“This is a cool way for a brand to take advantage of social media. Pulling off real-time interaction on this scale is impressive, to say the least.” —Sean Klassen

“One of my favorite pieces in the show, so perfect for the brand and its audience. It had that cheeky, whimsical tone you love to hear from Target, and the models looked like they were enjoying the show as well. It made me smile.” —Kris Kiger

Overview: Target is famous for its exclusive designer collections, but was selling the same groceries as everyone else. The Everyday Collection campaign showcases these day-to-day products as only Target can—fashionably. To entice shoppers to participate in the campaign, mono went to Twitter, where people share their everyday moments as they happen. Thus began the Tweet-to-Runway Show, the first live runway spectacular inspired by everyday tweets. The two-hour nonstop show featured models strutting down the catwalk and reading hundreds of crowd-sourced tweets, from musings on toilet paper to expressions of longing for cheese, each paired with products from The Everyday Collection.

• The Everyday Collection campaign included broadcast TV, out-of-home, radio, print, direct mail, newspaper inserts, in-store merchandise and digital banners.
• During the live runway event, tweets tagged #EverydayShow were curated, uploaded to a teleprompter, paired with related products and read on the runway by models.
• Tool of North America built a “tweet aggregator” that helped sift through 100,000+ tweets to ultimately find the 250+ that could be paired with Target Grocery products and used for the live show.

Comments by mono:
What was the response? “The Everyday Collection drove more social conversations in the first two weeks after launch than campaigns for brands that vastly outspent Target during that timeframe. Press coverage about everything from food to fashion featured the show and many of the tweeters. Viewers spent extra-long lunch hours tuned into the live stream, and most importantly, we gave everyday people their fifteen seconds of fame. One viewer summed it up best: ‘I can’t sit still for a 30-second commercial, but Target just got me to sit through a two-hour one. #EverydayShow #Brilliant.’”

What was the most challenging aspect of the project? “Planning and orchestrating the live event was a show in and of itself. Week by week, day by day—even hour by hour leading up to showtime—we encountered legal, creative and technical obstacles. The greatest challenge, however, was in the workflow process required to support real-time, user-generated content in a live show format. Four different teams (social, brand, legal and technical) had to work with each of the 250+ tweets to get them from the Internet to the runway, legally, in as little time as possible.”

What did you learn from the project? “Most brands want to be in complete control of their marketing, but by responding to real conversation (instead of driving it), Target could connect with people on their turf, on their terms. So we learned to plan for the unknown and think on our feet. For example, when we sent a tweet down the runway with the wrong username and got called out for it on Twitter, we bounced back, and minutes later one of our models apologized to the original tweeter live on the runway, without missing a step. The tweeter then shared our follow-up video with her 50,000+ followers.”