Walk through your friendly neighborhood Target and you’re sure to experience a veritable street fight in the aisle between brands on top of their game. Cool brands, hip brands, brands for moms, brands with a heart, big brands, brands that are good for the earth, brands you’ve grown up with – all battling it out for your attention and your dollars.
And one of the best brands you’ll encounter at Target is, in fact, Target.
It’s never labeled as such, obviously, because Target has realized that it can gain more strategic value by creating house brands targeted (forgive the pun) towards specific shopping categories, not the entire store. Rather than populate every aisle with same looking generic packages featuring the store brand, Target has cultivated a rich assortment of brands that go straight after what users need, want and desire. Step into the candy aisle and you’ll discover a colorful candy brand named Choxie (by Target). Walk down the auto aisle and you’ll see twenty feet of brushes, sponges, hose attachments and polishing cloths under the Vroom brand name (guess who?). Target has changed the game on their house brands, because they don’t feel like house brands anymore – they’ve become good products people just want. And the important point is that structuring house brands this way helps differentiate Target from its retail competitors. Unique products create unique aisle experiences, and unique aisles means Target doesn’t feel like Wal-Mart and the rest.
Which brings me to their latest creation, Up & Up.
Target developed Up & Up as the new brand name for household consumables like paper towels, diapers and disposable dishware. Gone is the Target bullseye and clean, generic brand package. In its place is a new brand with a more modern look and feel. The reasons for change make sense to me…
What I don’t get is why Target abandoned the street fighter mentality that has worked so successfully for them in other parts of the store – taking on the big guys aisle by aisle. For some reason they didn’t create new, distinct brands around baby, food storage, cleaning, beauty, and the rest. They just made one big brand to try and cover an entire corner of the store. But the rub is that these are unique categories, with unique dynamics and unique shopper needs.
Too unique for just one brand to satisfy?
Did Target miss a big one here?
I’m sure that folks like P&G, J&J and Method are sure hoping so.
