This situation kind of sums up why corporate pandering during Pride month doesn’t really give me the warm and fuzzies.
Rocketmiles apologizes for wishing a “Happy Pride Month”
Hotel booking platform Rocketmiles partners with dozens of airlines, to give people the opportunity to earn bonus airline miles for hotel bookings. One of Rocketmiles’ partners was Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles… well, at least until recently, as flagged by YHBU.
Earlier this month, Rocketmiles sent out an email wishing customers “Happy Pride Month.” For whatever reason, the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles logo was included in this email. My guess is that Rocketmiles sent out this email with the logo for the airline that Rocketmiles customers chose to earn miles with.
Well, I guess someone working at Turkish Airlines really didn’t like that, to the point that Rocketmiles had to send a follow-up email… apologizing to customers for wishing them a happy Pride month. Specifically, the email said the following:
We’d like to apologize for our previous email.
You recently received an email from us that was intended for a different part of our customer base.
Well, that’s not the end of the story. A couple of days after this, Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles was removed as a Rocketmiles partner. The company is claiming the partnership is “temporarily suspended,” though no timeline has been provided for when it will be reinstated.
This is why corporate pandering doesn’t impress me
I get a lot of pitches during Pride month, with PR people from travel brands trying to get me to write about Pride related things. But I’ve gotta be honest, companies changing their logo to a rainbow for a month and sending out an email wishing everyone a happy Pride doesn’t do a whole lot for me.
I think this is the perfect example of why. Okay, Rocketmiles wanted to wish everyone a a happy Pride month, which is great, I guess. A mistake was made, and I can appreciate how sending out Pride emails isn’t part of Turkish Airlines’ corporate strategy.
But it’s also disappointing to me how spineless Rocketmiles is, sending out an apology email for wishing people a happy Pride month. Sure, you weren’t marketing to the right group, but what does it say about a company’s stance when they’re apologizing for sending out a Pride email? Was this about trying to save the partnership with Turkish Airlines, and that was more important than standing up for what the company reportedly stands for?
In the end, Rocketmiles apologized and seemingly lost its partnership with Turkish Airlines anyway. Couldn’t the company have told Turkish Airlines “hey, we screwed up, but we’re not going to apologize for this, so if you want to end your partnership with us, that’s fine?”
Even here in the United States, you see airlines constantly highlighting diversity and showing their “Pride,” but then you also seem them making financial donations to politicians who basically want to just erase the LGBTQ+ community, who support gay conversion therapy, etc.
Now, before I sound curmudgeon, let me just say that what genuinely means a lot to me is the growing acceptance of “our” community. So much progress has been made in the past decade, and I’m grateful for that.
I mean, I feel like it shouldn’t be too much to ask let people live their lives the way they want to, but for a long time that wasn’t the case (and for many people in many areas, it’s still not the case, and there have also been many setbacks). So I don’t take that progress for granted, but I also don’t attribute it to for-profit corporations supporting the community through words but not actions.
Anyway, I’ll be getting off my soapbox now…
Bottom line
Rocketmiles accidentally sent out a “Happy Pride Month” email that included the Turkish Airlines logo. The airline seemingly wasn’t too happy with that, so then Rocketmiles sent out an email apologizing for the first email. Nothing shows how much you support the LGBTQ+ community quite like apologizing for… wishing people a nice month?
What do you make of this Rocketmiles situation?
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