Taking Aim at Target: Think That V is a CoinkyDink?
The Flickr photographer, Bennett says this billboard is in Times Square, NYC, about 20′ x 20′. I’m waiting for a corporate callback with an explanation from a ‘Target Team member.’ Meanwhile, the universal issue is sexualized ad slop, and how we need to just freakin’ STOP it.
The tasteless toddler tee “Hooters Girl in Training” (hat tip to Corporate Babysitter) is off the charts horrid, and “Playground Pimp” infant wear from idiot parents trying to be clever puts a bee in my bonnet too…But if BIG BOX retail is onboard the objectification train, you’re waving the proverbial red flag in front of a bull here…
It’s not everyday I unequivocally agree with Steve Hall at Adrants, but the industry commentary dissing his admonishment was enough to make my skin crawl. Steve, this time you hit the bullseye…
This Target ad is senselessly subversive on so many levels that it begs pointing out this article in the U.K. Telegraph headlined, Girls Being Brainwashed to Be Promiscuous featuring Carol Platt Liebau’s new book about how our sex-obsessed culture damages girls.
This ad may not be QUITE as blatant as some of the other spread-eagle ambient billboards we’ve featured or as viral as the onslaught of Axe videos making the rounds, but it’s subliminal to the point of guffaw. Regardless, Author Liebau, who is also managing editor of Harvard Law Review, points out:
“The new female imperative is that it is only through promiscuity and sexual aggression that girls can achieve admiration and recognition…there is scant recognition or respect for women’s achievements unless they revolve around sex…Girls are being led to believe they’re in control when it comes to sexual relationships but they’re actually living in a profoundly anti-feminist landscape where girls compete for attention on the basis of how much they are sexually willing to do for the boys.”
Yup. As I’ve said before, this doesn’t fall into the whole ‘third wave feminism’ argument, objectification is toxic profiteering and soul-smashing, no more, no less.
Liebau goes on to say that teenage girls are growing up in a culture in which being called “a slut” is preferable to being labeled “a prude.”
Sadly, I’ve witnessed this way down at the elementary school levels in our documentary film in development, Body Blitz: Media Shaping Youth.
C’mon, what’s it gonna take, people?
Does anyone CARE kids’ psyches are being trashed?
Drs. Sharon Lamb & Lyn Mikel Brown, our Shaping Youth advisory board members at Packaging Girlhood have written an entire tome citing examples like this, backed up by the 72-page APA study on the impact of early sexualization.
So where’s the mainstream meltdown?
Sure there are tiny orgs like Shaping Youth, About-Face, Dads and Daughters and such, but what about parents engaging their pocketbooks in this movement of cause and effect media messaging?
This review on the Sexuality blog from About has solid links to an opposing view of Liebau’s book reviewed on AlterNet, and this Science Book review airs a polarity of views, duly noting that Liebau points to a plethora of evidence of the problem but less on a solution…To be clear, I haven’t read it yet, so this is aimed at hyper-sexualized kids products and ambient objectification messages universally.
Solutions are our full focus at Shaping Youth, and I can tell you we’re “working on it” but clearly not fast enough to keep up with the churn! How? Counter-marketing…peer to peer messaging…media literacy…economic backlash.
Our ‘THREEP’ stands for “Three Ps”–precedent, persuasiveness, and peer perpetuation, and we’re testing these tactics as fast as we can to shift and instill healthier worldviews for kids.
But when ambient ads like these are cranked out in volumes, even from FAMILY household chain stores, it’s hard to ‘target’ our counter-marketing tactics to have the level of reach that mass media dominance holds.
Wanna help?
Our consortium is filling with media and marketing pros, but we need to reach out to social media, viral, and virtual worlds to start infiltrating on a much bigger scale and are anxious to get our site overhaul and research outcomes complete.
Feel free to send any digital media mavens my way (amy at shaping youth dot org) —interns, volunteers, parents, press, ping me!
Update: Corporate Call/Branding Issues
No, still haven’t heard back from Target’s PR machine yet, but on a related note, I wanted to open up yet another dialog about when brands are used in less than ideal ways…like this one about teens ‘at risk’ from ipod overuse (the ol’ planes, trains and automobiles problem when kids are tethered to media and don’t hear the warning signs)
Is this PSA fair or foul? Will Apple have a hissy? It certainly, makes the point…I can see it on billboards and transit signs in a blink.
Is there a difference when media ’serves’ the public in terms of brand erosion and trademark use? Where do we draw the chalk line? –a.
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Well, gosh, George, again…I LIKE Target, and I’d like to think they just misstepped here, and have learned from their mistakes, but only time will tell.
Since I never ‘officially complained’ I never received the form letter response that has been circulating I’ve heard. Kind of strange, actually.
That said, to have all this brouhaha drag BOTH Shaping Youth and Target through the hurricane of media muck and misinformation, one might think it would warrant at least a letter or a call…
Guess maybe I shouldn’t be so optimistic of ‘lessons learned’ if their silence is any indication of ‘outreach’ to their core community.
ugh…this misinformed minutiae about it being about this ‘one ad’ is so annoying…
I may have to do a post and say once and for all:
This is a ‘non-story’ for the positive social change work we’re doing here at Shaping Youth…we’ve covered blatant instances of ‘sexualized ad slop’ (media loves that line for some reason) so this one pales by comparison in terms of the ad itself without being put into larger context.
I wish we’d either elevate the dialog to a much larger context of objectification/ambient advertising and the impact on pop culture, or bury this in the circular file of corporate/customer service blunders to learn from.
As it is, ‘tarzshay’ could easily inspire copycat corps to mirror the tactics of free press controversy as an ad strategy.
Out of thousands of our posted topics (using the power of media for positive change, Twitter fundraising to send orphans to college in 24 hours, Age of Conversation global social media raising $11K for children’s charity) worthy media literacy, ecology, nutrition, and global counter-marketing programs for kids, THIS is the blog post that’s pulled for ‘mainstream media’ attention?
What a shame. What a loss. What a lousy target. sigh.
I think the problem is the amateur nature and limited reach of your blog. Simply put, any person can start a blog, and 100s of 1000s already have.
You’re entitled to your opinion, most certainly, but it’s interesting that the AMLA, pediatricians, children’s psychologists, educators/academics and child advocacy groups throughout the globe have written kudos for ‘taking the high road’ by ignoring flamers/trolls/and ignorant comments that hide behind anonymity and vitriol rather than debate the facts and issues in an objective, civilized manner.
Here’s a sample, just to enlighten a few…
[...] say ‘don’t we all?’ but risk being flamed again…plenty of that via the ‘Target billboard brouhaha. [...]
“I clicked through a series of links to find this post. Judging from the brouhaha surrounding it I figured I had better see the actual source. So let me tell you my reactions to this ad in the order they occurred.
1. Oh that is what I did at Lakeside to keep all the other kids off the center so I would be the last one up! (P.S. I’m a guy but all the girls did the same exact thing. It’s called center of gravity.)
2. Ah I get it, snow gear so the idea is to make a snow angel.
3. Is she going to fall? (Finally got the perspective since the picture wasn’t clear on that.)
4. Wow that reminds me of the people getting in velcro suites and throwing themselves at walls.
What happened next was I read through the comments here. It took me a bit but then I figured out what the hell you people were complaining about. Then I got what the fuss was about, you are obsessed with sex. It just colors all of your interpretations about everything.
Let me digress for a moment. I have this t-shirt some friends got me from Joe’s Crab Shack tears ago. I personally love it since it shows quite a bit about the people that read it. The front reads “Got Crabs?” in the font of the “Got Milk?” adds. The back, reads “We do! Joe’s Crab Shack.”
I have received four different types of reactions from this t-shirt. The first is from children who either don’t know what crabs are in either the edible or sexual sense. They look and then just go on with whatever the hell they are doing. The second is from people who get both senses and always, I really do mean always, ask to see the back of the shirt if they have never seen it before. The third is from 10-20 year olds who just snicker (exactly like I experienced and did 23 years ago) at every mention that might just possible relate to sex. The fourth is the people who only see the sexual connotation and either glare or tell me what a horrible person I am.
It’s really only the fourth group that I used too laugh my a** off at. Then I realized that they might have to, or have raised, the 10-20 year olds that snickered. I don’t even want to think about that poor kids who didn’t even give it a second look.
The only thing that hyperawareness of sexual content of any kind, vague or no, teaches a child is to look for it everywhere and, more important, give it a special significance. Now what they do with it when they go to rebel, well I’ll leave that for an exercise for the readers.
With that said I want to go back to why I had the reactions I did to this oh so horrible add. It is because my parents explained to me that advertisements where not reality. Oh and the showed it to me when I “really, really wanted the super cool toy!” I was probably 7 or 8 at the time. As I got older they also expanded on the earlier lesson a bit when it came to beer commercials and James Bond. When I got to junior high and took the human sexuality class where they explained in great detail all of the tricks advertisers use to make women, and men by the way, look far better in adds then they do in real life, pretty much cemented it for me.
What it comes down to is we need to teach children to deal with things. Not just cover them in a protective shell. Once that shell is broken, and be sure it will, they will be lost. It’s one thing to teach them good values, whatever you think those are. It is quite another thing to have them exercise those values, and they do need to be exercised. Once they get out of that shell you want them to be as strong as they can be.
Isn’t that really what shaping youth is about? Teaching them to be as strong and self reliant as they can be?
Posted by: Phuul Author Profile Page | February 1, 2008 2:16 AM”
From the Name Development.com site…
More of the same,this time marketers TRYING to PURPOSELY ‘pull an Imus’ for shock value to get press:
In this case, SuperBowl Sunday ad rejections for Go Daddy…and Danica Patrick’s ‘body parts’/slang integration into brand naming innuendo: http://www.namedevelopment.com/blog/archives/2008/02/go_daddy_builds.html
Hat tip to Nancy Friedman on this similar brouhaha in the U.K., where name generation specialists note that whitewashing is everpresent:
Woolworth’s Lolita Brand of bedroom furniture for 6 year old girls called a “cynical mistake”
http://www.namedevelopment.com/blog/archives/2008/02/woolworths_loli.html
Um…does anyone ELSE see the pattern here? This ONGOING undercurrent is SO much more than a ‘one ad/Target’ issue, folks…Please, take off the blinders.
From the Name Development blog: “The news that Woolworth’s in the UK had to pull a bed with Lolita brand naming for pre-school girls has been met with hoots of laughter across the blogosphere after the company claimed to not be aware of the literary allusion to the sexually predatory pre-pubescent girl in Vladimir Nabokov’s famous novel, which was not only made into (at least) two movies but also referred to in the song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” by the Police.—Sorry, but it is difficult to believe that this was an inadvertent mistake, or that the brand naming was introduced without somebody raising an eyebrow…”
Finally, it looks like we’ll need to close comments on this one as it’s devolved to the land of trolls, spammers, & autobots who can’t express beyond four letter words of indignation.
The erudite have moved on to the much larger conversation; it’s all been said in the 100+ comments prior…so if you haven’t ‘gotten it’ by now…you’re not gonna.
[...] flamers that didn’t take the time to research and fact check Shaping Youth’s original editorial context. If it’s one thing I’ve learned in the last week of media madness it’s that the “Age of [...]
hey amy check ur page about the negative influence of happy bunny, peope have made comments and i would like to see ur response
Hi…we saw them, just chose not to ‘engage’ as we’ve spent way too much time with trolls lately; and we’re all about the power of the positive…our board said ‘don’t take the bait’ as it trivializes the much bigger conversation on ambient ads behavioral cues in general.
Here’s a FUN version of ambient advertising…asking for kids to find the good, the bad and the ugly… http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=448
To answer you though, I’d say Target is MILD by comparison, as are the tees w/’tude…but it still contributes to the overall cacophony of ‘negative noise’ as urban wallpaper…
Our teen and tween advisory board simply said, ‘they’re trolling, and bored; ignore ‘em’ so we’re taking the high road, as usual.
btw, If I had a nickel for every kid who says advertising ‘doesn’t impact them in the least’ then proceeds to exhibit the exact same smarmy behavior to prove the point that they HAVE been impacted by cultural cues (trash talk/gutter mouth/flaming vs. productive discourse) then I’d be very, very, wealthy…
It’s kinda like the kids that tell me I “must need to drink some booze and get laid” …ironic how they manage to ‘make my point’ in one short sentence strand…without me even lifting a pen…
p.s. Comments are supposed to be ‘closed’ on this one as we moved on over a month ago, so I’ve gotta talk to my tech guy for troubleshooting…hope that answered your question though…?
thanks for that..i agree
[...] die Wirkung von Werbung auf Kinder. Als sie die Handelskette Target wegen einer, in ihren Augen frauenverachtenden, Werbeanzeige ansprach bekam sie nur zu hören, dass man es nicht nötig habe mit Bloggern zu reden. [...]
[...] the peculiar advertisement has raised many questions. You can see some discussion of the ad here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Apparently, Target is refusing to talk to [...]
[...] the peculiar advertisement has raised many questions. You can see some discussion of the ad here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Apparently, Target is refusing to talk to [...]
Oh…and Target…PLEASE don’t try to tell anyone this was an ‘accident’…your holographic lil’ doll for your upcoming runway show says it all…You’re trying Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard here…
http://www.adrants.com/2007/10/target-gets-holographic-with-grand.php
[...] dismisses blogger Amy Jussel from shapingyouth.org; blog storm ensues, story is picked up by the NY [...]
btw, since this dang story won’t die, (every day there are pings and links resurrecting the bloody thing) I’ll add this BRILLIANT response on another blog, http://www.unboundedition.com/content/view/4451/54/
since I keep getting asked the same question…
’what would you have done if you were Target?’ etc.
“Bloggers are consumers…written by E.R., January 28, 2008 05:31 PM Target gets a lot right, but it’s true, they tripped over this one. On this issue, they might have considered saying:
LOVE IT!!!! And here’s my response to his,
“This could have been both ‘defused’ and ‘diffused.’ In fact, that was such a brilliant retort, you should take over their PR, hands-down. wow. Impressive.
When I called Target to query CONTEXT it was for that very reason (I’m a former journalist fergoshsakes!)to give them the benefit of the doubt…(it’s my tweens’ favorite store right down the street; we even gave out $5 Target ‘gift cards’ in lieu of bday goodie bags!)
We’ve been dragged through the muck trying to reframe both Shaping Youth and the post itself into proper context, while dodging flamethrowers from those that haven’t read the whole story or misconstrued the context to being about ‘one ad’ when it was clearly about the surround sound environs of the retail atmosphere/normalization of objectification even in a family store…(in other words, the post was saying, “Et Tu, Target? Et tu?”)
[...] just fine then too, eh? Just a reminder, the PROLIFERATION of this ‘shock schlock’ is what my original Target article was about…(that is, before it got hijacked into a NYT sound-bite and flew through the [...]
[...] a recent Target billboard advertisement. She also called Target several times, to which Target responded in an email by saying that “Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets.” [...]
I work in the advertising industry, and all that I have to say about this ad is that it is innocent. It sounds to me like you need to get your head out of the gutter. I look at a young woman FULLY CLOTHED, NO CLEAVAGE, in winter gear smiling and having a good time, laying on that target in the same way as you would lay in the snow to make a snow angel. I am a young woman, and I agree that there are many advertisements out there that objectify women, and it’s disturbing and disgusting. But instead of attacking Target-whose ads have never been offensive in any way, perhaps you should attack American Apparel or Abercrombie and Fitch who blatantly objectify young women. Again lady, get your head out of the gutter-anyone that looks at that advertisement and immediatly notices that a young woman’s crotch is in the center of the target has some issues that certianly aren’t related to Target.
Ad Exec…if you READ ANY of this article or the comments above rather than react to the visual sound bite of what you THINK the article is about…you would see this has all been answered many times over.
I completely agree that A&F, Dolce & Gabbana, American Apparel and the other objectifying instances you mention present a much more heinous case of same, and a much clearer POV if that were my intent of the piece.
You must READ the piece, rather than react to a visual and a headline. That’s what media literacy is all about… Knee jerk reactions lead to misguided focus on minutiae rather than the backdrop of urban wallpaper, sexualized normalcy we’re speaking of…
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages?
Yaz, it depends on which subject you’re speaking of…the original context (objectification/normalization) or the ‘dissing the blogosphere’ story.
I saw some other languages discussing the latter, (in fact, see links above) but as one who is STILL mopping up from the ‘time sink’ of reframing the post into proper context so we weren’t dissed as ‘leftist PC censors’ or ‘right wing sockpuppets’ (believe me the flamers were out in force)
I can only say that if you open more of a global multilingual dialogue, I’d hope you do so responsibly. (both subjects are worthy of same!)
What I hope NOT to see is the VISUAL SOUND BITE. (vs. reading the original piece w/APA research on the normalization of objectification, or if you’re covering the ‘dissing new media’ angle, it needs deeper context on the nuances of customer service/response vehicles as well)
fyi, I’ll be deconstructing the whole experience in terms of what I learned about handling a media deluge when the conversation veers ‘off target’ in the 2008 blogosphere book for the upcoming sequel to The Age of Conversation book”—
Accuracy is key.
[...] like the heat of the New York Times spotlight annoyed me during my Target Corporation controversy (diluting my normalization of objectification conversation into a ‘snowangel vs. spreadeagle’ [...]
Dear Amy, hope this gets to you. Hopefully you can help expose a problem at Target. I was recently fired for stopping a 16 year old girl from stealing a bottle of alcohol. You can get alot of info on this by googleing.
dean babcock and target.
If you can use any other info please feel free to call me at 262-245-0931
thanks
Dean Babcock
Here’s one of the many links: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=736202
He was right, only to be wronged
Posted: April 6, 2008
” Dean Babcock spent almost 30 years as a cop in Delavan, so he’s seen the aftermath of drunken-driving accidents. Knows, too, how much trouble underage kids can get into and how much pain they can cause after getting their hands on a bottle of rum or tequila.
Plus, he’s a dad.
He was also a so-called protection specialist (a fancy name for a security guard, he says) at the Target store in Lake Geneva until getting fired for doing what any concerned adult would do.
Stopping, he says, a 16-year-old girl from taking a bottle of booze.
“They fired me for stopping a 16-year-old girl from stealing alcohol,” he said Sunday.
He doesn’t care all that much about the job. At 54 years old, he has a decent pension and was making only $8.50 an hour.
He just can’t believe what happened.
In early March, he says, he noticed a bottle of Captain Morgan rum was missing and, after checking a surveillance video, suspected a young girl of taking it.
On March 7, he says, she showed up again and took a $45 bottle of Patrón tequila.
“She’s a 100-pound girl,” Dean said. “She does three or four shots of that and that will do her in.”
So he did the only thing he could do. He intervened. Showed her a picture he had of her taking the Captain Morgan, got her to take the tequila out of her bag and then called her dad.
He could have simply called the police. But by the time they got there, she could have been long gone. Plus, he says, he was trying to handle it “low-key” because he knew that, technically, he’d violated a Target policy.
Only certain Target personnel, he says, are supposed to stop shoplifters. Never mind that, he says, none of them were there that day.
Dean, it seems, was not supposed to inconvenience the young thief. He wasn’t supposed to do the right thing. Lower-ranking Target employees are apparently not entrusted with doing the right thing. Not that he wasn’t allowed to ask a question.
“Can I help you find something?” he said he was supposed to ask.
“We cannot,” he said, “accuse a guest of stealing.”
Even a 16-year-old guest with a big bottle of tequila.
Even if the father of the girl, he says, appreciated what he did. And even if everyone who fears sharing the road with a high-schooler drunk on tequila would like to mail Dean Babcock a giant thank-you note right now.
He didn’t get a thank-you note. Instead, he got called into an office by a Target manager who heard what happened.
“You were not supposed to make the stop,” he said he was told.
“I am not going to let a 16-year-old girl walk out of here with alcohol,” he said he responded.
Most stores would give a man a raise about then. Four days later, he got a pink slip.
“I was fired,” he said, “for violating the policy” regarding when guests can be stopped.
Kristin Grieser, an assistant store manager for Target in Lake Geneva, confirmed that Dean was terminated and said she could not really provide details about what happened.
“We take shoplifting very seriously,” she said, “but we are also very cautious in making apprehensions.”
You can guess what that means.
That little girl, Dean said, “could have taken a shopping cart full and nobody would have stopped her.”
Would have just wished her a nice day, I guess. And, of course, asked her if she needed help finding anything else.”
Talk about blog fodder…sheesh. I’d call Target to get their comment, but hey, policy says they don’t talk to “non-traditional media.”
heehe. At least this is a ‘forward to a friend’ moment…I’m going to send it to Lisa at Parents for Ethical Marketing…after all, her entire blog is dedicated to being a “Corporate Babysitter.” 
Absolutely amazing.
Lisa’s used this in a new sociological context…Love this new site…check it out:
http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/06/19/targeting-target/
[...] think anyone that goes to Target stores read blogs,” stemming from Target’s now notorious statement saying it doesn’t “participate with nontraditional media.” (Side note: Yes you [...]
[...] chose the ‘marketing triumphs and tragedies’ category to reveal lessons learned from the Target fandango when the conversation veered away from its original [...]
[...] up there with what has now become “the infamous Target campaign gaffe” which started here on Shaping Youth, when I called to express a ‘what were you thinking?’ point of view and was met with [...]
[...] No…it’s because I already knew the ‘media conversation’ would miss the freakin’ point (just like the Target debacle). [...]
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[...] ShapingYouth recently posted about a potentially offensive ad from Target. I say “potentially” because it’s another one of those that, if you could divorce it from a world full of ads using sexualized images of women to sell crap, probably wouldn’t seem like a big deal on its own. AdRants does a good job summing up the issue: Ready for everyone to tell us we’re reading way, way too much into this Target billboard that places a certain area of a woman’s body highly targeted by men right in the middle of its signature target logo. But you can’t tell us not a single soul at Target or its agency looked at this and didn’t see a certain interpretation that could be construed as objectifying to women. There’s just no way. [...]
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages
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