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It’s no secret that we are fans of Target. The company gets so much so right – from its celebration and advancement of design, to its employee policies, to its breakthrough “marketing at the speed of life.” Any trip to Minneapolis headquarters will tell you that this company cares about those who have built it: associates, guests and vendor partners.
It is this context that makes Target’s dismissal of bloggers so disappointing. Blogs are the voice of the consumer – not merely “non-traditional” media. Maybe not each and every one is valid, but the wholesale devaluation of them says a great deal – and it is all wrong. In an age of disintermediation, blogs provide some of the most transparent, direct access to and communications with guests. Blogs allow companies and consumers to get closer to each other and find the elusive relationships that last and grow. Brand loyalty is managed in the blogosphere.
Yet, Target is still following the “old guard” media relations approach, which makes the company seem closed, arrogant and out-of-sync. Target’s PR policies are anything but “marketing at the speed of life.” In fact, they are contrary to the brilliant “design for all” and “expect more” mantras of the company. Target believes in great, consumer-responsive design, so long as the consumer never responds to it? We should “expect more,” so long as that doesn’t include basic civil responses to inquiries? Telling guests to shut-up – even figuratively and even digitally – is never good business.
Target knows how to do better and should – though the major troubles the company has had with its social networking efforts point to bigger concerns around the overall digital strategy at Brand Bull’s Eye. Today’s coverage in the New York Times, and on this and hundreds of other humble blogs, points to just how negatively influential not having good blogger relations can be. Moreover, a proper and effective digital strategy would have given Target a new way of embracing consumer voices – and “nontraditional” media – through a genuine content and social media site that helps drive CRM and manage marketplace conversations in real-time.
We’ll not blame Target only, though, for its misstep today. It simply doesn’t lead in PR like it does in other areas, and for understandable reasons.
Among all the marketing practices, public relations is by far the laggard of the team marching up the hill of media reshaping itself in real-time. All of media has changed – from readership to ad rates to business models – but good old “media relations” continues, as evidenced by Target’s initial actions and woeful PR response to them. Media relations must evolve at pace with the media. Few are leading here on the agency or corporate fronts.
With all due respect to Paul Holmes (and much is due), his oft-quoted “A Manifesto for the 21st Century Public Relations Firm” proves the very point all too well. While all the right ideas may finally be getting their late debate thanks to his piece, few in PR know how to apply them – Holmes included. Never has there been less a manifesto for the 2.0 age than Holmes’. The malleable relationship between form and content is one of the big drivers of disintermediation, and Holmes delivers a tome as quaint as an illuminated manuscript, though the finery of content is appreciated even as the form stumbles along in outdated garb. His is not a view ready for Web 2.0 debate and collaboration; he’s not built it to be. Holmes and Target show just how far the PR industry must still come to “get it.”
Public relations professionals must take part in the conversations that drive the marketplace now – start them, add to them, tolerate them, share them, listen and fidget over them – not merely comment upon them from behind a wall of “messaging” or with the standard forms of the past. Real time conversations, transparency, malleability, authenticity – these must shape and reshape PR as the conversations advance each day. Like the media world that CNN sparked, like the warehouses the keep Target stocked: it’s all 24/7 now, refreshed more frequently than the toothpaste aisle. Keeping up is hard.
Along with Holmes, Target has other odd company as its guest today. The company’s lack of response to bloggers is almost as absurd as BusinessWeek telling others on the Web not to link to their content. Why would one open the doors to commerce if there is little interest in the guest’s real voice? Why would one have a media relations team that does not evolve with media? Why would one write a Web 2.0 manifesto as an old-school advisory? Why would one put content on the Web if it was not to be shared, read, debated and blogged?
Why indeed. The question Target raised today is bigger than blogs or Web 2.0 or consumer conversations. It is one of relevancy, and what it takes to earn it and keep it.
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On this issue, they might have considered saying:
"In retrospect, perhaps the the logo may have been better positioned as a halo, since we intended the woman in the photo to be making a snow angel. We are proud, however, that bloggers and other new media critics view Target as an influential design force in America today. It is "design for all," and that includes public interpretation of design. We would like to collaborate in the future with people who may have innovative design ideas for Target campaigns... we urge those who are interested to e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ."
E.