Strategy remodeled: How Target drove 500k+ visits to its newly updated stores

Industry

Retail

Challenge

After remodeling hundreds of stores across the country, Target needed more than awareness — it needed a way to make each reopening feel relevant to local communities while still achieving national reach.

Results

The campaign redefined how Target reintroduced remodeled locations. With creative that updated in real time and tailored messaging around each store, Target turned store openings into measurable visits. The effort not only brought loyal shoppers back but also attracted new customers.

Key Product

Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

www.target.com/

72M

Consumers reached

533K

Incremental store visits

6.5%

Lift in FOOT TRAFFIC

Redefining the retail experience

Target, one of the world's most recognized brands and a leading American retailer, invested in remodeling hundreds of its stores across the nation. To draw attention to the initiative and get consumers back in its doors, the retail behemoth executed a strategically targeted, multi-month digital out-of-home (DOOH) activation.

Challenging the status quo

Target needed a way to inform consumers that the stores were now open following remodeling and provide updates if the renovation timelines changed.

DOOH provided the perfect platform to communicate store re-openings, combining public visibility with proximity to each store location. Its flexibility allowed messaging to adapt quickly to evolving remodeling schedules — something that would be more complex to manage across multiple traditional OOH placements.

Vistar Media enabled Target to execute this at scale, managing a highly detailed, location-specific campaign without adding operational or budgetary complexity.

Journey to success

While wanting to generate mass engagement, Target also wanted to localize the campaign for each individual remodeled store. The retailer needed to saturate particular areas with awareness and, at the same time, drive consumers to its locations across 65 cities and 22 states. To do this, Target ran specific messaging within a three-mile proximity to each store, enhancing the relevance of the campaign to each neighborhood.

A fruitful investment

Target conducted a foot traffic study to evaluate the impact of DOOH exposure on actual consumer visits — ultimately proving that its national yet local strategy was effective in getting shoppers through its doors.

Flexing with technology

The campaign strategy was both custom and flexible, leveraging the agility of programmatic DOOH to adjust in real time whenever remodeling plans or conditions shifted across the nearly six-month campaign. For instance, if a store's project was running behind or ready sooner than anticipated, the brand could quickly make adjustments, within hours, to meet its changing circumstances.

Further, Vistar’s DSP offered sophisticated creative support, requiring only limited specs to deliver seamless, accurate displays across ten different OOH venue types.

Making every visit count

The campaign also drove a proven lift in visits among consumers who had not previously been Target customers, showcasing the effectiveness of using highly targeted out-of-home to acquire new customers.

72M consumers reached
533K incremental store visits
+6.5% lift in foot traffic

This success earned the campaign a Gold Award at the 2022 OAAA Media Plan Awards, recognizing the campaign's innovation and influence in retail marketing.

GSTV-Target