Target Getting Real

Target had incredible success selling Missoni's new collection on-land and on-line this week. It has been amazing to see how people reacted to the Missoni for Target campaign. "People were literally filling their carts with Missoni items and running toward the register," said Target spokesman Joshua Thomas. "It's unprecedented." But why? Why this crazy follie for this shopping event?

Target is a pure on-land retail business with a good online shopping presence. With the Missoni for Target campaign they have leveraged their brand. People turned their attention to Target. Combining exclusive Italian design with incredible affordable prices makes the perfect shopping storm that every retailer dreams about. Target did it and results were just amazing.

Many marketing factors came together: design, exclusivity, limited availability, social media, longtail, and the most important ingredient: price! It is hard to generate great content to conquer top of mind in the social media arena, but when you have this killer combination of assets, the social media tools are the most powerful weapon that you can use. This has to be a very exciting lesson for all the on-land and on-line retailers: create great content from the heart of their business to conquer their social media space and drive people and sales to their stores.

Companies need to be brave and not be scared about the unexpected boomberangs that social media can generate. Target had an incredible sales success with the Missoni campaign, but their system failed and they were not be able to satisfy it the huge demand that they generated. But from a business perspective, think about how much new business knowledge the Target management team has learned from this campaign and imagine how they will improve the next launch. Target is getting real with their online business to compete against online moguls like Amazon. Not a bad start!

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