Target – Have you missed the bullseye?
Sunday, December 7th, 2008Your ads are awesome. They define cool. We all want to shop there – who wouldn’t? But does the in-store experience pay off your brand promise? It just dawned on me – I don’t think it does.
When I watch your ads I think – I could get all my gifts, all my fun accents, all my clothes/shoes/jewelry etc. in this, the coolest of places. And that would make me cool – right? Hell it might even make me young and cool. Can’t beat that.
But then I go into the store (and the one nearest me is a new SuperTarget) and it kind of falls flat. Oh the greeting card section is awesome (Hallmark should take note) and I could laugh my head off. And the “notions” are usually pretty cool. But then I head into women’s clothing and lingerie – and dammit – I’m in K Mart. Sorry, but it had to be said. And when I wander into their limited furniture section – I wonder why table joints that meet are a rarity, i.e. we’re not talking top quality here – and it shows. I think cool requires some level of quality.
Now let’s talk service. And we’re still in K Mart. When I try on women’s clothing I have to interrupt the dressing room attendant in her personal conversation and navigate past an explosion of random (recently tried on) garments to fight my way into the hideously lighted and fun house mirrored sterile white cubicles that are guaranteed to make me look like a body that floated up in a polluted lake. Now I ask you – is that cool? I think we’re starting to see a pattern here.
But what surprises me the most is that we’re all buying into what the ads are telling us. Even my own revelation was very recent. I was talking to my partner, a very savvy marketer – and someone who is fooled by nothing. The subject of Target arose and I noticed her eyes glaze over in a happy mist as she contemplated a trip to the great land of “Oz”. And as I sat there watching her, it dawned on me that my own experience does not elicit a similar response. In fact each visit to target has historically found me wondering what I was doing to make me feel as though I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in – you guessed it – K Mart. And now I have the answer – it’s not me – it’s Target and the Kool-Aid that they’ve managed to foist on an unsuspecting public. Oh Target, I’m a little disappointed – but undeniably impressed.