Outvertising 2025 opened with a keynote from Darren Styles OBE, Managing Director of Stream Publishing, the home of Attitude magazine, setting the scene for this year’s event, followed by a fireside chat between Darren and comedian and broadcaster Tom Allen.
Attitude’s record year
Styles used his platform to directly challenge the doom-laden narratives surrounding LGBTQ+ publishing. “Attitude is thriving”, he said, adding that “this has been, is still, the biggest and best year in the decade I’ve owned Attitude”.
The numbers backed him up. “Attitude print and online revenue has increased by 16% ”, he said, “bucking the industry trend of decline in the face of AI=driven web traffic optimisation”. Live events have grown by 27% compared with 2020 to 2025, and the Attitude Awards once again achieved “independently-monitored media reach in excess of half a billion”.
He emphasised that success rests on fundamentals. “High quality journalism is the price of entry for a media owner”, he said. “Everything starts and ends with writing that readers will buy, subscribe to and follow, and advertisers will always follow readers.”
Throughout the session, Styles pushed back strongly against the idea that advertisers are fleeing LGBTQIA+ media. “You may have read elsewhere that eight out of ten advertisers have stepped away from LGBTQIA+ media”, he said, but insisted that the evidence at Attitude contradicts this. Even more forcefully, he criticised attempts by some publishers to justify underperformance by suggesting trans rights coverage scares advertisers.
“Taking readers and advertisers for fools”, he warned, “is end of days material”.
Instead, he listed a cross section of brands still investing in Attitude, including Virgin Atlantic, Marks & Spencer, Jaguar, Bentley, Chanel, Garnier and British Airways. “Tell the advertising community that advertisers are on the run from our community, then you scare the horses”, he said. “Show them the opposite, and there is cause for clear heads.”
The dangers of internal division
Styles also addressed what he sees as damaging divisions within the community itself. “Our capacity as a collective for self harm and turning inward is the stuff of legend”, he said. He pointed to ongoing criticism of commercial Pride involvement, recalling years of complaints about “rainbow lanyards, stripy trainers, LGBT sandwiches, clothing lines, branded flags at the front of the parades”.
In several cities, he argued, pushing away corporate partners has resulted not in purer celebrations, but in collapsed events. “What do we have? Non-commercial Pride? No, we have no Pride at all”, he said. “To any advertiser that cacophony is toxic and deeply unattractive.”
His alternative was simple, “if you focus outward and upward”, and stay “resolute but strident, strong but not angry”, the market responds. LGBTQIA+ consumers, he reminded the audience, “statistically have higher levels of disposable income, travel further, are earlier adopters of tech, and critically, they will always support brands that support them.”
Tom Allen brings humour and cultural context
Comedian and broadcaster Tom Allen joined Styles on stage, introduced with a clip from his Marks & Spencer Christmas campaign featuring his mother. Allen joked about the scrutiny placed on festive advertising, describing people who pick apart who is represented, what families look like and what politics might be inferred. “There’s too much nuance that people think is there”, he said”.
Allen said the brand had been “very embracing of me being gay”, adding that the partnership felt “authentic”, a word he admitted he barely understood in an advertising context. He described the comfort of being included in a brand “that is in everybody’s life one way or another”.
Comedy as connection and protest
Reflecting on his upbringing, Allen said he grew up in “a generally kind of homophobic environment” where visible LGBTQIA+ role models were rare. Comedy became his entry point into identity and acceptance. “I realised that that was a way that people could be different and could celebrate the difference”, he said. Figures like Kenneth Williams on Round the Horne were important because “they were talking about having sex with a sailor”, even if audiences “didn’t necessarily understand what was going on”.
Humour, Allen argued, creates connection. “If you have a laugh together, then suddenly you’re connected”, he said. “It’s a protest that can be as important as anything else.”
Styles agreed, saying that most ordinary people “don’t really care who I get married to” and often know the community through mainstream figures such as Graham Norton and Alan Carr. “They’re not really too sure what the fuss is about”, he said.
Allen returned repeatedly to the importance of normalcy and presence. “The more we embed ourselves as queer people in the national psyche”, he said, “the less it can be taken away”. He described representation through advertising, comedy and culture as both “commercial” and “cultural”, a dual aim that strengthens community resilience.
“We’re like M&S sandwiches”, he said. “We’re on everybody’s desk at lunchtime.” Visibility, in that sense, becomes not an exception but an expectation.
