Can you believe it?! It’s July! I can’t. Time flies when you’re having fun and what fun we’ve been having here at MKG Marketing! A ton and I can’t wait to share with you all of our company updates.
Before we get to our company updates, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on the month of June which was Pride Month.* We need to be celebrating the LGBTQ+ community every day, not just in the designated month. That doesn’t mean these aren’t great reflection points to take a step back, look at how far we’ve come, and see the work that still needs to be done to support all of our LGBTQ+ friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. It’s all well and good to change our logos to rainbow colors and post on social media that we stand with the Queer Community, but the actions we take behind the scenes that people aren’t seeing every day are the actions that matter.
The LGBTQ+ community has always struggled, and continues to do so. Their history is rooted in violence.
The first Pride was a riot against years of police brutality. Pride Marches (a.k.a. Pride Parades) and Pride month are celebrated because on June 28th, 1969 a police raid at The Stonewall Inn in New York City triggered a riot and a series of demonstrations for days afterward, led by lesbians and trans women of color.
Those events sparked the beginning of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Unfortunately, the fight for civil rights for all LGBTQ+ people continues. There are high rates of violence against transgender people, especially transgender women of color. 2021 is already a record year for anti-transgender legislation, with 33 US states introducing 144 bills (and counting) restricting and denying basic rights to transgender people, with many bills targeting transgender youth—from restricting access to healthcare, to requiring genital inspections in school sports, and denying trans people the right to use public restrooms.
Knowing where we come from as a country and community, without sugar coating it, ensures we work to do better every day. As a business owner, I can ensure we have policies in place to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in the workplace. I can ensure our benefits speak and work for everyone. For instance, in our website update, we looked at the language we used to make sure things like, "Paternity/Maternity leave", are inclusive so we changed it to "Family Leave". If you have a child join your family, you are given 3 months of paid leave.
Small, cumulative steps like these fuel the momentum towards ensuring all LGBTQ+ folks have the same basic rights as cisgender folks. Individuals influence communities, and communities influence institutions. It is up to us to drive progress.
Our work never ends. Our leadership team is sitting down in the coming weeks to brainstorm what more we can do to support the LGBTQ+ and Black communities. Given we’re all white and cisgender, we’ll be pulling in our employees that these changes would affect most and have them mentor us through implementation. I hope to share more with you in the coming months as we roll this out.
*Written in collaboration with our beloved member of the MKG family & Queer community.
Company update time!
- Congratulations to John Ballard! He is moving from being an SEO Expert to a Digital Marketing Expert. At MKG Marketing, Digital Marketing Experts are T-Shaped Marketers. They know one area, like SEO, really well then they have a solid foundational understanding about the other service lines to support other team members as work fluctuates around the organization. We’re so excited for him!
- Working on a complete website redesign: This was supposed to be a simple copy refresh, but like all simple intentions it turned into a full refresh and I can’t wait to launch it and share it with y’all! We’re SO CLOSE!
- Season 8 is just days away! This is our best season yet as we were able to pull all eight episodes together around a theme which really tells the story of where the marketing and advertising industry are headed and how our guests are already moving in that direction. Be sure to subscribe so you’re ready to binge when all eight drop on July 5th.
See you next month,
Kerry Guard
