<div class="block">Brands like Google and Target have come under fire for their silence and intentional distancing when it comes to Pride month celebrations. Cheddar News senior reporter Michelle Castillo talks about the decision for major corporations to step back from Pride month celebrations amid backlash.</div>

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Brands Face Criticism During Pride

Google which sponsors many pride events throughout the United States. During the month of June had been set to help put on a pride drag show in San Francisco. However, according to C NBC, an internal petition from Christian employees claimed the event violated their religious beliefs. Now, Google has since removed the event from their official listings and told C NBC it was because it did not go through their standard events protocols, but it's not just Google, you have Target, you have Bud Light, you have Starbucks and others. They faced scrutiny about how they've celebrated pride on the other front Disney earlier in May had to backtrack the remove of a documentary called Howard. Now this film focused on Howard Ashman who was a gay man who wrote the majority of song lyrics for the animated The Little Mermaid. Now that movie was set to be removed right before pride month, but the company let it remain on the service after social media users were outraged on the timing, especially considering Disney had just released the live action version of the movie. So companies are definitely noticing the tension on both sides. Not only are they backing away from events or products, they're pulling dollars in promotion. Bloomberg News noted that out of 900 major companies, mentions of Pride Month have declined 40% year over year and inter pride which runs pride events around the world. Also noted that 22% of us events have said that they've declined in their number of sponsorships. And why are companies facing backlash now? Especially as LGBT Q, the Pride Month is almost over, you know, part of it is of course a negative sentiment from some groups. But another is because many of these campaigns are not coming across as authentic. So advertising data platform amplify, told me that they've noticed a steady decline in the number of Pride company Instagram posts specifically in this year and user interactions with these posts have also declined. So this year, it was less than half the number of comments and engagement that Amplify saw in 2021. Another survey from Glad, found that 70% of adults should publicly support and include the LGBT community through quote practices like hiring advertising and sponsorships. But there still isn't that much representation in ads and it's not always appropriate. So glad, recently found out that out of the 400 plus ads from the nation's top 100 ban brands, only 3% featured LGBT Q plus people. I actually spoke to Glad's Director of Communications, Tony Morrison and he said the organization also found using celebrities was one of the most ineffective uses of LGBT Q plus messaging. We're gonna have more from him and other ways companies can effectively support pride coming up soon.