Target came to us with a problem, and a 10-week window to try to solve for it. Beauty shoppers were shopping Target more than any other beauty competitor, they just weren’t shopping the beauty aisle when they were there. The few that did thought of Target as a replenishment stop for everyday items, but not a trusted source for private labels, designer brands, or specialty items. We believed to make a lasting business impact for Target's beauty business, we needed to amend the brief from being Q4 specific to being a yearlong program. And we did it without asking for incremental money to help sustain the effort.

A 45-week campaign designed to deliver fresh new content based on learnings, trends and optimizations we gathered throughout the course of the campaign. To aid the creative work, we created eight strategic touch points throughout the campaign. Each touch point occurred two weeks before the creative team went to shoot the next batch of creative, and included messaging performance from the previous phase as well as future-facing trend forecasts from our editorial partners. And since we knew that not all content in the beauty space should look the same, that tutorials and beauty hacks and social posts required more authentic less highly produced creative, while product shots and insporational content still worked best with some professional polish - we divvied up the work. Allowing our editorial partners at Refinery29 and Essence.com to make meaning creative for every type of beauty routine (from the special moments / products to the basics).

We found in our research that beauty routines were constantly evolving based on tutorials and beauty hacks, ingredient lists, tests and trials, reviews, press releases, partnerships, sample kits, and seasonal trends. To ensure Target Beauty was a compelling solution for this ever-changing landscape, we needed to create a campaign that was steady enough to make Target top of mind, yet flexible to stay relevant with the ever present shifts of the category. That meant we had to focus the plan and partner list as much as possible for efficiencies, without going too far to the point where we were just a forgettable banner near beauty content. The sweet spot focused on three areas in particular: real-time social and video distribution, amplification of influencer content, and highly curated custom content partnerships (with Refinery29 and Essence Beauty).

Custom digital video: Refinery29; Essence.com. These pieces were distributed across the publisher’s owned platforms, and heavily distributed through the YouTube ecosystem where beauty-based content such as routines, tutorials, beauty hacks, and product reviews are a highly consumed category.

Social: We leveraged a host of in-feed units in FB / IG targeting all audiences, and utilized Snapchat specifically for our teens and tweens. We leaned heavily into in-story inspiration and influencer content all about trends and new products.

Publisher partnerships: Two year-long custom programs with Essence.com and Refinery29. We made content for every type of beauty enthusiast, like quizzes for those who needed a recommendation, videos for those that wanted to pause and rewind, product round-ups for the trend-lovers, and tutorials for the DIYers. This content was so successful in the media landscape that we ended up integrating the content into Target’s owned channels (ex. Target.com and social feeds).

Beauty is the top performing category for Target across all marketing efforts of 2018. Media alone drove over $125MM in added revenue. Campaign performance was 2x average Target benchmarks and continued to pace at that level of performance. Beauty has become a gateway category for Target as a result of this campaign, with research indicating there is a strong correlation between increased spend in beauty and increased spend in total store and size of basket for each trip made.