Sender (1999), Ingebretsen (1999), and Bhat et al. (1998) point out that there are advertisers who do use gay and lesbian models to promote directly to the gay and lesbian community, but wish to remain innocuous to heterosexuals. Gay and lesbian advertisers do not actively pursue national recognition (which is essentially to a much larger demographic of heterosexuals) mostly due to fear and criticism. However, some very notable corporations, such as "Sony, Toyota, Microsoft, Levi's, Banana Republic, American Express, Miller, and Absolut now commonly use gay media. Some firms (IKEA, Calvin Klein, Benetton) have gone further into using homosexual imagery in advertising to [appeal to] more general audiences". The gay and lesbian advertisers should be creating ads that appeal to all sexual preferences, even though this may be easier said than done. The gay and lesbian advertisers must go beyond their select audience for ad campaigns targeting gays and lesbians to look at the inclusion, instead of exclusion, of heterosexuals. Sender (1999) suggests that on the heterosexual side, "images which are arousing for lesbians, but which may not have originally been intended for [lesbians], may actually offer greater pleasure than those which are implicitly coded to suggest a lesbian reading". If such is the case for "hot lesbian" advertisements, then there is nothing to say that actual lesbian advertisements might find heterosexuals left wanting something as well from them.
