HONORS: Selected for 2024 Kick A** exhibition by Holly Aguilar from Balcom Agency
All photography, copywriting, illustration and design created by me.
For this project, I was tasked with creating a campaign. I could select a pre-existing project to expand on, or create a whole new project. I opted to start fresh. Partly because I wanted to do a christmas campaign, yes, but mainly because I wanted to challenge myself with a campaign for a large-scale corporate brand - something I hadn't done before. Introducting, Target FastTrack.
I won't get into the nitty-gritty here, because the campaign is laid out pretty clearly by AI-Santa's voice in the video below. However, if you are interested in the slightly longer read that explains the assignment, approach, and results of this project, that's at the end of this page for your advertising-nerd pleasure.
Assignment:
Target is a top 3 leading retailer for holiday shopping, apparel, gifts, and toys, with the Holiday season as their highest grossing sales period. In order to expand their market, my task was to create an advertising campaign that increases online sales for “holiday essential” products in the weeks leading up to Christmas (December 1st-24th).
Approach:
To increase online sales during the busiest retail season of the year, it was essential to dig deeper than a campaign that would get lost in the sea of holiday advertisements. A new Target shopping feature was created that gives Target a unique edge over competitors: same-day delivery on holiday items during the month of December. Target FastTrack is a quick, easy way for Target shoppers to access the holiday essentials they forgot they needed.
The Target FastTrack icon was created as a subsidiary logo mark, using Target branding for brand consistency and recognizability. The logo is a wordmark with an abstract icon that can be pulled for smaller applications. The in-app shopping experience expanding on the pre-existing Target App allows customers to shop easily, with a homepage feature for easy access and a dedicated screen displaying all available FastTrack products. When shopping in non-FastTrack categories, FastTrack products are labeled with the small abstract icon for easy identification, creating a seamless shopping experience.
To market FastTrack as the best way to get the essentials you forgot you needed, a campaign was crafted around the feelings of frustration that come with missing items. “Peace on Earth” is the holiday dream - but there’s no peace when you forget the essentials. To complement traditional billboard and magazine ads, an on-site billboard was created for the Target parking lot cart returns. This catches pre-existing in-store Target shoppers, reminding them to check their shopping list for any forgotten items. And if there are any, FastTrack is the solution.
Advertisement imagery and copy are a humorous shock of recognition, and visuals of elaborate typography contrast with stark images of missing ingredients to showcase the problem of forgotten items. Hot cocoa is shown without milk, left a powdery disappointment. A near-empty egg carton symbolizes the irritation of being short on ingredients for your recipes. Lastly, an unfinished to-do list represents the frustration of forgotten shopping items. Each of these problems can be answered with Target FastTrack, which will repair holiday frustrations and bring back peace on earth.
Results:
This project successfully created a campaign targeting the holiday shoppers in charge of the shopping, giving them an option for the inevitably forgotten items. Advertisements give viewers positive emotions of peace on earth, remind them of the negative emotions of stress and frustration, and bring everything back to Target FastTrack as the solution to their holiday needs. Feedback for this project included praise for composition design, control of messaging to the viewer, and the unique solution to the problem of trying to stand out amongst holiday advertising.
