Commercial Closet Association
Encyclopedia
Commercial Closet Association is a New York City
based non-profit organization
, founded in 2001 to educate and influence the $1.1 trillion annual worldwide advertising
market
($128 billion in the US alone) to foster understanding, respect and inclusion of lesbian
, gay
, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT
) people to achieve a more accepting society and successful business results.
The organization is not a pressure group or watchdog
on advertising. It does not attempt to enforce rules or represent that a single "LGBT point of view" exists, given the great diversity
of the LGBT population. It does not seek to embarrass advertisers, organize protests against them or their advertising, or force them to do anything except expand their understanding and awareness of LGBT sensitivity
in all advertising using business rationales.
The organization believes that by reaching the image makers themselves, future advertising will be more inclusive and positive through this education.
Commercial Closet Association educates the business and advertising world through advertising training, an online Ad Library, Best Practices guidelines, a monthly LGBT advertising issues column, and the annual IMAGES IN ADVERTISING AWARDS event to honor excellence of LGBT portrayals in advertising.
The organization raises ad industry awareness of the issues of homophobia and transphobia in mainstream advertising, and has created joint efforts in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers
, the American Association of Advertising Agencies
, as well as New York politicians like Thomas Duane
, and major advertising agency leaders such as Tony Wright, Chairman of Lowe Worldwide
.
The CCA Ad Library on its website is a global online collection of 4,000+ LGBT-themed ads from over 33 countries, including hundreds of companies and ad agencies, going back to 1917. The site includes ratings, consumer
feedback
, Advertising Best Practices, and other resources. The Ad Library is intended to give advertisers and advertising agencies guidance on their work and competitors. The Ad Library has reached over 6 million people, and 100,000 unique visitors monthly. By seeing what competitors have done, it works to provide corporate confidence to pursue more positive and inclusive LGBT representations
.
The Best Practices guidelines outline how to create respectful ad representations of LGBT people and have been presented as part of advertising training to numerous corporations and advertising agencies nationwide, including American Express
, AT&T
, Campbell Soup, Citibank
, IBM
, Hewlett Packard, Kraft Foods
, Miller Brewing
, Motorola
, Whirlpool Corporation, Merrill Lynch
, Yahoo, Google
, Quaker Oats Co., Johnson & Johnson
, Glaxo SmithKline, Toyota, Nationwide Insurance, Prudential Financial
, Arnold Communications and more, as well as universities including Princeton
, Yale
, Columbia
, Dartmouth
, Duke
, and others.
The organization provides media outreach through seeding and fielding 40-50 annual press stories and by conducting worldwide advertising tracking and analysis of LGBT representations, complete with ratings and visitor feedback. News agencies and media outlets that have been reached include CNN
, ABC
, BBC
, VH-1, The New York Times
, The Wall Street Journal
, Business Week, Financial Times
, Newsweek
, USA Today
Adweek
, Adweek
, Hollywood Reporter, and more.
CCA also publishes original data
reports including the Corporate Sponsorship Report, tracking sponsorship support of LGBT organizations, events and the community
.
The Images in Advertising Awards rewards ad agencies and their clients for outstanding LGBT representations in ads each year. It is sponsored by ad agencies including Lowe Worldwide
, Arnold Worldwide
, Interpublic Group, SSH+K, and others.
and ad agency executives, university students/professors, media, and consumers.
and the Advertising Educational Foundation. Media include The New York Times
, Sirius Satellite Radio
, and Adweek
. Gay community groups include the Human Rights Campaign
(HRC), the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the school-oriented Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
GLSEN carries a Student Viewing Guide for teachers, and Human Rights Campaign carries CCA's monthly gay advertising issues column, the Advertising Best Practices and excerpts from Commercial Closet in the marketing section of WorkNet.
-based business journalist Michael Wilke has written about lesbian
and gay advertising issues since 1992 for Inside Media, Advertising Age
(Crain Communications), Adweek
(Nielsen Company), and other publications. He is credited with coining
the term "gay vague" in 1997 while at Advertising Age
. and has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal
, The New York Times
, Associated Press
, and Reuters
; he has appeared on all the US television networks and internationally to talk about the subject. Wilke served as a judge in 2006 for the Association of National Advertisers
Multicultural Excellence Awards, as the New York chapter president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
from 1998–2000, and as co-programmer of the 1998 NLGJA national conference in Las Vegas. He is a 2005 recipient of the Hearst
Professional in Residence Fellowship, was a 2002 Crain Lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism
at Northwestern University
, was honored in 2001 as one of the "OUT 100" by Out (magazine)
and received a 1998 honor at the GLAAD Media Awards
for his journalistic coverage of gay advertising, marketing, and media. His syndicated national column, The Commercial Closet, appears in leading LGBT newspapers and web sites.
magazine business journalist Michael Wilke, who was invited in 1996 by the New York City Gay & Lesbian Film Festival to present a worldwide history of LGBT representations in commercials. Wilke was already known for his work in writing about gay and lesbian matters in advertising. Wilke's video program, called "The Commercial Closet" appeared in 1997, then was widely presented at film festivals internationally, and in 2001 Wilke was funded by broadcast historian Michael Collins, then of Quinnipiac College of Connecticut, to start a full nonprofit organization by the same name The project was assisted by the pro-bono work of New York-based web development firm Mediapolis
and designer Stephen Mack of Gnomist, to develop the first version of CCA's online advertising library and ad ratings system at CommercialCloset.org. Three years later, the name evolved to Commercial Closet Association to indicate that it was an organization and to distinguish from the educational programs it produced.
grants
, corporate sponsorships, fundraising
events, membership, individual donation
s, and training fees.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
based non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
, founded in 2001 to educate and influence the $1.1 trillion annual worldwide advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
market
Market
A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...
($128 billion in the US alone) to foster understanding, respect and inclusion of lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
, gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, bisexual and transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
(LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
) people to achieve a more accepting society and successful business results.
The organization is not a pressure group or watchdog
Watchdog journalism
Watchdog journalism aims to hold accountable public personalities and institutions, whose functions impact social and political life. The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favour of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog...
on advertising. It does not attempt to enforce rules or represent that a single "LGBT point of view" exists, given the great diversity
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
of the LGBT population. It does not seek to embarrass advertisers, organize protests against them or their advertising, or force them to do anything except expand their understanding and awareness of LGBT sensitivity
Sensitivity (human)
The sensitivity or insensitivity of a human, often considered with regard to a particular kind of stimulus, is the strength of the feeling it results in, in comparison with the strength of the stimulus...
in all advertising using business rationales.
The organization believes that by reaching the image makers themselves, future advertising will be more inclusive and positive through this education.
Commercial Closet Association educates the business and advertising world through advertising training, an online Ad Library, Best Practices guidelines, a monthly LGBT advertising issues column, and the annual IMAGES IN ADVERTISING AWARDS event to honor excellence of LGBT portrayals in advertising.
The organization raises ad industry awareness of the issues of homophobia and transphobia in mainstream advertising, and has created joint efforts in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers
Association of National Advertisers
The Association of National Advertisers is a representative body for the marketing community in the United States of America. ANA’s membership includes over 400 companies with 9,000 brands that collectively spend over one hundred billion dollars in marketing communications and advertising....
, the American Association of Advertising Agencies
American Association of Advertising Agencies
The 4A's is an American advertising agency trade association.Founded in 1917, their website states that 4A's membership "produces approximately 80 percent of the total advertising volume placed by agencies nationwide." The association issues annual awards for the best agencies, in different...
, as well as New York politicians like Thomas Duane
Thomas Duane
Thomas K. Duane is an American politician from New York, currently serving in the New York State Senate. He was the nation's first openly HIV-positive person elected to office....
, and major advertising agency leaders such as Tony Wright, Chairman of Lowe Worldwide
Lowe Worldwide
Lowe and Partners is an international advertising agency headquartered in London. The Agency is a unit of the Interpublic Group, one of the world's largest advertising agency holding companies...
.
The CCA Ad Library on its website is a global online collection of 4,000+ LGBT-themed ads from over 33 countries, including hundreds of companies and ad agencies, going back to 1917. The site includes ratings, consumer
Consumer
Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...
feedback
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
, Advertising Best Practices, and other resources. The Ad Library is intended to give advertisers and advertising agencies guidance on their work and competitors. The Ad Library has reached over 6 million people, and 100,000 unique visitors monthly. By seeing what competitors have done, it works to provide corporate confidence to pursue more positive and inclusive LGBT representations
Representations
Representations is an interdisciplinary journal in the humanities published quarterly by the University of California Press. The journals was established in 1983 and is the founding publication of the New Historicism movement of the 1980s. It covers topics including literary, historical, and...
.
The Best Practices guidelines outline how to create respectful ad representations of LGBT people and have been presented as part of advertising training to numerous corporations and advertising agencies nationwide, including American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
, AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
, Campbell Soup, Citibank
Citibank
Citibank, a major international bank, is the consumer banking arm of financial services giant Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, later First National City Bank of New York...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Hewlett Packard, Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods Inc. is an American confectionery, food and beverage conglomerate. It markets many brands in more than 170 countries. 12 of its brands annually earn more than $1 billion worldwide: Cadbury, Jacobs, Kraft, LU, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang...
, Miller Brewing
Miller Brewing
The Miller Brewing Company is an American beer brewing company owned by the United Kingdom-based SABMiller. Its regional headquarters are located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the company has brewing facilities in Albany, Georgia; Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin; Eden, North Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas;...
, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, Whirlpool Corporation, Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
, Yahoo, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, Quaker Oats Co., Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....
, Glaxo SmithKline, Toyota, Nationwide Insurance, Prudential Financial
Prudential Financial
The Prudential Insurance Company of America , also known as Prudential Financial, Inc., is a Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, investment management, and other financial products and services to both retail and institutional customers throughout the...
, Arnold Communications and more, as well as universities including Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Columbia
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Dartmouth
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, Duke
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
, and others.
The organization provides media outreach through seeding and fielding 40-50 annual press stories and by conducting worldwide advertising tracking and analysis of LGBT representations, complete with ratings and visitor feedback. News agencies and media outlets that have been reached include CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, VH-1, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, Business Week, Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
Adweek
Adweek
Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
, Adweek
Adweek
Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
, Hollywood Reporter, and more.
CCA also publishes original data
Data
The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
reports including the Corporate Sponsorship Report, tracking sponsorship support of LGBT organizations, events and the community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
.
The Images in Advertising Awards rewards ad agencies and their clients for outstanding LGBT representations in ads each year. It is sponsored by ad agencies including Lowe Worldwide
Lowe Worldwide
Lowe and Partners is an international advertising agency headquartered in London. The Agency is a unit of the Interpublic Group, one of the world's largest advertising agency holding companies...
, Arnold Worldwide
Arnold Worldwide
Arnold Worldwide is an advertising agency headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The agency has 15 offices in 12 countries, including Amsterdam, Boston, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Milan, New York, Prague, São Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney, Toronto and Washington DC...
, Interpublic Group, SSH+K, and others.
Target audience
The organization caters to four important tiers to achieve its goals: marketingMarketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
and ad agency executives, university students/professors, media, and consumers.
Partnerships
CCA has partnerships with leading advertising industry associations and media, and the largest LGBT organizations in the United States. Ad industry groups include the Association of National AdvertisersAssociation of National Advertisers
The Association of National Advertisers is a representative body for the marketing community in the United States of America. ANA’s membership includes over 400 companies with 9,000 brands that collectively spend over one hundred billion dollars in marketing communications and advertising....
and the Advertising Educational Foundation. Media include The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
, and Adweek
Adweek
Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
. Gay community groups include the Human Rights Campaign
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest LGBT advocacy group and lobbying organization; according to the HRC, it has more than one million members and supporters...
(HRC), the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the school-oriented Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
GLSEN carries a Student Viewing Guide for teachers, and Human Rights Campaign carries CCA's monthly gay advertising issues column, the Advertising Best Practices and excerpts from Commercial Closet in the marketing section of WorkNet.
About CCA's Founder/Executive Director
New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based business journalist Michael Wilke has written about lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
and gay advertising issues since 1992 for Inside Media, Advertising Age
Advertising Age
Advertising Age is a magazine, delivering news, analysis and data on marketing and media. The magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930...
(Crain Communications), Adweek
Adweek
Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
(Nielsen Company), and other publications. He is credited with coining
Coining
Coining may refer to:*Coining , metalworking process*Coining , production of money*Counterfeiting of coins*The creation of a neologism...
the term "gay vague" in 1997 while at Advertising Age
Advertising Age
Advertising Age is a magazine, delivering news, analysis and data on marketing and media. The magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930...
. and has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, and Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
; he has appeared on all the US television networks and internationally to talk about the subject. Wilke served as a judge in 2006 for the Association of National Advertisers
Association of National Advertisers
The Association of National Advertisers is a representative body for the marketing community in the United States of America. ANA’s membership includes over 400 companies with 9,000 brands that collectively spend over one hundred billion dollars in marketing communications and advertising....
Multicultural Excellence Awards, as the New York chapter president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is an American professional association dedicated to unbiased coverage of gay/lesbian issues in the media...
from 1998–2000, and as co-programmer of the 1998 NLGJA national conference in Las Vegas. He is a 2005 recipient of the Hearst
Hearst
Hearst may refer to:People* Amanda Hearst* Garrison Hearst, NFL running back* George Hearst* George Randolph Hearst, Jr.* Hunter Hearst Helmsley, WWE professional wrestler* John Randolph Hearst* Lydia Hearst-Shaw* Michael Hearst* Millicent Hearst...
Professional in Residence Fellowship, was a 2002 Crain Lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism
Medill School of Journalism
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States...
at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, was honored in 2001 as one of the "OUT 100" by Out (magazine)
Out (magazine)
Out is a popular gay and lesbian fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any gay monthly publication in the United States. It carries itself in a similar editorial manner to Details, Esquire, and GQ. Out was published by PlanetOut Inc...
and received a 1998 honor at the GLAAD Media Awards
GLAAD Media Awards
The GLAAD Media Award is an accolade bestowed by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to recognize and honor various branches of the media for their outstanding representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives...
for his journalistic coverage of gay advertising, marketing, and media. His syndicated national column, The Commercial Closet, appears in leading LGBT newspapers and web sites.
About CCA's History
The organization developed out of work by Advertising AgeAdvertising Age
Advertising Age is a magazine, delivering news, analysis and data on marketing and media. The magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930...
magazine business journalist Michael Wilke, who was invited in 1996 by the New York City Gay & Lesbian Film Festival to present a worldwide history of LGBT representations in commercials. Wilke was already known for his work in writing about gay and lesbian matters in advertising. Wilke's video program, called "The Commercial Closet" appeared in 1997, then was widely presented at film festivals internationally, and in 2001 Wilke was funded by broadcast historian Michael Collins, then of Quinnipiac College of Connecticut, to start a full nonprofit organization by the same name The project was assisted by the pro-bono work of New York-based web development firm Mediapolis
Mediapolis (company)
Mediapolis, Inc. is a web engineering company based in New York City. Founded in 1995 the company has built over 300 websites largely utilizing open-source software.Mediapolis owns and operates the DataLounge a popular LGBT Internet Forum.-History:...
and designer Stephen Mack of Gnomist, to develop the first version of CCA's online advertising library and ad ratings system at CommercialCloset.org. Three years later, the name evolved to Commercial Closet Association to indicate that it was an organization and to distinguish from the educational programs it produced.
Funding support
CCA is supported through foundationFoundation (charity)
A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes....
grants
Grant (money)
Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...
, corporate sponsorships, fundraising
Fundraising
Fundraising or fund raising is the process of soliciting and gathering voluntary contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies...
events, membership, individual donation
Donation
A donation is a gift given by physical or legal persons, typically for charitable purposes and/or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including cash, services, new or used goods including clothing, toys, food, and vehicles...
s, and training fees.
External links
- Commercial Closet Association
- Mike Wilke
- Advertising Educational Foundation - CCA Images In Advertising Awards winners
- Association of National Advertisers - "Gays in Commercials: Sales or Sellout?"
- Association of National Advertisers - "Building GLBT Awareness and Inclusion in Mass/ Business-to-Business Advertising"
- GLSEN/Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network - "Commercial Closet Student Viewing Guide"
- Mediapolis
- Gnomist