Target
Integrated Advertising Campaign

Starting with the national phenomenon that has become known as “Black Friday,” the immediate days following Thanksgiving are the most critical period in the sales year for retailers across the country. Target needed an integrated campaign that would stand out from the door-busting/low-price messaging of its many competitors, stay true to the unique tone and design-consciousness of the brand and, most importantly, get people pumped to get to their sale by 6am Friday morning.

Target
Integrated Advertising Campaign

How did we inspire millions of shoppers to get to Target on Black Friday? By first inviting them to help an animated icon do it first. In the days preceding Thanksgiving, four national TV spots and a slew of rich media and standard online banners directed viewers to target.com where they could play “The Race to the 2-Day Sale” and meet the one-and-only Cartman.

Made up of 23 animated segments — and each with their own share of twists, turns and Easter eggs — the game invited Target’s target to decide how Cartman would get to the sale through a series of choices. At the end of the game, players could post their actual game onto a personal blog or Facebook page and enter a sweepstakes to win a $25 Gift Card.

Adding campaign components that were as fun to discover as the game itself, highlights of Cartman’s adventures were posted by number on YouTube, allowing viewers to see which animated tangents they might have missed and “collect” them all. And in cities across the country, we employed projection trucks to bring larger-than-life versions of Cartman to life on city buildings. Depending on the speed of the vehicle, the projection featured Cartman running, sprinting, walking or (in midtown traffic) just jogging in place.

Target
Integrated Advertising Campaign

Cartman not only arrived promptly at the 2-Day Sale millions of times in his game, he helped countless others do it in real life — more than 6 million visitors raced to the campaign site (up 38% from 2006). The game itself was played over 7.7 million times and there were more than 800,000 sweepstakes entries.

Cartman also loaded his cart with a National Gold ADDY for the online component of the campaign and the OMMA Best in Show for Integrated Online Campaign.