Commercial Closet Association

Commercial Closet Association is a New York City based non-profit organization, founded in 2001 to educate and influence the $1.1 trillion annual worldwide advertising market ($128 billion in the US alone) to foster understanding, respect and inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to achieve a more accepting society and successful business results.

The organization is not a pressure group or watchdog on advertising. It does not attempt to enforce rules or represent that a single "LGBT point of view" exists, given the great diversity of the LGBT population. It does not seek to embarrass advertisers, organize protests against them or their advertising, or force them to do anything except expand their understanding and awareness of LGBT sensitivity in all advertising using business rationales.

The organization believes that by reaching the image makers themselves, future advertising will be more inclusive and positive through this education.

Commercial Closet Association educates the business and advertising world through advertising training, an online Ad Library, Best Practices guidelines, a monthly LGBT advertising issues column, and the annual IMAGES IN ADVERTISING AWARDS event to honor excellence of LGBT portrayals in advertising.

The organization raises ad industry awareness of the issues of homophobia and transphobia in mainstream advertising, and has created joint efforts in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, as well as New York politicians like Thomas Duane, and major advertising agency leaders such as Tony Wright, Chairman of Lowe Worldwide.

The CCA Ad Library on its website is a global online collection of 4,000+ LGBT-themed ads from over 33 countries, including hundreds of companies and ad agencies, going back to 1917. The site includes ratings, consumer feedback, Advertising Best Practices, and other resources. The Ad Library is intended to give advertisers and advertising agencies guidance on their work and competitors. The Ad Library has reached over 6 million people, and 100,000 unique visitors monthly. By seeing what competitors have done, it works to provide corporate confidence to pursue more positive and inclusive LGBT representations.

The Best Practices guidelines outline how to create respectful ad representations of LGBT people and have been presented as part of advertising training to numerous corporations and advertising agencies nationwide, including American Express, AT&T, Campbell Soup, Citibank, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Kraft Foods, Miller Brewing, Motorola, Whirlpool Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Yahoo, Google, Quaker Oats Co., Johnson & Johnson, Glaxo SmithKline, Toyota, Nationwide Insurance, Prudential Financial, Arnold Communications and more, as well as universities including Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, and others.

The organization provides media outreach through seeding and fielding 40-50 annual press stories and by conducting worldwide advertising tracking and analysis of LGBT representations, complete with ratings and visitor feedback. News agencies and media outlets that have been reached include CNN, ABC, BBC, VH-1, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Financial Times, Newsweek, USA Today Adweek, Adweek, Hollywood Reporter, and more.

CCA also publishes original data reports including the Corporate Sponsorship Report, tracking sponsorship support of LGBT organizations, events and the community.

The Images in Advertising Awards rewards ad agencies and their clients for outstanding LGBT representations in ads each year. It is sponsored by ad agencies including Lowe Worldwide, Arnold Worldwide, Interpublic Group, SSH+K, and others.