So let's talk about the next two PAAs: Who coined the term pinkwashing?

and Is pinkwashing bad?

These two questions were answered by a Wikipedia entry titled "Pinkwashing (LGBT)" ,and the

aforementioned article titled "Pursuing the pink pound: How big is the UK's LGBT market?"

and another article titled "Pink Dollar Marketing and Queer Representation in Advertising" published

by mediasmarts.ca which is a Canadian not-for-profit organization for digital and media literacy.

According to these three articles,The term Pinkwashing was coined by Sarah Schulman in

her article for The New York Times titled "Israel and Pinkwashing" published in 2011.

and Pinkwashing is when a company makes a concerted public relations effort to appear

gay-friendly in order to gain access to the pink money, but they don't actually genuinely

support LGBTQ rights and some will even willingly act against queer interests

when it's convenient for them.

For example, When R.J.

Reynolds Tobacco Company sought to break into the queer market in San Francisco, their proposed

gay-themed marketing campaign was tellingly referred to in-house as “Project SCUM”.

Well, what can you expect from a Tobacco Company, they literally kill people every day.

But there are tones of companies that have done this, that even include companies generally

considered LGBTQ-friendly like Starbucks, can you believe that?

So the next none-PAA is, Did Starbucks commit pinkwashing?

This Non-PAA is answered by PinkDot Taiwan's official Facebook page, which is an annual

LGBTQ event that started in 2009 started in Singapore and extended to other Asian countries.

and Student Union For marriage Equality's official Facebook page which is an LGBTQ right

student organization in Taiwan.

So here's what happened: In early June 2016.

Starbucks Taiwan launched the six-color rainbow cup, but the promotional copy did not express

any explicit support for LGBTQ rights, only includes implicit words like

"six-color rainbow spectrum" in their copy.

At this point, it's kind of still just in the grey area of pinkwashing, and it appears

most of the people in Taiwan were giving it a pass.

A lot of people thought that for a company operated in an Asian country implicit support

was already progressing.

The PinkDot Taiwan's official Facebook even encourage People to "encourage Starbuck Taiwan

to do more, instead of accusing their semi-pinkwashing behavior" But then on June 16, 2016,

Student Union For marriage Equality's official page release a post, said that they called Starbucks'

customer service asking if their six-color rainbow cup is in support of LGBTQ right,

and here's what the customer service agent reply "Starbucks respects multiculturalism,

but the rainbow design is based on the concept of colorful summer" and denied any connection

between their six-color rainbow cup and LGBTQ issues.

To rule out the possibility that the reply was not due to an ill-trained customer service

agent, PinkDot Taiwan's editor called Starbuck's customer service again, and this time they

posted the whole conversation with the agent as followed: Starbuck first said: “Starbucks

always supports and respects multiculturalism, but the rainbow design of this cup is based

on the concept of colorful summer, not related to LGBTQ."

The Pinkdot keeps on asking "Then why did you choose the "six-color rainbow" instead

of the more common "seven-color rainbow"?"

Then the customer service agent fell into silence.

Since the customer service did not reply, Pinkdot went on and said "Six-color rainbow"

is a cultural symbol often used to support LGBTQ.

We have not seen it used on other occasions, and you were completely unaware of it before

you used it?"

The customer service fell into silence again.

Since the customer service did not reply, Pinkdot went on "So you used a six-color rainbow,

but you said that you do not support LGBTQ?"

The customer service repeated the canned reply “Starbucks always supports and respects

multiculturalism, but the rainbow design of this cup is based on the concept of colorful

summer, not related to LGBTQ."

Pinkdot replied "So Taiwan Starbucks does not support LGBTQ?

Even the Starbucks head office of the United States has publicly expressed its support,

that does not including you?"

The customer service fell into silence again.

Since the customer service did not reply, Pinkdot went on " Don't you think it's exploiting

LGBTQ community to use a symbol that supports LGBTQ to make money

, but refuse to speak up for us?

The customer service then replied: I will pass your opinion to the supervisor, or if

you want to call the head office directly the number is 02-87867799.

In the end, the pinkdot editor asked the customer service to ask their supervisor to call back

as soon as possible, but the call to the head office did not receive any reply.

And when they check Starbucks' post again, they have even rewritten the original copy

that implied their support of LGBTQ to make sure they did not even implicitly support

LGBTQ rights.

Wow, so it is like the "first-degree pinkwashing" from Starbucks!

A company always proclaims to be LGBTQ-friendly.

Hello, everyone! This short video is part of the original WhatPeople Also Ask series, in which I preach

about how to find useful information using Google's People Also Ask feature.

Every week, I make a video focusing on one specific entity with more in-depth content.

You can watch the entire episode using the link in the description or the end card on

the screen.

You can also subscribe if you enjoy my content.

Look forward to seeing you!