The Elephant Room - Flying the flag for Uber Pride

To mark Pride celebrations this year, Uber teamed up with The Elephant Room to create and launch its own “Many Voices of Pride” campaign across the UK. The campaign goes beyond the familiar six colour symbolic Rainbow flag to celebrate the many sexual orientations and gender identities that make up the LGBTQIA+ community. 

Pride campaigns are often criticised for commercialising an important social and cultural movement. With 2019 marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, we knew that Pride’s purpose ran much deeper than simply overlaying rainbow flags on packaging and products – superficial gestures that brands are often called out for by a community still fighting for equality and their right to be heard.

As a movement that Uber were seeking to associate themselves with, there was a need to find a truthful connection to Pride, its history, its present and its optimistic future. 

Building off the insight that Pride means many things to different people, we created a content series that highlighted the individual experiences of both members of the community and Uber employees. A community-led and culture-first solution, we wanted to surface LGBTQIA+ stories that felt true to real life and experience. As such, the campaign gave a platform to fifteen different gender identities and sexual orientations.

Each interviewee spoke about their association and identification with various LGBTQIA+ flags including: Agender, Asexual, Aromantic, Bisexual, Black Pride, Gay, Gender-fluid, Genderqueer, Intersex, Lesbian, Non-binary, Pansexual, Polysexual, Pride Classical and Transgender.

As firm believers in collaborating with those embedded within the cultures we seek to speak to and represent, The Elephant Room team concepted and created the work alongside film-maker and artist Samuel Douek as well as photographer Arron Dunworth.

Partnering with PinkNews, the stories of Uber’s LGBTQIA+ community will be shared on a dedicated blog page, www.uberpride.co.uk, as well as in the app and across Uber’s social channels for the month of July. The stories will also be featured on more than 100 flag wrapped JUMP bicycles, Uber’s new electric bikes in the capital. 

Giving a platform to celebrate and educate people around the experience of queer communities should run much deeper than glitter and rainbows. We wanted to showcase the reality of queer experience, showcasing differing perspectives to how people self-identify, their experiences both positive and negative. Through this work, we hoped to shine a light not always be exposed by mainstream media and often missed by traditional brand-fronted Pride campaigns.