Michael Barbaro, of the New York Times, is reporting today on an interesting story involving Target and some bloggers. The story revolves around a marketing campaign Target has undertaken during the winter season.
According to the Times Amy Jussel, founder of the blog ShapingYouth.com, called to complain about an ad the ‘cheap chic’ store was running. The ad depicted a woman making a snow angle on the Target logo, a bullseye appeared to be pointing at the woman’s crotch.
Target’s reply to Jussel was, “Unfortunately we (Target) are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets.”
Target’s justification for not dealing with bloggers is based on, in its words, “to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest,” basically Target doesn’t think anyone that goes to Target stores read blogs.
I can understand Target’s apprehension in targeting bloggers. Working with a small PR staff you really have to hedge your bets and target publications that will get you the most ROI. That being said I have to wonder two things. How small is Target’s PR staff and how many people does it take to answer an inbound request?
If Target is claiming its PR staff is too small I have a solution: Hire more people, your Target. If Target really didn’t want to talk to a blogger, it should have never sent a reply to the initial email. While I don’t suggest this, saying ‘no comment’ is far more dangerous than actually not making a comment.
In the end Target has the right to do what they please, but do any of you out there feel slighted by Target because they feel bloggers don’t matter? Will any of this effect target’s bottom line? Probably not, but it is always interesting to see how companies view their publics.
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Now Target has incredible market share and probably do not NEED to deal with bloggers, there are blogs ou there that get more hits, views and subscribers than the San Fran Chronicle. However I doubt they would slam the good old Chron (I am thinking Consumerist for one example).
As for their PR department, being in marketing myself I can tell you that it took just as much energy to write "We don't talk to snotty and insignificant bloggers" as it would have "Thank you for bringing that to our attention. We will forward this to Marketing with your contact information. Thank you for being a Target customer." It admitted no malice and showed that all complaints will be directed to the appropriate people.
Even if nothing came of it, it would be marked as "Target had not responded directly to our questions as of yet."
Then again it may have been just as relevent for Target to say "We appreciate you advertising our stores for free on your web site. We will be happy to continue to produce sexually ambiguous ads in hopes that you will continue to draw attention to them."
:)
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