It’s more or less the assumption that when you combine more or less the gays plus their friends, you have a significant growth in business, but so far, the trend has been, you get a minimal boost for a while, then if your own business was going down, it will continue to go down since out of your total patronage, only a small percent either are gay or much less care. Then there’s the unaddressed issue of really providing more than pictures of your potential patrons’ lifestyle. What good is portraying what your own customers might do when you may simply not have their desired products?
A novice CEO perhaps.
What's next - Burger King advertising for gays? Yeah, that's a match.
Reverse it to see how ludicrous this strategy is: If radical straights ran ad agencies - and wanted to increase market share for bath houses by picturing a 'mother, father, and 3 kids' romping around in one - it would be the equivalent. Stupid. It's not a market match - group-think at it's worst.
Not enough gays shop at JC Penney for this approach to make sense. Insulting the 98% of the population that's NOT gay isn't a good business model when it's that 98% that shops at your establishment.