Kmart Corp., Show Your Colors

Following shoppers around the store, two blue-collar guys talk about buying a weed cutter.

Next is two men in suits who try to find a gift. "I know what we can get your dad, how about a chainsaw for cutting up firewood?" The other replies, "But my dad doesn't have a fireplace." The first guy says, "No, but we do..." He puts his arm around him and they walk away.

This may be the first example of a male couple in a commercial (excluding film/TV ads). When the commercial began airing, the press began writing about a new "diversity" campaign from Kmart -- the company vehemently denied that the ad intended to show a gay couple, then the ad disappeared.

"It was not an ad for homosexuals at all. It was just a regular ad," said Mary Lorencz, a Kmart spokeswoman to Marketing News, the American Marketing Association newsletter, and she added that the men had been shown with spouses in earlier ads. She said the commercial prompted "a few calls but wasn't in the hundreds" and they were evenly divided on the idea.

Such denials of intent were common for advertisers into the late 1990s, even if they went so far as to place advertising in gay media. The companies would only say that the outstanding "demographics" a gay magazine had was why they were there, downplaying that the readers were gay. Companies feared media attention of such efforts because it usually brought on attacks from right wing groups.