Advertising: A Contest From Target With a High-Tech Twist

The retailer, Target, part of the Target Corporation, and the new Co.Labs technology blog published by Fast Company magazine, owned by Mansueto Ventures, sought out developers to take part in a competition they called the Retail Accelerator contest. The goal was to encourage the development of mobile apps with shopping purposes; the grand prize winners would receive $75,000 and a chance to have their entry brought to life by Target for customers to use.

The contest began in March at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. On Wednesday, Target and Co.Labs plan to announce the winners of the grand prize: a group of seven people who work at TBWA/Chiat/Day and TBWA Worldwide in New York, part of the Omnicom Group, and competed on their own, separate from the agencies, under the name Team Pilot.

Team Pilot’s winning entry, called Divvy, is meant to improve digital experiences in the realm of group shopping or social shopping by, for instance, enabling several people to update a shopping list in real time and making it easier to divide a bill among numerous shoppers and distribute copies of receipts among them.

The idea from Team Pilot — led by Christopher Reardon, team leader and head of user experience — was one of seven finalists in what was formally called the Co.Labs and Target Retail Accelerator contest. Each finalist received $10,000 and a chance to present to judges, including Jeffrey J. Jones, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Target in Minneapolis.

There were initially about 350 individuals and teams who registered for the contest, Mr. Jones said, of whom about 75 submitted completed entries. The 75 were winnowed to the seven finalists and then to the grand prize winner.

The genesis of the contest was a question Mr. Jones asked as follows: “How do we continue to find ideas to accelerate our multichannel agenda?” By that, he meant ways of engaging with customers that include “target.com, our in-store experience, our Target app and the mobile Web.”

“As a reader of Fast Company, someone who is passionate about design and technology, I felt we were going to what I believe is the best media source that understands what’s going on and has access to the right people Target has to know, the best minds in the R.& D. community,” Mr. Jones said.

The contest is another example of a popular trend on Madison Avenue known as content marketing, which provides consumers with articles, video clips, charts and other materials that are sponsored by marketers. The purpose of content marketing, also known as branded content, custom content or sponsored content, is to surmount the increasing skepticism among the public for traditional advertising.

“I wanted to create some different models of how we can work with advertising partners,” said Christine Osekoski, publisher of Fast Company in New York.

“If you’re going to work with them on custom content, the question becomes how you make sure it’s content readers really want to read,” she added. “You have to be selective.”

Matthew Smith, integrated advertising director at Fast Company, agreed, saying that in this instance “the interests of church and state and the client and the community all aligned” because “we were speaking to them in an authentic way.”

That was echoed by Chris Dannen, the editor of Co.Labs. A way to achieve compelling content is to be transparent with readers, Mr. Dannen said, because “if they can’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, they won’t trust you.”

As a result, “we let it happen as it happened,” he said of the contest, adding: “There was the chance that no one would submit anything good. We were biting our nails.”

Mr. Dannen also shared some shortcomings, principally that because “we did not give people stringent guidelines on what their submissions should look like, some people put all their energy into the idea, some did highly detailed mock-ups and some submitted sketches on graph paper.”

The contest concept was first brought up a year ago, Ms. Osekoski recalled, when she met Mr. Jones in Los Angeles at the introduction of another Fast Company blog, Co.Create.

Although “Target is not a traditional advertiser for Fast Company,” she said, the retailer was keenly interested in reaching out to developers through the magazine. “Fast Company could be the conduit, the connector, the consultant,” she added.

Target is running ads on the Co.Labs blog to promote the contest.

Target is involved in other content marketing efforts, including the publication of its own online magazine-cum-blog, A Bullseye View. Mr. Jones said he and other Target executives “love what’s come out of” the collaboration with Co.Labs. But he added, laughing, “don’t let Christine tell you I promised to do this again.”

Ms. Osekoski, when told of Mr. Jones’s remark, said, “He reads my mind,” and laughed.

Although Fast Company is happy with how the partnership has turned out, she added: “This is not a contest to name a shade of lipstick or a nail color. This was a huge experiment for everybody. It takes a lot of work.”