Pop Artifice

Target has been around since 1959, when its first store opened in the Roseville, Minnesota, a suburb just north of St. Paul. And for much of next four decades, its advertising was practical, safe, and largely forgotten as soon as the ad ended.  

But during the mid-90s, things started changing. It began with the chain's very conscious positioning of itself as a “discounter unlike other discounters,” typified by the theme, "Expect more. Pay less." And when Target broke into the East Coast market, opening a store in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1996, they turned to New York agency Kirchenbaum and Bond, who gave them a striking campaign that married household products to fashion, and helped make Target a favorite of fashionistas.

 

So the stage was set for Minneapolis agency, Peterson Milla Hooks, to make Target's next leap. Dubbed the “Sign of the Times” campaign, it turned their red bullseye logo into a design element in all of their advertising, combining it with stylish, somewhat plasticized people moving around in boldy artificial environments. 

In some alchemical way, Target’s advertising turned kitsch into high style. So distinctive, so successful was the approach, that it’s continued in a variety of ways ever since..

Concurrent with that initial campaign, PMH launched the vendor co-op campaign you see here, one that the internet seems to barely note – but which I find to be every bit as memorable, stylish, and  groundbreaking as the bullseye campaign.

Pop art-inspired, part Andy Warhol, part David Hockney, it juxtaposed product imagery with a series of repeated photos, adding visual interest and drawing the eye to what Target wanted you to notice. Even more, the juxtapositions became part of the fun — the product names commenting on the photos in unexpected ways, inviting you to discover the connection for yourself. 

This sub-campaign lasted only a couple years, before Target fully committed to designs that featured overlays of their iconic bullseye. Today, this campaign seems to be more of a footnote to the evolution of the “Target look” (I had to find these examples in an awards book), but I find it as irresistible today as I did 25 years ago.


The cleverness, the repetition of the photos, combined with colorful product packaging, transforms a work of advertising into a work of modern art. It’s Warhol minus the indictment of mass commercialism, a Hockney photo collage plus sheer exuberance. 


But enough with my telling you why should like them. Just enjoy them yourself.





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