Video Game Glitches Can't Stop Love in Pony Malta's Pride Campaign

Nearly 10% of the world’s population identify themselves as LGBTQ+. However, even today, being part of this community is criminalized in over 69 countries, where people can’t express their love freely. Therefore Pony Malta, a brand that is committed to encourage diversity, introduces #LoveIsUnstoppable. A campaign whose objective, from a standpoint of inclusion, is to make all expressions of love visible, encouraging people to tell their story through 'bugs' or 'glitches' in video games. 

“Even though glitches, in a video game experience, are considered errors or mistakes, in Pony Malta we want to give them another meaning, thanking game developers because what looks like a mistake, is helping visualise everyday life situations that young people go through. We call out to gaming developers to join our message and continue visualising different expressions of diverse love”, says Pony Malta marketing director in Bavaria, Alejandro Lotta, who announced that the brand has sent a letter to main video game developing companies encouraging them to join the initiative.

“Videogames are one of the main media for young people. This is why, when we found that through bugs we could send an important inclusion and diversity message, showing that 'Love is Unstoppable' even in countries where the LGBTQ+ community is banned, we didn’t think twice to do so,” says Diego Alejandro Muñoz and Juan David Pardo, ECDs at MullenLowe SSP3.

The Non-profit organisation Sentiido joined this initiative reaffirming that, for young people, expressing love freely is part of recognising their identity and free development, knowing that 'only half (54,7%) of LGBTQ+ teenagers in Colombia have come out to at least one of their parents. Of these, only 25,2% received support from them, and 22,2% didn’t' stated Lina Cuellar, director at Sentiido. These numbers prove the importance of normalising expressions of love as something unavoidable for young kids that are part of the community.

On his end, Cristhian Salamanca, leader of the LGBT board in Bogotá, organiser of the Pride LGBTQ+ demonstrations that were held on Sunday, 3rd of July, says: “Every demonstration of private or public entities is a chance to recognize diversity, and enable a space for conversation for our youth that even today don’t feel comfortable or safe to express themselves freely. Videogames are becoming a more relevant space to do so.”

Pony Malta launched this initiative as part of the diversity and inclusion platform All Humans from Bavaria AB InBEV Colombia, looking to educate their own teams and other organisations about these topics, attempting to strengthen equity, representation, and diversity in communication campaigns nationally.