Originally founded in 1902, national retailer Target cultivates a loyal fanbase through its affordable prices, exclusive in-house brands, and industry-leading social media presence.
Industry: Retail & E-Commerce
Annual Revenue: $93B
Locations: 1900+
Teams in Opal: Organic and Paid Social (and all teams who contribute to that content)
Challenge: Deliver a consistent brand experience across teams and channels
For massive consumer brands, social media is a multi-team endeavor. Target is no exception: their in-house media agency, brand marketing, recruitment, communications, and external agency partners all produce social content across several channels to be consumed by their millions of engaged followers.
According to Kelsey Dahlager, Senior Manager of Social Evolution, this poses a real problem: “Our Target guests don’t care what Target team produced the content that they’re seeing—they just know one Target. So if we’re putting different messages with different strategies and different priorities out in the world, we run the risk of looking disjointed.”
Solution: Opal delivers visibility to Target social teams
That’s why, for the past six years, Kelsey’s team has relied on Opal to provide the key to showing up as one cohesive brand: visibility. “Our goal is to have everyone who plays in the social space on behalf of Target in Opal for content planning,” Kelsey said.
“Before anything goes live into the world, that thing should be in Opal.”
Given the volume of content Target produces (300 pieces per day), no one person touches every asset, but the added visibility helps identify mixed messages or conflicting stories. “We’re seeing that content before it goes live, as opposed to not knowing what another team is doing in social until it’s on Facebook and the guests can already see it,” said Kelsey. “Opal has really helped us avoid being 10 different Targets when we show up in that social space.”
Results: Collaborating on thousands of social moments—while saving time—in Opal
Today, with the Organic and Paid Social teams planning social media content in Opal, Target organizes their work across product categories and produces thousands of branded social moments each year.
Kelsey credits helpful features like nested labels and templated “Stamps” with saving Target teams valuable time. “Stamps basically cut out three minutes of every moment’s creation, and when you’re talking thousands of moments, it’s huge for us,” said Kelsey. “It’s also made it a lot easier to train people, and cuts down on random human errors.” Teams also use Opal’s dynamic presentations to share campaign assets and activities with leadership and publishing integrations which make it easier to get approved Opal content into the social platform for which it’s intended.
But for Kelsey, it all comes back to one key benefit: “That visibility over the fence to see what other teams are doing helps us all sleep better at night. Ultimately, Opal leads to a more cohesive Target on social.”