move. And targeting the Gay Dollar or Pink Pound is particularly clever, given the gay community’s spending power, trend setting aura, and loyalty towards brands that actually acknowlegde their existence. Taking the un-straight path is Danish CBB Mobil, a mobile virtual network operator that’s targeting Denmark’s approximately 250,000 gay consumers with its GAYMobile service (‘a service that’s gay all the way’). Besides telephony, think Village People or ABBA ringtones, and wireless same-sex dating. Nice touch: 25% of profits will be channeled back to the gay community.

Opportunities

Judy Garland ringtones or designer handsets? Sure. But as in many countries the gay population may be too small to sustain large, gay-only businesses, the real substantial added value for large organizations will be found in connecting to truly trend-setting customers, and building a platform to co-create or test truly new design, services, and branding.