Over the holidays I saw a couple of commercials from Target that I thought where absolutely amazing! They follow a lady and her personal build up until the two day sale at Target which starts on Black Friday.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that she is crazy and obsessed with the “Two Day Sale”. She is kind of like the character Sue Sylvester from the hit TV show Glee, but in the form of a well put together house wife which is obsessed with preparing and practicing for the sale. She is usually dressed in a red track suit with white stripes which are the color of Target, she always wears a pearl necklace and high heels and has a blond perfect pony tail.
Target ran multiple ads featuring “the crazy Target lady” this year but now when I researched those ads, I became aware that it is not the first year that she has been featured in a campaign. It has actually been running since 2009 under the name Christmas Champ, but she is more commonly known as “The Crazy Target Lady.”
What I think is so great about these ads is first of all they are funny, but “the crazy Target lady” has grown into a phenomenon of her own. She has her own Facebook page and people like me blog about her. However, what is probably the most important thing about the campaign is that that the advertiser keep hammering home the message in each ad, meaning that there she is, in very ad, looking the same; she still has that pearl necklace, earrings and her perfect blond ponytail to the side, and she is still sporting red and white (Target’s signature colors) in every ad.
That is what is common for a marketing campaign and integrated brand promotion, which is when you use different kinds of media or multiple ads, but they still have a common theme or themes, that people can associate with the brand and this is what is so excellent about Target’s ads. As people see her and the red and white colors they immediately think about Target and shopping there.
This is what VP of Communications, Dustee Jenkins, had to say about the Crazy Target Lady: "She represents the whole notion of Black Friday being a contact sport. Love her or hate her, she resonates with our guests."
In a sense she has become the symbol of Thanksgiving and the following Black Friday Sale. That is gold for a marketer and Target itself because this means that they have done such an excellent job that this campaign and “the Christmas champ” have become part of a tradition, and because it is associated with Black Friday it automatically means more sales for the company since it plays such a crucial part of the holidays now.
Another great thing about this kind of advertising is that it is like a TV miniseries where we get to follow our favorite character and were we are in a sense; anticipating what she will do next. So when we are fast forwarding trough the commercial breaks on the DVRs we switch back to “play” if we see a glimmer of that particular kind of ad and then we will most probably rewind and watch the ad in its entirety and perhaps even watch it over again. This is exactly what the advertiser want to achieve; to have a viewer watch one ad and continue following and re-watch other episodes because this drives home their message and an idea that they might have of buying something from that store can be solidified after watching the ads a couple of times.
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