Ahead of the London Pride Parade on Saturday, and the wrap up of Pride month, we ask ourselves yet again: Are brands genuinely supporting or profiting off of us?

I’m old enough to remember when Pride was either about fun stuff like leather daddies and Dykes on Bikes, or political stuff like Act Up and Lesbians and Gays support the Miners (ok I was too young for that, but we’ve all seen the film Pride).

But I’m also old enough to remember the corporate pink-washing era too. Another era which arguably has now passed. Whilst in 2018 there were complaints that it had become essentially a moving billboard for corporate sponsors, this year, 75% of Pride events across the UK have seen a decline in corporate sponsorships, with a quarter experiencing funding cuts of more than 50%.

This is against a backdrop of Trump’s crackdown on DEI, which has seen multiple brands roll back their support for LGBTQ+ rights in America, and has no doubt affected things over here too.

But it’s also against a growing cynicism about the often lazy or sanitised ways brands mark Pride Month. Once it no longer became acceptable to just whack a rainbow flag on your logo and call it a day, did some brands just decide it wasn’t worth the hassle anymore?

With this in mind, is it better to do something bland and tokenistic than nothing at all? Let’s find out by diving into the best and worst Pride campaigns of 2025.

Nivea: Be proud in your skin

I don’t want to be too mean about any brand marking pride month, especially in times like these, but… If you asked 100 people to write a pride slogan for Nivea, my guess is that somewhere between 80 and 100 would write ‘Be proud in your skin’. And their ‘limited edition’ pride moisturiser is, presumably, the same as their regular moisturiser, only with a rainbow on the packaging. That’s unless I’ve missed something, and queer people have extra dry skin which require different, more powerful ingredients? In which case, this is a pretty cool idea.

And don’t make the same mistake I did and walk into Savers, flash your LGBTQ+ card and expect a free tin. Turns out, we have to pay like everyone else, which begs the question: What’s the point of this? (It should be mentioned that proceeds go to PFLAG Connects: Communities programme, which is obviously a good thing.)

Lidl: Live, Laugh, Lidl

Now we’re talking. Not many brands find themselves in the rare category of ‘beloved by huns for some reason’ but Lidl are firmly in that camp, sitting comfortably alongside Kylie Minogue Rosé and Prosecco flavour Pasta ‘n’ Sauce.

And Lidl’s experiential bus/stage/lip-sync-battle stage perfectly straddles the line between knowing irony and unabashed fun.

If you’re not familiar with hun culture, think bottomless brunches, reverence for the low brow and Gemma Collins memes.

Or, a crowd of people at Mighty Hoopla chanting ‘Finding it hard to believe, we’re in Lidl’ to the tune of Heaven by DJ Sammy.

And what about that slogan, ‘Live, Laugh, Lidl’, humorously referencing the twee signage loved by Airbnb owners everywhere, putting the brand firmly at the centre of the joke. Hope the copywriter took the rest of the day off after that, they earned it.

Like Katie Price and Kerry Katona performing together at the Northwich Pantomime Production of Cinderella in 2024, it shouldn’t work, but it does.

Converse: Proud to be

Converse has launched its eleventh ‘Proud to Be’ campaign, a campaign name remarkably conceived years before Chat GPT even existed. Their website states ‘Converse have always stood with the proud, the daring and the unapologetic’, adjectives none of which can be said about this campaign. Rainbow laces? A great idea when Paddy Power offered them to Premier League footballers to make a point about the lack of out gay players in 2013, less so when put on an £85 trainer in 2025. It’s a shame for a brand so concerned with unapologetic self-expression to put out something that feels like the opposite.

Diesel: Tom of Finland

Diesel has brought back their collaboration with Tom of Finland, the artist behind some of the most iconic male homoerotica. The in-your-face designs, worn by models cast from the hook-up app Grindr, feel refreshingly bold and fun. A far cry from the sanitised, often vague ‘Love is love’ or ‘Just be you’ wallpaper we so often see from other fashion brands. It gives the impression that Diesel isn’t concerned about making queerness more palatable for straight people, and most importantly, I actually want to buy this stuff. A genderless vest with Tom of Finland prints feels made for people like me, rather than my straight friends and colleagues. Though of course, if they want to buy it, I’d welcome that too, everyone loves an ally with an open mind.

So, what’s the lesson here? Ultimately, all brands that are at least trying to show support for Pride in the current climate should be commended. And more pride flags are always better than less.

It’s just an added bonus if they dig a little deeper, making an effort to understand the audience, offering something either fun, meaningful, sexy or (and here’s a challenge for next year), why not all of the above?