Scott Seitz

Scott Seitz is CEO and majority (90%) owner of dotGAY LLC, a California corporation, and founder and owner of SPI Marketing, a leading LGBT agency with over 14 years of service on behalf of corporate and not-for-profit clients. SPI has planned the strategic entry or supported existing programs targeting gay and lesbian consumers for ABSOLUT Vodka, Diet Pepsi, North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association, LOGO, Aquafina, American and IBM, among other clients.

SPI Marketing has been LGBT agency of record for ABSOLUT since 1996; in 2009 it received a GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Outstanding Advertising award for its print work on behalf of ABSOLUT, considered the leading brand in the U.S. gay market. Scott has been listed in OUT100 and Instinct Men of the Year, and has been awarded recognition by several LGBT service organizations he has supported.

The SPI team, which has been looking for a way to give back to the community, views .gay as a vehicle for social entrepreneurship, with the potential to deliver tangible financial and strategic benefits to the global LGBT community. The team’s vision for .gay is based on 1) channeling two-thirds of the profits from the sale of .gay domain names to non-profit LGBT client organizations, and 2) safeguarding key community domains based on important generic keywords—e.g., lesbian.gay, hotel.gay. PalmSprings.gay, health.gay, marriage.gay and pride.gay—as communal resources to be operated for the mutual benefit of LGBT constituents: the service and non-profit community, business community, advertisers and media, plus a diverse range of individuals and emerging community groups.

A graduate of Michigan State University with a BA in Chemistry and a BS in Packaging Engineering, Scott honed his business, technology and marketing acumen at Kodak and Pepsi, working in a range of disciplines including business-to-business sales, operations, distribution, new product introductions, quality control, reengineering, brand and consumer marketing. Recognizing that maximizing affinity with gay consumers required highly specialized marketing communications strategies, he founded SPI Marketing in 1996.

Active in community service, Scott has served on the Board of Governors of Bread & Roses, a Connecticut AIDS service organization, Stonewall speaker bureau, and is a founding board member of Honoring Our Journey, a men's spiritual group. Active in the First Congregational Church of Norwalk, he has provided expertise to a variety of other community organizations and businesses. Scott lives with his partner of 15 years on the Connecticut coastline.