Badvertising

Halloween fun at Target!

Target’s Questionable Advertising: Shoppable Videos, Gimp Suits

Look, we love Target as much as the next person who finds that it’s oddly comforting to walk down aisle after fluorescent-lit aisle, knowing that everything we need–from food to furniture for your college dorm to designer apparel–is all available in one location at a relatively low price. For instance, one time in college we went to Target and bought a frozen turkey, a giant bouncy ball and a B.B. gun, and then drove to a field for Target target practice. (We kept the turkey in the car and ate it later.)

So in terms of mega-chains, Target is tops, no question. We do have some question, however, about its new advertising techniques. Such as: Read More

Fashion

Video

Jason Wu-mania over at Target

Updated: Jason Wu Collection Reveals Hole in Target’s Fashion Policy, Retailer Responds (Video)

Update: Target responds below!

Target: has a brand ever before fully encompassed Tina Brown‘s vision for a high/low cultural Utopia? Take for instance, the outlet’s weekend release of its new Jason Wu collection just in time for New York’s Fashion Week (for people who don’t live in New York). The collection sold out across the country only hours after they hit the shelves, and pretty soon the items were popping up on Ebay for resale faster than you could say “This is worse than Versace doing H&M.”

So what was the cause for this massive buyout? Apparently, couples like this: Read More

Whale Watch

The Category Killer.

Wooing Walmart: NYC brokers still have eyes for elusive retailer

The weekly phone calls. The dinner invites. The gifts.

When representatives from Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, waltz into the New York Hilton for this year’s two-day International Council of Shopping Centers conference, many of the city’s most intrepid retail brokers will be close behind them, perhaps even plying those officials with compliments, dinner invitations and business opportunities. Read More

Art World News

60-Second Art World

Game-Changers: Well-connected gallerist David Zwirner won the right to represent the Donald Judd Foundation, hard on the heels of Pace’s win of the Willem de Kooning estate.

Winner of the Week: Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Xiaogang, whose 1993 painting Chapter of a New Century–Birth of the People’s Republic of China II sold for $5.9 million Read More