Walking Through The Brand # 1 - Brand Experience Transference

Many brands have problems extending the brand promise to other categories. Target seems to have accomplished this almost seamlessly in their SuperTarget Stores.

For those of you who are Ries and Trout positioning advocates, you know that brand extensions can be a trap. But in TargetÂ’s case one store flows effortlessly and seamlessly between one and the other. They have accomplished what many havenÂ’t, including Wal Mart and SamÂ’sÂ…and Kmart isnÂ’t even in the ball game.

Super Target is one store…with a lot of stuff. I DO expect more from them and I do think I pay less. I think part of the payoff results from the “Target Look.” Your experience of the store, as you walk through it, is a total experience.

That is because I think the experience in-store exemplifies your experience from their advertising. Both are open, colorful. fun and its totally communicative. I virtuallyvirtualy every department in the store wherever I'm standing due to open layout and great, big signage. The store is not only colorful, clean, too.

Just like their advertising which opens up and lets you into it. You always know its a Target TV spot the nanosecond it comes on the screen...even when you're not looking at the set.

When you walk into the store, it is almost like walking into the television spots. It is just as open, inviting, a bit crazy and certainly as colorful as you would expect it to be. That is what I mean about "“Walking Through The Brand."” A brand only fulfills its promise, totally, when you can, in essence, "walk through the brand." It envelops you. You feel it. Like it. Want it. Just how many brands today evoke though kinds of feelings? Few, I dare say.

Are there areas of improvement needed at Target? Yep. The people experience has been uneven at times. My impression has been that the food side people get it. They seem more into their jobs and "live the brand", while the cashiers are uneven in their "delivery."Sometimes they are very courteous, but often times as not, they are indifferent. For Target to hold onto its promise they willl have to get that worked out.

Here's one case where the extension trap hasn't trapped the brand experience, but has actually enhanced it.