Logo for boycott-Target Facebook group

The marketing for Target’s Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular,  the retail giant’s official launch of its fall clothing line, has become hijacked by people upset with Target’s donation to MN Forward, a Republican-run independent expenditure committee that has endorsed gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. The social marketing for the New York City launch has become marred with anti-Target messages.

David J. Carr, digital strategy director at Chemistry Group, detailed the social media backfire:

Unfortunately the “community’s shared responses” all over the Facebook page and wider web have nothing to do with the campaign and everything to do with the Target’s donation to Minnesota Forward, a republican group in Target’s home-state of Minnesota, which is a lot less equal rights focused than Target itself.

The campaign has now become a channel for debate and outrage with people a lot less interested in the spectacular 20-minute performance accompanied by an original soundtrack by Squeak E. Clean, aka Sam Spiegel, performed by a 30-piece orchestra and 10-person chorus.

Transparency and consistency online is vital. If your brand and your deeds diverge you will be found out and called out.

Unfortunately for Target and Mother NY this has happened in a big way – just showing that for real people there are a lot more important things than advertising.

“I won’t take responsibility … Somebody told me about Wikipedia, where people can put in whatever they want into, in my name. I tried to correct some of it … somebody decided I had a pet rooster, somebody else said I was an international opera talent, but I decided not to go into it, and you know what … this is bull.”

Mondale’s Wikipedia entry has apparently since been scrubbed of any poultry or operatic claims.

The interview — which focuses on Mondale’s views as an elder statesman and his new role as honorary Norwegian consul-general in Minneapolis — appears in the latest issue of Nordic Reach but took place on  June 4, the day after Barack Obama announced he’d clinched the Democratic nomination for president at the Xcel Center in St. Paul. That was the same day on which Mondale switched his own endorsement from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Obama — although on MySpace, the interviewer informs Mondale, Obama was already one of his top friends.