🌈 Pride in Your Brand
A Brand U Lab Lesson from LGBTQ+ Entrepreneurs
A Brand U Lab Special for Pride Month
Ever wonder what embracing your brand’s authenticity through your culture(s) can teach you about branding?
Short answer: Everything.
Long answer: Let’s talk resilience, reinvention, and rhinestones.
The Art of Showing Up as Yourself
At Brand U Lab, a bold brand starts with bold authenticity. It is Pride Month, and we are spotlighting lessons to be learned from LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs who have turned self-expression into sound business strategy.
Imagine a Queens-based party supply brand. Their tagline? Joy is resistance. They have built a cult following by showing up fully as themselves—colour, sass, sequins and all.
A non-binary Washington Heights baker redesigns their brand’s packaging to include pronouns and affirming notes in every cupcake box. Sales soar. Not because it is trendy, but because it is genuine.
Today, personal identity isn’t just part of the brand story—it is the brand story. And audiences in an AI-saturated world? They’re craving what’s real, rooted, and radical.
A Legacy of Resistance: LGBTQIA+ and Cannabis in NYC
To understand queer branding today, we must honour the history. In New York City, Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ folks have long stood at the intersection of culture-making, resistance, and community care, with cannabis as both a coping mechanism and a creative tool.
During the AIDS crisis, cannabis became a critical remedy for pain, nausea, and anxiety when the medical system failed. In Harlem and Bed-Stuy, underground networks of queer organisers created safe spaces where cannabis was used for healing, celebration, and survival.
Fast forward to now: queer-owned dispensaries, CBD brands, and equity-driven collectives are reclaiming space in the legal market they helped make possible. They’re not just selling flower—they’re designing futures. Brands like these remind us that Pride is not a performative act. It is strategic. It is legacy. And your brand can carry that torch forward. Some brands leading the way include:
CANNACLUSIVE, the inclusive cannabis collective dedicated to marketing and fair representation in cannabis.
Housing Works Cannabis Co., the non-profit organisation fighting homelessness and HIV/AIDS, opened New York State’s first recreational cannabis store and actively supports trans and BIPOC communities.
Each of these brands represents what’s possible when community roots, political purpose, and cultural aesthetics align. They aren’t just in business—they’re building belonging.
QUICK REFERENCE CHECKLIST
A clearly defined brand purpose around inclusivity, community, and diversity
Documented current LGBTQIA+ support through communications and actions
Identified new ways your brand can support LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities
Outlined practical steps for inclusive hiring, partnerships, and storytelling
Aligned social value initiatives with your brand’s long-term impact goals
Planned annual Pride-aligned initiatives that go beyond performative marketing
Created metrics to measure impact on community, customer perception, and brand reputation
Chosen a Pride Icon that reflects your brand’s inclusivity ethos
Developed a brand bio and packaging that clearly narrates your allyship
Standardised a social media presence with inclusive language, tone, and visuals
Committed to ongoing learning and authentic community engagement
Let’s Build Your Pride Persona
Here is a quick quiz to spark your own bold brand energy.
Drop your result in the comments and tell us what it inspires for your brand design, language, or storytelling.
This week, we are offering a free downloadable Brand U Lab worksheet:
Your Brand’s Pride Persona—a one-page mini-guide to help you infuse bold, affirming values into your packaging, bio, social presence, and visual tone. Download the Brand Pride Persona worksheet to create a Pride strategy for your business. Share your filled-out worksheet on IG/Threads and tag @BrandULab #BrandWithPride
Let’s Make Your Brand NYC-Ready
Want more street-smart branding tips + retail gems?
Subscribe to Brand U Lab. We drop weekly insights with a side of sass.
Have a cannabis brand (or idea) worth building? Drop us a line. We love branding convos (especially if snacks are involved).
In NYC: Be Bold. Be Real. Serve Well. If you’re not standing out, you’re just smoke.
Brand U Lab is created on the coastal oak-hickory forest community, ancestral homeland of the Lenape people—the original stewards of this land, who have lived here for thousands of years before European arrival.