Standing Proud with… Graham Nolan
A PR consultant with over 24 years of experience advancing brand conversations, Graham Nolan has never been afraid to lead, mentor, disrupt, and fight for diversity throughout his years of work. Values which have translated meaningfully into his ‘gay job’ – co-founder and co-chair of the US-based advertising organisation for 2SLGBTQ+ people, Do the WeRQ – he’s blazing a trail day in and day out, demonstrating the importance of embracing queer creativity and supporting meaningful representation and support systems as a whole.
Of course, as someone who has been fighting the good fight for so many years, Graham has seen a lot, and has learned even more about what it actually is going to take to increase queer representation in the industry and its marketing efforts. Whether it’s demonstrating the financial value of companies investing in business resource groups and DEI initiatives, or ensuring backlash management must become a part of training regimens for those working in the communications and planning sectors, there’s a lot which can – and must – be done better, especially at a time when many seem all too keen to step away from allyship.
To learn more about the experiences guiding these opinions, what it takes to launch something like Do the WeRQ, and in general, what the next steps must look like for businesses that want to meaningfully support 2SLGBTQ+ communities, LBB’s Jordan Won Neufeldt sat down with Graham for a chat.
LBB> Hi Graham! Please introduce yourself and tell us your story!
Graham> I'm Graham Nolan (he/him). My day job is PR consultant and director for the agency sector, which is something I've done for the entirety of my 24-year career. I've worked at agencies across Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and I currently live in Austin, Texas. These days, I'm looking to help more agency brands tell their own stories.
On the other hand, my 'gay job' is co-chair and co-founder of Do the WeRQ, where I help determine the organisation's strategic direction, and onboard volunteers. Our mission is to elevate 2SLGBTQ+ creativity, representation and share-of-voice in US advertising/marketing. That involves being a communications platform and making sure the discussion of queer representation is had outside of June. The work includes putting out data that sparks new conversations, hosting monthly programming sessions about 2SLGBTQ+ marketing topics, or launching the first-ever US-focused 2SLGBTQ+ mentoring programme for the advertising industry. Basically, we ask ourselves, how do we keep our presence known and relevant in an industry that would happily say, “OK, June is done, time to stop”?
LBB> What has your journey been like? Speaking candidly, have you faced any discrimination along the way, and as a whole, how has the industry evolved since you started?
Graham> I started my first role in 2001, and at the time, I wasn't out to anyone yet. In some ways, I knew I didn't fit in, and people had been very comfortable reminding me of that in my personal life. But I didn't have that first inkling of being out professionally until I was working as part of a joint PR team at Leo Burnett and Starcom. On several different occasions, it was organically mentioned that if there was a queer member on this team, they would be welcome. They didn't look at me when they said it, and there was already queer leadership on the team, so when I finally came out, everyone was really supportive, both professionally and socially.
Unfortunately, it's not always like that. There have been times where I make my identity known, and people just don't know what to do with me. For example, at one agency, I was on the road to a promotion, hitting all my goals, and then a certain man was put in power, and my promotion got put off for an entire year without me ever being told why. The truth is, he didn’t know what to do with me. It may not have necessarily been because I was gay, but my queerness put me outside of what was considered professional representation in the industry. Mind you, this took place at a time before the conversation had shifted from 'Do we have multicultural people at the agency?' to 'What are we doing with the multicultural people that we have here to make sure that they're included?', which is what’s happening now.
Another thing I encountered initially was a fear of PR people leading DEI initiatives. In this case, it wasn't because they were trying to shut me down for being queer, but because there's this stigma that if you tell the PR person anything, they're immediately going to go to the press. In some ways, this was the start of the shift toward real accountability. People were afraid I was going to trumpet about DEI and expose the fact that they didn't actually have the action to back it up.
Something we’re still working on, however, is demonstrating why the industry needs to serve diverse perspectives. It's funny. Marketing is all about trying to get people to leap towards ideas that make them slightly nervous. But there's still a hesitation to do stuff that doesn't look like what people already know. I think that’s because people get too comfortable with the status quo. Look at the celebrity figureheads who speak against the establishment. Many of them end up doing mass marketing commercials 20 years into their careers, selling things like bedding collections with Williams-Sonoma. We really don't have a lot of examples of people who truly act outside of a professional framework and advance in the long run. Even when you think of the executives who are wearing T-shirts in their office and putting up art, it's still usually something like a $20,000 piece of graffiti. It's all about building and brandishing money; they don't know what success is outside of that. To this day, few and far between are the leaders that are like, 'I don't need a million dollar salary, thank you, but I'm still going to make millions for my company'.
LBB> Of course, one of your biggest achievements, and something you mentioned earlier, is launching Do the WeRQ. Tell us about this! How did it get started, and what are you hoping to accomplish?
Graham> When I moved to Austin almost six years ago, I didn't have a day job for the first time in a long time, and I was just talking to everyone I could, in order to better understand the landscape. In the process, I learned that when people had positive industry stories pertaining to DEI, they were about employee resource groups (ERGs). But, even still, they were met with issues of scale. They might get executive attention in May in order to do Pride in June, for example, but that'd be it. There was no sharing of different perspectives, even within that 2SLGBTQ+ demographic, when all the letters can entail incredibly diverse experiences.
The second thing I learned was that almost everyone thought an organisation like Do the WeRQ already existed in the US at that time... but it didn't. At the time, ADCOLOR had existed for about 10 years, as had The 3% Movement for women in advertising, so some people were genuinely convinced they'd been working with a 2SLGBTQ+ equivalent for quite some time. I'd talk to someone and they'd say, "Yeah, of course there's a queer organisation in advertising." Then, they’d think, struggle to find a name, and subsequently point to Out In Tech or Out Professionals, neither of which were in advertising.
Because of both these factors, we were eventually inspired to ask, 'If there was an advertising organisation for 2SLGBTQ+ people, would you be a part of it?'. That was the premise of this. We wanted to create scale, highlight the challenges and celebrations, and then start to put all those things out on a communications platform that would make noise for the other 11 months of the year.
LBB> On a practical level, how does Do the WeRQ approach its aim of increasing queer representation in the industry?
Graham> A lot of what we do and how we operate is done on the community's terms. There's a certain amount of allyship that we're tapping into with this, but we're really trying to speak to the strength of the community. If we do right by ourselves, we can better allow other people to do right by us, so that we can all grow business together.
A big part of this is emphasising the importance of being in the room. While data, Pride and business missteps all prompt people to pay attention and ask what’s going on, it’s hard to get the full picture. Let’s say a brand does a campaign involving a lesbian, but it doesn’t land quite right. Most people’s immediate response is to say, “You can tell there wasn't a lesbian when that was developed.” But again, we don't know. Maybe a lesbian was in the room, but she wasn't out for reasons of her own. Maybe she was met with adversity and not heard. Or, maybe the team loved all of her ideas, but the client wasn’t amenable. So, Do the WeRQ is all about what led up to the final outcome. We know queer people need to be in the room, but now, it's all about what should be happening once we're there, in order to make sure we’re heard in a way that contributes to financial growth.
This is one of the main issues DEI is facing at the moment, in fact. While a lot of the tactics of the past few years made sure we were heard, they weren't necessarily plugging into how that aided the growth of the company. So, lobbyists who are against 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion are now going up to companies asking if they know how much they spent on DEI in a given year. The companies are able to add it all up, but they can't answer how much they made from that. So, the lobbyists go, 'Well, you know how much money you made from direct mail and these campaigns; why do you have numbers for everything but the DEI stuff?'. That's where we now need to innovate, which is why Do the WeRQ is exploring the dynamics of figuring all these things out.
LBB> Speaking of DEI, at a time of rollbacks, what can people do to better push back in favour of diverse demographics like the 2SLGBTQ+ community?
Graham> Put simply, the easiest way to cut through is by pointing to how we’re contributing directly to profit, and there's two primary ways to do this.
The first is to elevate ERGs into business resource groups (BRGs). An ERG, as we've seen in the industry, is a group that represents a certain culture. You’re sanctioned by your company, you’re allowed to get together, and you're able to do your thing, on company time, with certain company resources. It's a 'You can'. A BRG, on the other hand, is more of a 'You must'. It's designed not only to celebrate culture and give visibility to the team and discourse, but to directly impact the policy and practices of the company.
In turn, if anyone comes to your company and goes, ‘We know how much you're spending on DEI, but do you know how much money you're making?’, you’re able to say, "Our BRG consulted on four different client campaigns, and the one which went to market generated this much money," or, "We had an employee forum for 2SLGBTQ+ people; 200 attended, and those who went, when surveyed, said they felt better about the company." In short, you can start building metrics to demonstrate the end result.
The second thing is, companies – and their decision makers – have to start understanding that backlash management is now part of the communications planning process. After all, any company standing for anything could be subject to the backlash machine. We're in this social media era where everyone has the megaphone. Look at Anheuser-Busch and what happened with its Dylan Mulvaney partnership. After the fact, many people said, "Well, if the brand didn't want this issue, it wouldn't have jumped into this space." But, Anheuser-Busch has been involved in queer campaigns and communities for decades. It didn't suddenly get into it, and that perception speaks to the fact that the backlash machine is always ready to hit at a moment's notice.
So, in the process of creating a campaign, you must ask yourself, 'When the haters come for us, if they come for us, what volume of response are we willing to put up with?'. That, and you have to reevaluate your targeting. If the hate is from people who are outside of your target depth, do you even care? Moreover, could the public outrage actually be a success metric, because it actually makes a statement? No campaign is for everyone. We learned when we were five years old that you can't please everyone all the time... and then we try to do that anyway in the industry for some reason. So, that’s the other big thing.
LBB> Looking to the year ahead, what steps do you think the US and its businesses need to take in support of 2SLGBTQ+ communities? What are you hoping to see, and do you think it’s feasible?
Graham> One of my favourite things about the Trump era – and it's probably the only good thing – is that it's becoming much more clear where everyone stands. I don't love division, but I also don't live under the impression that everyone can always be on the same side. So, the first thing I hope to see is that more people become clear on where they stand, which will facilitate a shift from authenticity to integrity. To give you an example, consider those who think the Earth is flat. I genuinely believe they have a lot of authenticity. When they say “we have to question scientific principles” and that “there's more to this universe that we don't understand”, that curiosity and scepticism is very real. But integrity is the act of doing what you say you'll do, and that's where they fall flat. When you ask them to walk you to the end of the Earth, they can't do it.
For the past few years, this has been the case in the advertising industry as well. People genuinely want a better world, but their practices don't match. When Target said it cared about queer people, but proceeded to drop the DEI, it proved that it was never really a part of its core DNA. So, everyone making it clear behaviourally where they stand is very helpful for people that want to invest in this space.
The other thing I want to see is brands using this as an opportunity to figure out where they want to go. Yes, it's a quiet year for policy and action which demonstrate transparency, but brand decision-makers weren't trained on how to manage backlash back in college. They're learning with the rest of us, and they're trying to keep their jobs. If this is the year where people do their strategy work and make sure that their integrity is in place by the time they talk, I would not begrudge that relative quiet for this year. A strategic pause for those brands that aren't ready to be transparent and need to figure it out is actually going to be really important to long-term success. After all, you don't have to build the car while you’re in it. Stop, build the car, and then drive it later.
LBB> Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to fellow 2SGLBTQ+ people in marketing and advertising?
Graham> Over the years, what's become clear to me is that the very act of being ourselves is good for business. We have unique perspectives, and if we are allowed to show up as our true selves, that will not only impact business positively, but bring in new insights. There's so much about queer culture that overlaps with this industry. We create trends and get involved in consumer and social movements. All of these are vital skills for brand organisations to tap into.
Also, if you look at the polls in terms of what percentage of the next generation is 2SLGBTQ+, it's a huge leap. People won't go back in the jar, and in some ways, we're experiencing so much adversity because we are present in such an undeniable way. Our existence is resistance. We counter people's assumptions about what humanity should be. One of my collaborators said something brilliant about this. "You being gay is not about how you're a man that loves a man, or your genitals, which people seem to obsess about. Your queerness is your ability to love on your terms. You create the relationship you create, you love what you want, and you celebrate what you want." Queerness is inherently a creative thing. It's the ability to acknowledge the world you're being handed, but still choose to bring a personal perspective, illuminate your own path, and connect with other people who are similar. Queerness is a strength in this industry, because it's about creativity, and that is what this industry needs to build its bottom line.
