This piece originally appeared in the July 14, 2010 issue of Advertising Age.

Last week in the heart of Chelsea, in New York City, Joan Rivers got a standing ovation from her adoring gay and lesbian fans after the screening of a documentary about her life, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” The sold-out event at NewFest, New York’s premiere LGBT film festival, attracted a well-educated, professional (and good-looking) crowd of New Yorkers, most of whom were gay, and all of whom are prime targets for many of today’s brands from Heineken to American Express, and yet mainstream sponsors like these two (who, by the way, underwrote the Tribeca Film Festival in April) were nowhere to be found.

NewFest was made possible this year thanks to the generosity, primarily, of the fashion designer Marc Jacobs, with additional sponsorships from Showtime’s “The Real L Word,” Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams, TekServe, Grand Marnier, IFP, The Gem Hotel, Viña Casablanca, Chilean wines Santa Carolina and NYC’s Gay & Lesbian Center, among others. Some of these sponsors are certainly big, mainstream brands, but what is interesting to me is that the top three are either owned by gay men or, in the case of Showtime, do programming specifically oriented to the gay and lesbian community. So I scratch my head, wondering if major brands simply don’t care about advertising to the LGBT community anymore. CONTINUED