Hillary's On Target
Smart stuff over at JackandHill by Hillary Johnson about Target's New Yorker campaign. (Target was the sole advertiser in the August 22 New Yorker):
I'm intrigued by the initial assumption--that there's something crass or smarmy about such a deal. If we think of it in terms of patronage--Target wants to patronize the work of one of our leading cultural journals, thus also patronizing authors and illustrators, where's the fire? (There's also a tediously snarky story about the ad campaign in Slate, which is worth reading for the bit of Target history it gives.)Of course, I shop at Target and have always liked their particular consumer culture, and the part of their business culture that's visible to me--whereas I won't set foot in a Wal-Mart, largely because doing so is aesthetically depressing, from those ugly blue bibs they make the employees wear to the bad lighting and disheveled shelves, and also because my knowledge of their corporate culture includes the fact that they are corporate welfarists, and literally, as many of their employees also qualify for public assistance, meaning that even without setting foot in a WalMart, I'm subsidizing their bottom line with my tax dollars. (NB: when I heard Martha Stewart was to be jailed I went to Kmart and bought some bright red towels in protest, but they were awful, shedding red all over my skin even after a dozen washings. I'll stick to buying her magazine and give Kmart, which is also a depressing store with the personality of a chromosomally challenged character out of Deliverance, a pass from now on.)
Kinky_1Now, I don't know anything about Target's business practices other than what I see, but I do know that one of the signposts I use for judging the moral health of a company is their aesthetic and cultural integrity. And I know that talented designers with wit and flair have made deals with the company, and that their employees are always friendly and seem stress-free. I also know that when I was a newspaper editor, one of the best hires I ever made was of a freelance photographer who I met while shopping for a digital camera at Target--he was working behind the counter. His name is Nick Goodenough, and he went on to win the Association of Alternative Newspaper award for photography for us the following year (here's an example, at left). Nick is one of the hippest people I've ever met, and he would never have been found at WalMart or KMart--to me, that says something about the company.
Where does branding leave off and corporate culture begin? It's an interesting question, and one that isn't always transparent. Take the Body Shop, the company founded by Anita Roddick and known for its alledged philantropy and environmentalism. An anthology called Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot To Print edited by David Wallis includes a previously unpublished story about the hideous corporate culture behind the real Body Shop (a stolen business idea, tainted products, defrauded franchisees, miserable employees, and, yes, animal testing of products, contrary to their primary marketing claim). None of which, if true, is visible in the company's feel-good hype, or the fawning press coverage it has consistently received. Yet, I have never bought anything there, as something about the Body Shop alway struck me as off, without me having the faintest idea as to why....
So, while it's nice to think that corporate culture will always rise to the surface and become visible to consumers, WalMart and the Body Shop's huge indicates proves otherwise. But that just makes it all the more important, I think, to give Target a nod when they patronize the arts and pull it off with wit and class.
I highly recommend Killed, published by my oldest friend in New York (met him when he was 17 at the NYU housing office, after I transferred for my senior year from University of Michigan). Wallis is a stand-up guy who's determined not to let great articles die just because some magazines are too wimpy to publish them.
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