Britain's biggest businesses are pulling back on their public support for Pride celebrations, new analysis has revealed.
The trend towards huge brands backing the Pride campaign has started to buck, with companies worried about polarising or alienating their customer base, in turn losing out on profits.
There is no greater example of this than Jaguar's infamous "copy nothing" marketing campaign, which saw huge decreases in sales, up to 97.5 per cent.
British businesses appeared to have learnt from this and are keen to avoid making the same mistake.
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Results from The Guardian's new research, which analysed the customer-facing social media accounts of the top 10 UK companies, paint a telling picture.
Among the British brands were the technology company Arm Holdings, pharmaceutical firms AstraZeneca and GSK, nicotine products company British American Tobacco, HSBC bank, chemicals company Linde, defence and engineering company Rolls-Royce, oil company Shell and food conglomerate Unilever.
Totally in 2023, 52 posts were made on their Facebook, Instagram and X accounts that contained the word "Pride", such as Pride events, Pride months, weeks and weekends, and employee LGBTQ+ networks.
By 2024, this number had dropped a drastic 48 per cent, down to 27.
Britain's biggest businesses are pulling back on their public support for woke pride celebrations, new analysis has revealed
| GETTYBut it kept falling, and by 2025 this fell a further 85 per cent to just four. This is a 92 per cent decline from 2023.
HSBC was the British company most likely to post about Pride on their social media channels, although it too saw a 94 per cent drop in posts regarding the movement.
"A tally of social media posts does not reflect the breadth of our approach," HSBC said in a statement.
AstraZeneca, Shell and Unilever were least likely to post about Pride at all from 2023 to 2025.
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HSBC was the British company most likely to post about Pride on their social media channels, although it too saw a 94 per cent drop in posts regarding the movement
|PA
In the United States, they saw a similar - albeit less dramatic - drop in LGBTQ+ related posts.
Some 39 Pride posts were found on social media accounts belonging to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, among others.
This fell to 21 posts in 2024, a 46 per cent decline, and then 18 in 2025, a total fall of 54 per cent.
Surprisingly, Apple, which is the most likely to post about Pride in the US, saw a 22 per cent increase in LGBTQ+ posts during this time.
The results demonstrate the clear retreat of large businesses from such social politics - although Lush co-founder Mark Constantine thinks otherwise.
"I like being woke," he admitted to the BBC this week, telling those who disagree with his views: "You shouldn't come in my shop."
Simon Blake, chief executive of LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall, said "in a world in which LGBT people are feeling less safe and less welcome in lots of places", it was in the best interest of companies to send "clear signals" of support.
"I absolutely want to ensure that it’s about walking the walk every single day of the year, rather than making a logo rainbow coloured during Pride month," Blake said.
"However, I do also think it’s important that we make sure we reflect flags and other things because it does send the signal."
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