Target Beauty Educational Content
The Target Beauty Concierge program is focused on elevating guest experience in every store. We created a continuing education and immersion-focused content platform crafted to ensure that Target Beauty staff are informed and up-to-date on beauty fundamentals, trending products and styles, and are well-versed in the brands they carry. This becomes especially exciting as Target Beauty continues to expand its commitment to serving the diversity of its guests and supporting challenger beauty brands.
Why it matters
The Beauty industry is notoriously competitive and brands need a finger on the pulse of consumer needs. Target takes immense pride in its Beauty department and its highly curated group of brand partners. Having staff who are knowledgeable and brand-savvy helps to ensure a consistent guest experience across its 1900+ US stores and helps to provide service on par with specialty retailers.
Focus on Craft
When I joined the team, the Beauty Concierge program had already been in full swing for several years. My role was to inspire and provoke the work – never getting too comfortable or recycling previous content. Our clients are forward-thinking, design lovers, fully immersed in the beauty world – the creative we share with them should hold up to beauty and fashion editorial peers.
Although we were using a “budget-friendly” stock photo service, we dug deep to eliminate the expected, clichéd beauty poses in favor of real moments with our actual demographic.
Monthly “Brush-Ups” focused on key beauty concerns, building regime, and product benefits
Later versions mirrored Target retail design language updates – Initial Caps, oh my!
Made better, for everyone
The content calendar progressed to deepen the conversation around diverse audiences’ needs: supporting Target’s Black Owned Brands spotlight, understanding the specific needs of Black Guest, Asian Skincare Trends, Hispanic Guests, and more… We deepened the education content so the staff would have specific recommendations for all guest’s beauty types.
Searchable content hub
We created a microsite where all content is stored and easily accessed, including a searchable ingredients library to identify products by hot topics like hyaluronic acid, retinol, paraben-free formulas, etc.
On trend, on time
The ideal would have been to create a Target-Beauty TikTok, but that was outside of our agency’s access.
So, we created a series of internal-facing 30-second trend videos filtering what’s hot on socials.
Hang on, things are about to get crazy!
So things were going well, the client was loving the work month by month, year over year…
And then, we were given an unfortunate set of circumstances: employee training time was limited to 15 minutes per week.
This meant that the weekly newsletters, brush-ups, shopping guides, lookbooks, and brand-specific deep dives were severely time-limited and only available on back-of-house computers. With an agency retainer based on employee training, this was potentially catastrophic.
Background:
I do love a challenge – but this was a bit much! I took stock of what we had: dedicated Beauty staff, a growing library of content, and… a handheld device already in each Beauty department. It’s called the Zebra, a clunky relative of the iPhone – but, unlike the “back of house” computers, staff time was not limited as it was ingrained in the sales floor.
The idea
Behind-the-scenes educational content is being phased out.
Hard pivot. What if the staff-facing content was now made part of the sales floor?
We will transform it into guest-facing, “Co-Discovery tools!“
A quick shift in format…
I am usually pretty humble… but this idea was a hit! The clients loved it. It not only kept the agency’s content retainer alive but allowed it to grow at a double-digit rate. We increased the number of yearly “Brush Up” editions, added mobile Shopper Guides, and were able to create a library of Infographics – housed on staff-accessible microsite and shared with guests on the “Zebra” mobile device.
Scroll through the Shopping Guide example below. (Note: the pages are indexed on the actual devices.)
The directional color-coded indicator was used in early versions to help users navigate section groupings.
…and it’s a GO!
It was a bit of a rough journey, but well worth it. The net result: back-of-house staff training content is now shareable with Target guests – so when a question arises, answers and inspiration are easily at hand, in every store.
It should be mentioned that Target has in-house creative, and a go-to digital agency – so, if we were to pitch this idea cold, it would likely be impossible. However, through building staff education content and later extending to guest-facing (with the blessing of an amazing client team) we were able to realize the vision of a high-level Beauty experience in each store.
The Results
All of the above work was presented in annual program optimization meetings and may be in various phases of roll-out. From an agency perspective, the quality of creative work improved, the retainer increased dramatically, and a more diverse range of guests enjoyed an elevated shopping experience.
