Pride is here, folks! It’s the LGBTQ+ Community’s month! A time to celebrate and assert our identities, honor our history, and struggle by continuing the fight for equality, for corporations, it’s also the best time to secure that pink money by performing allyship! Even crosswalks are in ROY G BIV again.

Establishments are adorned with the colors of the rainbow. In C5, the toothpaste brand Close-Up’s billboards are making rounds on various social media sites for their cleverness: two boys in separate billboards getting closer for a kiss as you drive along the highway.

Now don’t get me wrong. I really believe that we should all be wary of trusting brands about anything, okay? Business is business and the queer community has mad purchasing power. But I also think behind a lot of campaigns that cater to the queer market are actual queer creatives who take advantage of such opportunities to tell queer stories and promote more queer visibility, and this list is for them.

Here are some of our favorite queer ads!   

Skater Girl

I personally have been boycotting McDonald’s, but I’m not gonna lie. This one-minute sapphic love story that promotes their Ride-Thru is cute as hell!

Meme Vice and Mam Pao

Drag has been getting more and more mainstream with Drag Race Philippines which Paolo Ballesteros hosts and, well, Vice Ganda is arguably the most influential celebrity of these times. Add the fact that they’re from long-time noontime rivals It’s Showtime and Eat Bulaga, seeing them together on-screen and in full glam is simply powerful.

“Amoy kita!”

With its charming lead and its clever spin on a phrase that for so long carried a negative connotation for queer kids who aren’t ready to come out yet, this Bench ad is both funny and heartwarming.

Coffee shop crush

I’ve sat across quite a number of crushes in a few coffee shops before so, to me, this one’s embarrassingly relatable. I never had his luck, though. 

Added to cart!

“This one’s a little too cheesy and heavy-handed for my taste,” I thought. I rolled my eyes. “This one’s too determined to make me cry.” 

Spoiler alert: I cried.

Baby gays

Making dresses out of blankets, wigs out of t-shirts, earrings out of clothespins? It’s all too familiar. And when I grew up and found the queer community, I learned that we all somehow did the same thing despite never having seen anyone do that on TV. There’s a future fashion designer and drag superstar among the kids doing these things now, and I’d love for them to see as early as now that they are being celebrated like this. 

UberPool crush

Uber may have left the country, but we who availed their ride-sharing service, UberPool, probably have our own memorable stories about it. Twitter user Aaron Tabangay’s story, however, was immortalized in this ad. I wonder if they ever met again. 

Friend request

Lastly, a personal favorite. See, this is what I mean when I said real queer stories could still be found in ad campaigns. In one minute, this Smart ad was able to capture an experience many queer folks have to live through: compartmentalizing our lives to create a space where we can live as our authentic selves while protecting ourselves from the possible heartbreak of coming out to our loved ones. I still get choked up every time I watch it!

Did we miss anything? What is your favorite queer ad or TVC?