Marketing is your Brand’s Mistress

Great companies with a brand mindset live by this. In meetings with clients struggling to make the connection between brand and business strategy, I refer to the cautionary tale between Kmart’s demise into bankruptcy and Target’s meteoric rise as the second-biggest discounter behind Wal-Mart.

Here’s how I explain it.

Imagine for a moment that you are Target marketing team member who has come up with the idea that steel shopping carts (you know the ones that typically get stuck together with rusty worn out wheels that suck when you’re trying to put your toddler in the seat after sitting out in a really cold or hot parking lot ) will create a better shopper experience and should be redesigned.

I go on to ask, “How do you think Kmart executives when they were at the height of their “blue light special” zenith would have responded to a team suggesting an idea such as this?” After a brief pause, I put forth (hypothetically speaking) how these executives may have been inclined to respond as in:

“Why the heck would we do that? The customers don’t care about that. The only thing they care about is price.”

“Are you actually suggesting we spend money on shopping carts?  Nobody else does that. Why don’t we do more coupons or something that will move sales directly.”

“Can you prove within a quarter that it’s going to create an uptick in revenue? Where’s your numbers?”

In essence, no way. No how. Not happening.   

In stark contrast, Target did redesign its shopping carts, and has consistently been 1st to market by reinventing what their brand and business strategy means to their consumer. This is how and why everything Target does pertaining to their products, customer service, return policy, advertising, promotions, merchandising, and store appeal has outflanked the competition and transformed “discount chic-tailing” as a lifestyle brand.

Leadership is fully vested in the brand and and all of “Tar-zhay's” marketing serves the company’s tagline of “Expect more. Pay less.”