Target covers its bases with multimedia marketing - Target Stores

Discount Store News, April 1, 1996

Robert Redford. Glamour magazine. National Parks Foundation. "Entertainment Tonight." National Wildlife Federation. Home Improvement." Singer and actress Vanessa Williams. Super Bowl quarterback Joe Montana.

All are prime ingredients of the rich stew of cause marketing, promotions and celebrity endorsements that feed the upscale image Target has nurtured since its inception.

Under the talented hand of John Pellegrene, executive vice president, marketing, Target cooks up a banquet of creative marketing programs that vendor dollars often enrich.

Target is getting ready to announce its fourth annual cause marketing program to raise money for the National Parks Foundation.

This year, Target will shift its focus to refurbishing national monuments from aiding parks environments. Target isn't releasing details of its program, except to say that it will select a new celebrity spokesperson.

Robert Redford, known for his interest in environmental causes, has served for four years as the celebrity spokesman for the parks project.

Last year, Target and its participating vendors, Eureka and Visa, raised almost $l million to aid the National Parks system through its non-profit foundation. For every sale at Target of Eureka vacuum cleaners, the manufacturer donated a portion of the sale price. And for every Target purchase charged on a Visa card during the six-week campaign from Father's Day through the Fourth of July, Visa also donated a percentage of the sale.

For its part, Target promoted the cause marketing with huge signs hanging over each checkout register. In addition, it featured its Greatland private label line of camping equipment at the seasonal area at store entrances and also promoted the National Parks program with signage there.

Target is working now with Visa in a test of a co-branded Target/Visa credit card that will supplement the private label credit card it introduced last year. The co-branded card is currently being test-marketed in Jacksonville and Orlando, Fla., and Indianapolis. Called the Target Rewards Visa, it offers gift certificates as a marketing hook to enhance customer loyalty. The card will grant a 3% rebate to customers on every purchase they make at Target. For purchases elsewhere, the Target co-branded card also offers a 1% rebate.

The rebates take the form of gift certificates redeemable only at Target, so the outlays are the wholesale value of merchandise, rather than cash.

The card caries no annual fee if used three times during the year, and the interest on unpaid balances is 16.2% for those with the best credit histories and 20.2% for all others. That compares with 18% to 21% for the Target card, depending on state usury laws.

We created the Target Rewards Visa card because we wanted to give our customers the option of having a general purpose credit card ... that would complement our Target Guest Card,, said Ralph Salo, Target senior vp, finance.

Target is promoting the card with television ads, direct mail and in-store promotions.

At the same time, it has been involved in putting together a 19-page special advertising section in the April issue of Glamour magazine with various H&BC vendors, such as Pond's and Jergens.

For its part of the bargain, Target ran the first installment of Glamour Simple Style tips featuring the products of participating advertisers in its March lO circular. Those were Chic jeans, Jergens, Pond's, Ban and Panama Jack sun cream.

In-store, Target is also promoting Glamour magazine by putting its logo on Target shopping bags for two weeks in April, said Target spokeswoman Carolyn Brookter. The Glamour thrust is part and parcel of Target's approach in its Target the Family magazine to push apparel by appealing to young, family-oriented women with children, Brookter said.

Target apparel departments are featuring the same Glamour Simple Style imagery used in the circular on fixture-topper signage. In H&BC, balloon signs and tip cards carry the Simple Style tips theme, featuring the participating vendors and keeping the Glamour name in front of the public.

The March lO circular also illustrates another cross promotion, this one between Target and Entertainment Tonight,,, the Paramount Pictures TV show.

The circular's consumer electronic pages carries the slogan Target Today/Entertainment Tonight," with consistent in-store signage in music and video departments. Musician and " entertainment Tonight" co-anchor John Tesh appeared in several TV spots to kick off the campaign last year to promote Target sales of music books and video.

Under the Entertainment Tonight, umbrella, we want our guests to know that they can find all their entertainment needs-from movies to state-of-the-art home theater systems to the best music-at Target today," Bob Thacker, vp of marketing said.

Another TV cross-promotion deal allows Target to use the Home Improvement" name and logo in its hardware department. Target uses the names on vertical strip signs to segment, for instance, its electrical products gondola into various categories. In addition, Home Improvement" series star Tim Allen has appeared in Target circular ads and TV spots since Target nailed down the deal in '94. The deal expires this May with the end of TV sweeps season.