Haahahaha.. Gotta hand it to Subaru for this one. Well played!
[curious.com]

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.

LGBT Pride Month is winding down, so let's talk about cars. In the early 1990s, Subaru was a small car company struggling to compete with their much bigger Japanese brothers, Toyota, Nissan and Honda. The one bright spot in the Subaru lineup was the newly released "crossover" 4x4, the Outback. The company decided its best chance of survival was to focus on niche groups that were already attracted to their flagship product. So the marketing team identified four niche markets who liked the rugged and practical Outback: educators, health-care workers, IT professionals, and outdoorsy people. But then they noticed that several US locations were buying the Outback in disproportionate droves: Northampton, Massachusetts and Portland, Oregon. In those areas, the buyer was often a single woman head of the household. Compared to the overall population, single women in those areas were 500% more likely to buy an Outback. Eventually, with the help of focus groups, the Subaru team figured out who these single "head of households" in trendy towns were: lesbians. So they launched a new advertising campaign around this taboo demographic. Their messaging had to be subtle, so they spoke to their target market in code. One ad showed a car with the license plate "XENA LVR" in reference to the popular TV show Xena the Warrior Princess—whose two main female characters were widely assumed to be in an off-screen same-sex relationship. Other ads had double-entendre tag lines, such as "Get out. And stay out." and "It's not a choice. It's the way we're built." That last one ostensibly referred to the fact all Outbacks came with 4WD. Uh huh. Subtle or not, the strategy worked. Subaru regained its footing and today it is the fourth highest-rated car company by customer satisfaction. Pride.
More about this Curio:
Priceonomics: "How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru"