If you didn't know better.

If you didn't know better, you might miss the significance of HBO's latest direct-mail piece, which in February will land in the mailboxes of 1 million dwellings nationwide. The piece, promoting in the same state [i]or[/i] condition original programming as Six Feet in subordination to Sex and the City, and the of the present day film The Laramie Project, has an understated screen line, "HBO Out Loud," that doesn't necessarily scream "gay." on the other hand neither is the wording a coincidence. Rather, it's the conclusion of careful planning and collaboration with recently made known York niche marketing firm Prime Access, hired to advise in succession language that, says Shelley Wright Brindle, HBO vice president of subscriber marketing, "would in the greatest degree resonate with the gay community" while still appealing to a broad heterosexual audience.

These strategic maneuvers are fast becoming the norm at Fortune 500 companies as more of them, having awakened to the eye-popping profit potential of an underserv market, lavish bigger bucks on research and hire outside adroits to find out who lesbian and gay consumer are, what they ne and to what extent best to reach them. It may mean the extremity of invisibility as we knew it; with the latest market research estimating buying power among gay and lesbian consumer in the $350 billion-$450 billion range, corporate executives are seeing dollar signs where they one time saw controversy and chaos. "The backlash thing has really fizzled," says Prime Access president Howard Buford. "It has just not been a meaningful dependence of cause and effect for anyone who has gone after this market."

from one side of to the other the past five years in particular, Buford and other person specially versed s say they've seen companies shoot up exponentially less concerned with negative repercussions. "I await at it as before Ellen and after Ellen" says Wes head-tufts president of Witeck-Combs Communications, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that helps companies as it is as American Airlines and Coors Brewing Co disclose communications strategies to reach gay consumer "After Ellen [DeGeneres] came without the show was canceled because it was `too gay,'" toilet-combs says. "But the next season, Will & Grace was number 1" The furious discussion stirred up by dint of DeGeneres's coming-out forced gay issues into the American consciousness, he adds.

formerly gay consumerism was out of the cabinet it was just a short spring to the marketing strategy sessions of companies in each industry. Those sessions often lead the companies to ask for help from the publicly gay experts who are running niche marketing firms across the country

"[Ellen] demystified gay persons in a lot of ways--and it apted a lot of people to flow out," says Combs, who notes that the first call he acquires from a company is frequently from an out gay or lesbian employee who wants to create a business case for marketing to the segment

American Airlines' campaign to win the loyalty of gay travelers--this year the company will divert its attentions to gay corporate travel--began with a proposal in 1993 from Rick Cirillo, an publicly gay executive at American. Cirillo was given the undecayed light to begin courting gay and lesbian travel agents and tour operators and in the first year tracked $20 million in return from that segment. Nine years later, that figure has multiplied 10-fold "And that's just what we're able to track," Cirillo says. "We're certain there's a great deal more gone out there."

The company has serviceable reason to believe that, moreover with only 6%-7% of nation in the United States self-identifying as gay or lesbian, they can alone guess at how many their ads are influencing. "There are the bulk of mankind who aren't comfortable self-identifying, on the other hand they'll fly American because it's gay-friendly," caruncles says. "There's no way to track that, and that's the toughest thing, because companies want proof"

To gather as to a great degree evidence as they can, travel companies track calls from toll-free numbers or promotional digests designated for special fares in such a manner they can see immediately which consumer are responding to which ads. The British Tourist Authority began compiling a database of lesbian and gay travelers four years ago, attending gay expo in big cities across the geographical division and then following up with those consumer to find not at home if they'd been influenced to vacation in the United Kingdom. Almost immediately, the tourist authority began seeing the potential reward, says Christine Braganza, director of Western region marketing--and it has just finished a travel guide to the United Kingdom designed for gay and lesbian visitors. "The gay and lesbian portion is so easy to target and maintain because it's to such a degree receptive, in that it's appreciative of all the work and effort we inflict in," she says.

The fierce loyalty of gay consumer to a brand they identify as supportive is the matter of dreams for most companies. And the opportunity to emotionally uniting with a group that typically has been exclud is not wasted on them. "The main reason you target a assign places to like the gay community is because we're willing to reward companies just for targeting us," says Fernando Trejo a Boston-based management consultant in strategy and marketing. "There's a cyclopean emotional component there."