Feature
The Gist
- Campaign analysis. Target's LGBTQ+ Pride campaign reveals complexities.
- Marketing missteps. Understanding cultural nuances is vital for brands.
- Recovery strategy. Brands can bounce back from cultural marketing errors.
When noticed, deja vu invariably prompts a double take. Marketers are doing just that with Target’s decision to temporarily remove products for LGBTQ+ customers from some of its Southern locations. CNN reported that Target spokesperson Kayla Castaneda later said that some items were being removed from all US Target stores.
Target’s brand image has been risked in a way very similar to that of Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light campaign crisis. Yet some distinct differences exist, enough for brand managers to learn how to develop a recovery plan. Target's case is particularly crucial as customer experiences are increasingly shifting online and being managed through advanced digital platforms.
The Details Behind Target’s Pride Campaign
Target claimed that store workers and team members at a number of its Southern locations were being harassed for highlighting the products as part of a Pride Month Celebration supporting LGBTQ+ rights and history. According to Target, the harassment signaled potentially more harmful disruption. Thus, it decided to pull some of its LGBTQ+ products from its stores' shelves.
Target did not specify what harassment was occurring. But the decision to pull its products and services did upset many of its customers and clients. One of the products in question was tuck-friendly swimwear, designed for trans people who have not had gender-affirming operations.
Despite the move, Target insisted that it was going forward with its Pride Month celebration campaign.
Related Article: Cultural Intelligence Improves the Customer Experience
Target’s Inclusion History so Far
For years Target has launched thoughtful inclusive campaigns offering a selection of products and services. For example, Target stores have been a main retailer for products from a number of Black-owned businesses. The company periodically featured them in prominent store aisle locations. This positioned Target as a platform, providing even the smallest businesses or startup teams a path to attract customers and enhance their profiles. This differs from the acquisitions that have occurred recently, such as Unilever’s purchase of SheaMoisture and L’Oréal’s stake in Carol’s Daughter.
Target’s Previous Campaigns
So far Target has grown its experience with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) campaigns. It curated a special assortment of products to celebrate Juneteenth in 2022. It hosted in-store marketing while using pillar content to highlight sections of its website that showcased the Juneteenth products. It also has made investment targets to be achieved by 2025 — $2 billion is to be invested in Black-owned businesses across multiple segments, including beauty, fashion, home and food, as well as $25 million in media to diverse-owned and founded brands through Target's in-house media company via the Roundel Media Fund. These instances reflect the importance of investing through the supply chain as an element of customer experience, which I explained in this post on supplier diversity.
Marketing Decisions & Harassment
But Target has also experienced harassment as it has rolled out its DEI campaigns. Back in 2020, Black Enterprise reported that The Honey Pot, a Black-owned business that sells its feminine care products in Target stores, was being trolled with fake negative online reviews of the brand. Target highlighted The Honey Pot as a centerpiece of its Black History Month campaign. To fight back against the bad reviews, Honey Pot customers offered their testimony and called for the fake reviews to be removed from the platform.
Related Article: 5 Ways Diversity and Inclusion Impact the Customer Experience
How Being a Retail Platform Impacts DEI Strategy
One particular aspect of retail’s evolution in the last several years is that many major retailers have added digital platforms to enhance their customer experiences and strengthen their brands as a result. They have seen the advantages Amazon has earned through ecommerce and are looking to emulate a similar success.
Platforms & Their Implications
Platforms have implications for how brands deliver on their brand promises. In general, a platform provides an opportunity to communicate ideas or information to a group of people. Retailers have leveraged digital platforms for that purpose, using their influence to deepen their communication to their customers and develop the kind of loyalty that sustains a brand with lifelong consumer relationships.
One of the pitfalls with digital platforms is that a brand’s message can spread wider than the company's capacity to respond and to audiences that it did not intend to connect to. Thus, analytics emphasizing spatial analysis can unveil strategies to more effectively customize messages according to an audience's location and select projects that enable brands to maintain their core messaging.
A Geospatial Analytics Decision
The decision to remove LGBTQ+ oriented products mimics qualities in geospatial and cohort analytics – to respond to product-related activity from a region and customer segment serviced by a brand. An argument can be made that analytics serve as a targeted safeguard for suppliers against potential product damage, and also protect managers who might potentially confront harassers.
Many suppliers who depend on retailers as platforms lack the financial capability to replace extensively damaged goods. However, such analytics provide better value when applied to support a marketing campaign, rather than in response to a potential threat that might not materialize.
Sending a Message
When Target decided to remove the LGBTQ-oriented products it inadvertently sent a message to the harassing audience that it acknowledged their concerns over its own customer base that had supported its platform.
To be a forward-thinking brand, your team must be aware of your messaging from an analytic standpoint, as the context in which your brand articulates its purpose influences how the message is perceived. Having a defined purpose behind your content adds depth to the metrics, revealing whether the interactions with your customer audience are genuinely engaging. Ultimately, this purpose can significantly influence the sales pipeline
Learning From Cultural Marketing Missteps Is Possible
As inclusion becomes a standard in attracting and retaining young customers, examples of brands that have moved on from their missteps have begun to emerge. When I wrote about cultural branding in a post on inclusion, I noted Dove’s apology for a Dove Deep Moisture Body Wash digital ad with a message about dark skin being undesirable. That was in 2017. Since then, Dove has made significant strides to put the moment in its branding rearview mirror.
Dove & The Crown Act
In February of this year Dove revealed a co-commissioned study with LinkedIn called the NEW CROWN 2023 Workplace Research Study. The research detailed the systemic social and economic impact of hair bias and discrimination that Black women encounter in the workplace. It was a reinforcement of Dove's significant investment in ongoing projects supporting the passage of The CROWN Act, legislation to eliminate race-based employment policies that discriminate against cultural hair styles in the workplace. In 2019, the brand established the CROWN Coalition with major social justice nonprofits including the National Urban League, Color of Change and Western Center on Law and Poverty to advance anti-hair discrimination legislation.
Impersonal Communication Leads to Missteps
This instance is a reminder that brands that rely on generic, cookie-cutter and impersonal communication will most likely fall into these missteps. Customers will view those messages as failing to connect to them. Connection requires a consistent investment, becoming part of the storytelling that brands must do these days to advocate their purpose.
Target’s Chance for Recovery
Because Target is a retailer, it has a unique opportunity to build on its relationships with consumer brands that have invested in their DEI messaging to learn how to incorporate examples and to make wise ongoing commitments that represent its true intentions.
Successful businesses are meant to address common and specific customer pain points. But success is also about how empathy for cultural differences is managed, from diverse offerings to diverse staffing. A brand that lacks that empathy will be seen as cold and out-of-touch in its messaging, leading to a disconnect between a brand and its audience.
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Target’s decision was regrettable. But recovering from missteps in delivering cultural marketing is possible. Target has the chance to regain customer trust and revitalize the inclusion-based customer experiences it had established.
