Target Corporation Advertising Essay.

Background and Products

Part A: Advertising Brief to go to agency

This section should be succinct and to the point. Detailed explanations or justifications are to be addressed in Part B.

1. Background:

What is the background of the advertising? What is the background on the company (brand) - history, achievement, philosophy, and advertising? What is the background on your product or service - when it was launched, unique features, competitive advantage? Who buys the product? Who are your main competitors and why? Are there any changes or special considerations in the marketplace?

• Thebrand
• Competitors
• Buyer analysis (e.g. who buys/uses the product, who influences the purchase decision, when they use the product,)
• Current/Previousadvertising

2. AdvertisingProblem:

What is the advertising problem (i.e., what is the reason that you need to advertise)? Look for the problem, not the symptoms.

3. Objectives:

What do you want this advertising to accomplish? These are the advertising objectives such as brand awareness, knowledge, brand interest, favorable perception, attitudes and image, etc. They should be realistic, relevant, and measurable. Give a specific time period (e.g., 1 year). For example,

• To increase brand awareness (e.g., up to XX% of the target in ayear)
• To create the brand’s position or to reposition the brand based on attribute, consequence, value, user, competition, etc. (e.g., perception change up to Y% ofthe target by 6 months)

4. TargetMarket:

Who are you talking to, and what do you know about them? Is there a particular segment you would like to target? Who is your most viable segment? Can you outline a geo-demographic and psychographic profile of the target audience?

• Target
• Consumer insight: There may be many consumer insights. However, you need tofocus on the insight(s) that can be applied to your advertising

5. Budget:

What is the budget for the ad campaign? Also address campaign timing (e.g., when the campaign would launch and why). The budget is not considered important for the assignment. However, you need to propose a reasonable campaign budget. Your budget is solely based on media budget that will be allocated to media expenditure, excluding production costs and other expenditure (e.g., costs involved when you use a celebrity). Please see the media expenditure data in 2016 at the end of this document.

6. Creativestrategy:

What’s the single most important thing to say? Is there any direction or considerations for the creative? How do you want consumers to describe the brand - its essence and personality (brand personality)? Provide a creative statement (see creative lecture slides).

• Creativestatement

7. Mediastrategy:

Which media channels should be considered (media mix)? What media channels have been used in the past (if data available)? How can you use media to support your creative strategy?

8. Mandatories:

Is there anything else worth thinking about that might help you achieve great advertising? Is there any current trend, fad, or news? Is there a list of items that must be included in the advertising campaign? Logo, contact details, website etc.? Include all the mandatories here.

Part B: The justification - Supporting evidence for your decisions

Use the same subheadings as in Part A. In addition, add reference list

1. AdvertisingProblem
2. Objectives
3. TargetMarket
4. Budget
5. Creativestrategy
6. Mediastrategy
7. Mandatories
8. References

Part B should contain the evidence to support the decisions you made in your brief (Part A). Supporting evidence includes:

• Findings from your primary research (consumer insight report and perceptual mapping analysis) and your own observations of people who use the
• Secondary research sources, such as Roy Morgan data, retail or industry figures ortarget market profiles from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and/or other reliable sources.
• Academic journal articles in advertising, consumer behaviour and marketing in
• Your compelling and logical arguments if no other supporting evidence is
  

The Brand

Target Corporation Australia (TGT) sells numerous brands, however, some of the most known brands are in line of clothing, homewares, cosmetics, consumer and fitness electronics, as well as general electronics.

• Competitors

Some of the most prominent companies that directly compete with Target are WMT (Wal-Mart Stores) and COST (Costco Wholesale) (Screen Australia, 2014).

• Buyer Analysis

The operations of Target involves digital retailing. The corporation uses numerous channels to ensure that their goods reach buyers. In general, Target deals mostly with women, but also sell male and children stuffs. The company harnesses the opportunity associated with the fact that the Australian consumers do not prefer to go for online retail products even with technological improvements because they are afraid of counterfeiting (Screen Australia, 2014).

Target is primly positioned on the Australian retail-marketing segment. It therefore, targets corporate audience, which includes more than 5,450 individuals in the country. The company has put aside a marketing budget that would ensure that the company attracts more customers while offering more value-oriented products as well as being geared towards reaching for customers that are cost-conscious (Sisson, 2013).

Retail companies, Target included, faces the challenge of reaching for customers that are poorly motivated by local products. Such a case means that the marketing techniques used by Target and the rest is ineffective. Since Target Corporation, as a retail company in Australia, uses ineffective marketing strategies, revenue generation remains stagnated.

This advertisement paper intends to:

• To increase the awareness of Target’s brands by 50% by the end of 2019.
• To increase customer’s perception on Target’s brands by 50% come 2020.

Target

Target Corporation target shoppers that are fiver years younger than those of Walmart are. Therefore, the company is able to make a revenue of approximately $12,000 more on every household. Most shoppers at Target are white with Hispanic background (Swinburn, 2016).

• Consumer Insight

Target wishes to lead Walmart and Costco in customer experience. Apart from that, the company is also passionate about strategizing how to increase client advocacy and loyalty (Swinburn, 2016).

The table below shows the projected media budget for Target to commence by December 2018.  

	Walmart	Costco	Target
Celebrity Advertisements	15,000,000	8,000,000	11,955,000
Television & Radio Ads	0	0	1,823,000
Gifts and Product Promotions	0	0	1,000
Social Media Adverts	0	0	2,522,000
Banners and posters	0	0	576,000
Promotion and social Events	0	0	539,000
Magazines & Newspapers Ads	12000	1,000	165,000
Grand Total	15,012,000	8,001,000	17,581,000

According to Target, the biggest test is ensuring that the advertisement of its brands involves a timeless and resonates process with customers (Woolworths, 2014).

• Creative Statement

The creative statement for Target is “The beginning of Brilliance”. The statement also forms the basis of the company’s ad campaign.

Target will connect with its customers via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. However, the products will as well get advertised in magazines, radio stations, and TV stations (Swinburn, 2016).

• Media Mix with % budget Allocation

Media	Percentage %
Celebrity Advertisements	68
Television & Radio Ads	10
Gifts and Product Promotions	0.006
Social Media Adverts	14
Banners and posters	3.3
Promotion and social Events	3.1
Magazines & Newspapers Ads	1.594
Total:	$17,581,000

• Media Scheduling

Advertising Problem

TGT is regarded as a strong retailing “merchant”. TGT in relation to being strong is able ability to employ creativity in its advertising endeavors towards ensuring marketing differentiation and innovation.

According to marketing reports, TGT has performed well under its Cat & Jack kid's brand having generated a gross profit of over $1.7 billion in a span of two years after its launching. As a result, the management is confident that launching 12 other brands would be a major boost by the end of fiscal 2018 (Sisson, 2013).

The Justification

1. Background

Target (TGT) has been employing creative tools of advertisement such as banners and social media tools to boost its brand awareness since its inception. Apart from that, TGT is owned by Wesfarmers and has been operation for more than 10 years. The company also owns more than 300 stores in the entire country that sells clothing, homewares, cosmetics, consumer and fitness electronics. With time, the Corporation has been regarded as a strong retail “merchant” because the provided products are value oriented. Target believes that value beats price thus, offering that has demonstrated the ability to use creativity as a tool towards ensuring differentiation and innovation of the sold products. The mission of the corporation is to provide quality goods time to time. Therefore, the main goal of the corporation is to meet quality standards that the Australian market audience require. As mentioned before, Target started its operations by manufacturing clothing, homewares, cosmetics, consumer and fitness electronics. However, the main lines of production were homewares and clothing. The main feature of the products provided by then was the quality and discount offers most of which were bought by women. Its main buyers were and still are women because women go for value against cost. However, the company started facing stiff competition from superior companies such as WMT (Wal-Mart Stores) and COST (Costco Wholesale) (Euro Monitors International, 2014).

1. The Brand

As mentioned before, Target Australia is owned by Wesfarmers, operates more than 300 stores in the entire country, and sells branded clothing, homewares, cosmetics, consumer and fitness electronics, as well as electronics in general (Elliot, Rundle-Thiele, & Waller, 2014).

1. Competitors

Target, also known as TGT is a discount retailer as mentioned before. Such means that TGT has its revenue generated by offering priced goods to consumers. Some of the companies that directly compete with Target are WMT (Wal-Mart Stores) and COST (Costco Wholesale). In as much as Target clients have high incomes and interests in high spending, particularly on quality products, Walmart of offer low prices on goods which lure individuals with low income compared to Target. Target On the contrary, appeals to individuals with more affluence by emphasizing on top-quality goods and low-cost designer fashion (Roy Morgan Research, 2013).

Advertising Objectives

Target and Walmart are more of direct competitors though Costco also competes with the two for customers. However, for Target to ensure future growth, it has to restructure its strategies for connecting with customers, have large margins that would ensure that investors are provided with solid profit, as well as be able to benefit from the existing economic conditions. When the market competition is strong, retailers are motivated to reduce margins and stay competitive in terms of pricing. However, the strategy of margin reduction may lead to price improvements while leaving tiny profits for investors (Sanitarium, 2014).

1. Buyer Analysis

Women and children buy most products offered by Target. As mentioned before, women buy goods and services that are value oriented unlike Walmart or Costco’s that are price oriented. As a result, the company mostly target children and women as well families with high incomes. In most Australian homes (63% to be precise), mothers do most purchasing decisions for household and children products sold by Target. Therefore, the company decided to deal mostly with women and children stuffs. Since household products are used every day, Target is not urged to invest a lot in marketing (Sanitarium, 2014).

1. Advertising

Target has been and is still using traditional advertising methods to advertise its brands. Some of such tools include the use of promotions, ad events, and banners. However, the company has included digital marketing aspects such as social media tools (in the form of Twitter and Facebook platforms), radio and TV platforms, as well as magazines and newspapers ensuring that the company is in a premium position within the Australian retail-marketing segment. Currently, Target’s marketing outcome focuses on its corporate audience within Australia. Its advertisement budget is small, value-oriented, and geared towards enticing buyers that are cost-conscious. Therefore, Target is currently third to Walmart and Costco in advertising and revenue generation because the techniques employed do not give the company the overall appreciation by the audience within the local spectrum (Sanitarium, 2014).

As mentioned before, the products and services offered by Target are value-oriented and are geared towards ensuring that clients get quality against high pricing, which more than 58% of Australian retail products audience do not appreciate (Roy Morgan Research, 2013).

2. Advertising Issues

Target has a huge marketing hurdle and therefore, needs to boost its advertising because:

• It is unable to coax a huge number of clients to go for its products like Costco or Walmart does.
• It is unable to boost its social currencies in the level of Walmart and Costco’s.
• Only 32% of Australian market audience go for value-oriented goods because of the stratified incomes of the Australian families.
• It focus on media decentralization rules to get going in the marketing sector making it unable to fight for the top marketing and advertising spot.

The advertising issues highlighted above affect Target’s operations because it has a tiny marketing budget and is therefore, unable to reach the entire enticable 32% of value-oriented customers in Australia. Apart from that, the management of the company and the marketing team are unable to explain and convince the target audience on what the company offers and how. Otherwise, already established firms like Walmart and Costco uses advertisements to defend and reinforce their brands. Also, the two main competitors are running ads and doing so effectively because they understand that it is the only way that consumers would be aware of their brands. On being unable to boost its social currencies, Target spends less on advertising compared to its competitors making its dollars less coveted to Walmart or Costco by the advertising agencies. Otherwise, Target is unable to market its brands in the same level and playing field as Walmart or Costco. Apart from that, Australian marketing agencies only go for companies who are willing to spend on ads as much money as they generate in form of revenue, which Target does not (Roy Morgan Research, 2017). On focusing on media decentralization rules, the retail industry of Australia faces issues of poor buyer motivation alignment that Target is yet to be aware of since it focuses on a small marketing niche. Therefore, with a weak advertising strategy, Target needs to re-strategize its marketing priorities and fight to achieve the same marketing spot as Walmart and Costco (Philp, 2015).

3. Objectives

Target Audience

As mentioned before, the industry faces several marketing and advertising issues. To curb such problems, this paper is charged with coming up with marketing and advertising strategies that would lead to:

• Increased awareness of Target’s brands by 50% by 2020.
• Increase customer perception on Target’s brands by 50% come 2020.

4. Target Market
   1. Target

Target offers retail products and thus, targets mostly mothers and children as well as few male adults (most of who are financially well off) (PewResearch Internet Project, 2014). However, since the products offered are value-oriented, those who are interested in the products sold by Target have high incomes. On the contrary, Target wishes to coax everyone to buy its products. Therefore, it is interested in low-to-high income families in the country. Target has realized that the difference between it and its competitors is the 68% price-oriented customer segment that would go for price and not value. As a result, Target is interested in the price-oriented segment and intends to explore it (Langley, 2013). A 57% of Australian families in the Northern parts would go for pricing as a purchasing factor with 40% going for Value. Otherwise, 3% would go for household brands and not value or price. In Southern Australia, 12% of families prefer pricing as a purchasing factor; 60% go for value, and 28% go for household brands (Morejon, 2014).

 

1. Consumer Insight

Target ventured into the market with several ideas making the process of picking the right choice tedious. The company then decided to venture into retail services. To entice customers, the company ensures that the picked idea is effective. The idea that is chosen is most promising and is taken to the “minimum viable venture” stage. Such means that the idea is rolled out as projects (Griffiths, 2013, pg. 160). However, preparations associated with pivoting is not mostly desperation driven but about ensuring that Target do not waste any kind of opportunity. The company, thus, has a huge role in ensuring that it is well positioned to ensure that their assets are used. Apart from that, Target would wish to lead the way regarding customer experience. The company is also passionate about strategizing how to increase client advocacy and loyalty (FAO, 2014).

5. Budget

However, below is the newly projected media budget for Target for FY18/19:

	Walmart	Costco	Target
Celebrity Advertisements	15,000,000	8,000,000	11,955,000
Television & Radio Ads	0	0	1,823,000
Gifts and Product Promotions	0	0	1,000
Social Media Adverts	0	0	2,522,000
Banners and posters	0	0	576,000
Promotion and social Events	0	0	539,000
Magazines & Newspapers Ads	12000	1,000	165,000
Grand Total	15,012,000	8,001,000	17,581,000

Source: Media expenditure for Target based on Sept 2018 Reports

This projected media budget is scheduled for launched in the FY18/19. Celebrity advertising is given the largest portion of the budget because most Australian households and the population in general tend to depict the lifestyles of local celebrities, from their household items to their personal outlook. Using such individuals would therefore, be a boost for the organization. Social media advertisement is given the second largest potion because more than 87% of Australians are social media addicts. Therefore, accessing the target audience via social media would be easy. The third portion of the budget goes to television and radio ads since Target wishes to capture the percentage of consumers who are convincible through radios and TVs. Banners and posters; magazines and newspaper ads; as well as promotion and social events are modern-traditional tools that were employed earlier on by Target and produced insignificant marketing outcomes. Such is the reason why they have the lower allocations of fund. Finally yet importantly, Target does not intend to do much of gift and product promotion advertisements and thus, allocated to lowest amount of this marketing budget.

6. Creative Strategy

Budget

Target will use its advertising to retail buyers that TGT offers better services than the market leaders, Walmart and Costco. Target will use a structured marketing approach to build the loyalty of its customers. Support will be that because Target is 3^rd in the market, it has to try harder in every aspect of its line of delivery to beat Walmart and Costco that provide customer experience that is truly personal. The company will use a tone that is factual and no-nonsense in the creation of its’ brands’ appeal such as “The beginning of Brilliance” (Jurevicius, 2014). In this case, the character of Target’s brands is being cheeky, innovative, and being able to disrupt the status quo (Apostolou, 2014, pg. 21).  

1. Creative Statement

Target believes that the biggest test when it comes to owning a good advertising strategy is ensuring that the process is timeless as well as resonates with customers (Heart Foundation tick, 2014). The creative statement for Target is “The beginning of Brilliance” the statement means that the company looks forward to providing new, owned brands. The launching of its marketing objectives in line with the statement ensures the differentiation of the company from its competitors. The statement also forms the basis of the company’s ad campaign (Gracewood, 2018).

7. Media Strategy

Target has been reaching its customers through promotion events, radios, TV programs and magazines. However, the company will also employ digital advertising channels like social media platforms in the form of Facebook and Twitter. On the same note, Target will continue advertising through magazines, radio stations, and TV stations. Through the named advertising channels, Target will reach its targeted price-oriented market segment and convince them that Target is ready to offer quality goods at subsided prices; and also that Target is “The beginning of Brilliance” (Claudio, 2015, pg. 115).

1. Media Mix with % budget Allocation

The table below shows the proposed media mix alongside budget allocation in percentage for FY18/19.

Media	Percentage %
Celebrity Advertisements	68
Television & Radio Ads	10
Gifts and Product Promotions	0.006
Social Media Adverts	14
Banners and posters	3.3
Promotion and social Events	3.1
Magazines & Newspapers Ads	1.594
Total:	$17,581,000

1. Media Scheduling

The table highlights Target’s proposed media scheduling in a span of 25 days, every month for FY 18/19. 

8. Mandatories

Target is thinking of gaining its business spot as the best retail company in Australia. The company also attempts to regain its name as the strongest Australian “merchant” by beating Walmart and Costco in marketing when it demonstrates its ability to use creativity as a tool of production and marketing differentiation and innovation (Be Natural, 2014). Currently, the good news is that retail analysists are enthralled on the performance of Target’s Cat & Jack kid's brand that has generated a gross profit of over $1.7 billion in a span of two years after its launching. Therefore, Target’s management intends to add 12 more brands to its ad campaign that has already shown massive results through the Cat & Jack kid's brand success. The 12 brand are likely to be launched by December 12 2018. The company also intends to upgrade its website by adding new stores and online purchasing capabilities (Argyropoulos, 2012).

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