Commercial Closet Association
The Commercial Closet Association was a New York City based non-profit organization, founded in 2001 to provide "training and best practices on the representations of" the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in advertising. It hoped to affect the $1.1 trillion annual worldwide advertising market. Its board announced its closure in 2009 after merging with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
The Association's programs targeted at the business and advertising industries included advertising training, an online Ad Library, Best Practices guidelines, a monthly LGBTQ+ advertising issues column, and the annual Images in Advertising Awards event to honor excellence of LGBTQ+ portrayals in advertising.
The organization targeted marketing and ad agency corporate officers and executives, university students/professors, the media, and consumers, aiming to make future advertising more inclusive and positive by contacting advertising and image creators in order to educate them directly.
Programs
The CCA stated it was not pressure group or advertising watchdog, instead aiming to educate advertisers. Its programs focused on raising industry awareness of the issues of LGBTQ+ stereotypes, homophobia and transphobia in mainstream advertising; some of its efforts were created in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, New York politicians like Thomas Duane, and major advertising agency executives. After the merger, GLAAD received the Ad Library, training resources, online materials, and the company's name.The CCA Ad Library is an online collection of over 4,000 LGBTQ+-themed ads from over 33 countries and hundreds of companies and ad agencies since 1917. It contained "video clips, still photo storyboards, descriptive critiques, and indexing to more than 600 television and print media ad representations," sortable by various statistics and also by overall depiction or message about gayness, "categorized as vague, neutral, positive, or negative." The site includes ratings, consumer feedback, Advertising Best Practices, and other resources.
The Best Practices guidelines outlined how to create respectful ad representations of LGBTQ+ people to be used as part of advertising training.
Each year, the organization seeded 40-50 press stories and conducted worldwide advertising tracking and analysis of LGBTQ+ representations, complete with ratings and visitor feedback.
The CCA published original data reports on LGBTQ+ sponsorship spending, top spending companies, and top earning LGBTQ+ organizations and events.
History
The Commercial Closet Association was founded in 2001 "as a way to track and document .Partnerships and sponsors
CCA is supported through foundation grants, corporate sponsorships, fundraising events, membership, individual donations, and training fees.CCA has or had partnerships with advertising and media industry groups and with the LGBTQ+ organizations in the United States. Ad industry groups included the Association of National Advertisers and the Advertising Educational Foundation. Media included The New York Times, Sirius Satellite Radio, and Adweek. Gay community groups include the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, and also GLAAD, pre-merger.
GLSEN carried a Student Viewing Guide for teachers, and Human Rights Campaign carried the CCA's monthly LGBTQ+ advertising issues column, the Advertising Best Practices, and excerpts from Commercial Closet in the marketing section of WorkNet.
The Images in Advertising Awards were sponsored by ad agencies including Lowe Worldwide, Arnold Worldwide, Interpublic Group, SSH+K, and others.