Up, up and away

Target’s new store brand Up & Up received its strongest promotional push to date this week, as the retailer featured the line of 850 items in a two-page spread at the front of its weekly circular. Up & Up products in such categories as household, baby, personal care, beauty and health have been filtering into stores for several months, where they have been called out with a variety of shopper marketing techniques, such as endcap signing, shelf-edge talkers and floor graphics. However, the circular ad marks the first national consumer marketing effort to let consumers know the Target brand with the familiar bull's-eye logo has changed to Up & Up with an upward pointing arrow logo. The switch was puzzling at first, given the tremendous equity of the bull's eye, but the wisdom of the rebranding effort has begun to reveal itself as the introduction of a new brand enables Target the opportunity to generate excitement among shoppers and an additional platform to communicate a price and value message. That shouldn’t be hard to do considering 600 of the 850 Up & Up products cost less than $5. Be on the lookout for national television ads now that the product launch is complete.