LaBarge+Partners

I am not a loyal grocery store shopper.  Our small little DMA is surprisingly crowded with stores: Publix, Food Lion, Piggly Wiggly, Bi-Lo, Whole Foods, Earthfare, Wal-Mart, Target…not to mention local favorites like Veggie Bin and our amazing Farmers Market.

We have plenty of options and outside of specific items from specialty stores (I’m not finding my fancy cheese @ Bi-Lo), each grocery chain does not offer any real competitive advantage against the next.

When my pantry is bare and my fridge is scary, I ask myself two questions before heading out to the store:

1)  Which store is closest?

2)  Which store has what I need?

If I’m stocking up I’m most likely headed to Wal-Mart.  While slightly terrifying/overwhelming, Wal-Mart is the option that has staples I need @ the competitive price I want.  They surprise me by offering local produce and excite me with roll-backs (yay for cheap cereal!) They don’t always have what I need — terrible wine selection, weak health food — but price and convenience rules my day.  I can knock out my grocery shopping AND pick up the million other things I need.  There is no other store that lets me buy bananas, shower curtains, printer cartridges, milk and christmas lights in one foul swoop.

Until now.

Target is a bit of a wild card.  No doubt it’s a big box store but for some reason it feels cleaner, fresher, hipper and, dare I say, more lux, than its competitors.   Like Wal-Mart, Target sells everything from flat screens to cereal but unlike Wal-Mart, Target never ventured into the fresh food game.  That all changed in 2010.

In 2010 Target aggressively shifted into the fresh food game with a major, nationwide campaign and retro-fit grocery aisles in almost 400 stores.

Looking to grab consumers from Wal-Mart and grocery stores, Target entered the grocery game by adding fresh produce and meats to its list of low price point offerings.

But how do you enter the consideration set of smart, budget savvy grocery shoppers when you’ve essentially ignored their needs for years?

You go big.

The nationwide campaign took various shapes and sizes throughout 2010 but one major theme played consistent — Target went big.  They decorated a food truck to look like a bag of groceries and parked it on Michigan Avenue.  They handed out hundreds of bags of groceries and recruited A-list Celebrity Chefs to give live cooking demonstrations.  Target ran ads in local newspapers, sent direct mails and placed door hangers on homes.  They also took to the streets and distributed 10,000 samples of produce in Philadelphia using branded bicycles and trucks with the Target bull’s-eye logo and “Get Fresh Philadelphia!” messages.

Target won’t reveal how much they spent on the “Get Fresh” campaign but industry experts put the figure in the high 200 millions.

They certainly bought my attention.