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Last week, Target Corporation issued a new directive to its store employees. As reported by Bloomberg News, the new store policy instructs employees, “if a shopper comes within 10 feet of you, then make sure you smile, make eye contact and greet or wave. If they come closer–within four feet–ask whether they need help or how their day is going.” Common courtesy? Perhaps. Good strategy. Negative. Why not give them something to smile about rather than admonish them to fix their face?
I’m sure there’s research commissioned by the brand showing a correlation between consumer perceptions of friendliness from store personnel and incremental purchases, but scripting those interactions with behavioral mandates rarely works. While authenticity can be operationalized, it has to be done systematically–from hire to retire. It requires active culture management and leadership. And it only works when it is in the service of an optimized marketing mix (product, place, price, promotion).
When you smile because you have to, not because you want to, you open the door for a dose of inauthenticity. Minnesotans are renowned for their authentic brand of nice, but this policy risks landing with all the sincerity of the required minimum “pieces of flair” at Chotchkies (IYKYK). When you create conditions for genuine engagement by surrounding employees with inspired merchandise, clear cultural values, and a brand they’re proud to represent, customers feel it and respond accordingly. Serve up the saccharine version and all you’re serving is empty calories.
If employees aren’t smiling, it’s not because they forgot how. It’s probably because there hasn’t been much to smile about.
The Target brand has been in trouble for some time. Financially, it’s been weathering rough seas since COVID. If you’d invested $100 in Target on January 3, 2022, it would now be worth just $43. That same $100 in Walmart would be worth $225. In Costco? $169. This brand, which was once celebrated as the reference point for other brands aspiring to achieve the same level of prestige in the zeitgeist, has lost its mojo.
The Brand Once Known for Joy
Target used to be a place of joy. You came in for detergent and walked out with a lamp, three candles, a throw pillow, and two impulse buys you absolutely didn’t need—but absolutely had to have. It was fun. It was curated. It was an experience. It felt like a modern lifestyle magazine come to life.
What fueled that joy wasn’t smiling employees, although a lot of employees surely did smile because they were surrounded by inspired product and fun, lively marketing campaigns. The marketing mix tailored the whole experience to feel like a great escape. Collaborations with Isaac Mizrahi, Missoni, Gwen Stefani, Michael Graves, and Jonathan Adler crashed servers, inspired waiting queues, and made high design feel extraordinarily accessible. Despite its affordability, it was an egalitarian magnet for all social classes. I recall a great marketing research project that studied Target parking lots from surveillance camera footage. Camrys and Bentleys parked adjacent to each other in blissful harmony. Well, maybe not quite, but Target did achieve a cachet that inspired the whimsical nickname of Tar-Jay (a Europeanized pronunciation of Target).
Even if Target didn’t have as many SKUs as Walmart, and its prices weren’t always lowest, it offered something better: taste. The brand had its finger on the pulse of culture and its eyes and ears on the aspirations of its customers.
That strategy seems to have been abandoned. The shelves are now more functional than fun. The product mix leans heavily into essentials and groceries, as if trying to out-Walmart Walmart. Meanwhile, the partnerships and design collabs that once defined the brand are fewer and farther between. Instead, stores are increasingly filled with locked cases and security cameras. That’s not a good recipe for serendipity.
Even the store footprint has shifted. Target has closed many of its urban mini-stores, the ones that used to serve as sanctuaries in cities like NYC and San Francisco—places where you could take a breath, poke around, and maybe fall in love with a $9 ceramic bowl you didn’t know you needed.
While Target has been regressing to a retail mean, Costco has invested in its own journey of the unexpected through the auspices of its Kirkland brand, perhaps one of the greatest private label stories in retail history. Their version of joy is served in bulk, but delivers on a promise of rich rewards for those who are members of the club. Meanwhile, Walmart continues to deliver on price and scale, even daring to enter the urban markets they once deliberately avoided and investing in a digital infrastructure that is challenging Amazon.
DEI Missteps and the Loss of Product Voice
This discussion would not be complete without mentioning the issue of the brand’s dance with DEI. For years, Target was celebrated as the gold standard for diversity and inclusion. It championed Black-owned brands, LGBTQ+ creators, and underrepresented entrepreneurs. Based in Minneapolis—the hot zone where George Floyd’s murder ignited a national conversation about race—Target didn’t just talk the DEI talk; it purposefully curated products from a more inclusive world. More than a gesture towards social justice, it was a strategy that made the products sold in the store more interesting, and consumers rewarded the effort with their wallets.
But when the backlash came over perceived “wokeness,” Target folded. They shut down all DEI programs. In doing so, they didn’t just lose customers from the left or right, they also lost their own authentic voice.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about rainbow t-shirts. The real value of Target’s DEI efforts was always in product. It was the energy of creators and designers from different walks of life, shaping a richer, more vibrant assortment. That’s what created loyalty, not the exploitative messaging, the virtue-signalling manifestos, or the over-the-top PRIDE merch. Trust me. While this proud gay man applauds any company that demonstrates allyship for the queer community, even I was whispering, “maybe turn it down a notch” the last time Target offered its Pride collection. The effort had become a performative characterization more than a commitment to a cause.
You Can’t Smile Your Way Out of a Broken Brand
Which brings us back to the 10-foot smile rule.
In the seminal work on the subject The Service Profit Chain, Harvard professors Jim Heskett, Earl Sasser, and Leonard Schlesinger gifted managers with the wisdom that satisfied customers are the product of satisfied employees. Employees derive satisfaction from systems, policies, and strategies that empower employees to generate value for customers. The key word in that last sentence is empower. No one is empowered by a memo with rules dictating when to smile.
In two of her most famous HBS cases, another legendary Harvard professor–the customer service and trust sage that is Frances Frei–detailed how Commerce Bank outperformed rivals by preferring to hire people who smiled when their face was naturally at rest. This was one part of a systemic strategy to outperform rivals in customer service.
In the best-selling Southwest Airlines case that she co-authored, she detailed how the company evaluated potential employees based on their natural inclination toward service. That brand cast flight crews by unorthodox hiring strategies that included gameplay, because the thesis behind this tactic was that folks who enjoy play will have the right attitude to deliver on the LUV Southwest promises every passenger.
The common thread between both these brands? They understood that you have to cast your brand through careful culture development, nourish it with resources that empower employees to deliver value in the moments that matter, and develop a business model that creates a competitive advantage that’s extremely hard to deposition or copy.
This is the path Target should follow. They need to reignite the brand from the inside out. That starts with product that generates delight. It follows with pricing that feels fair but sometimes premium. It means designing digital and physical spaces that invite you to explore, not just shop. And it requires creative campaigns that broadcast an authentic vision that charms customers and makes them feel the brand is uniquely theirs. If you need a point of reference, check out this new spot from Gap, which seems to be finding its soul again after a long time wandering in the desert. Under the leadership of new CEO, Richard Dickson, Gap is slowly but surely reminding us why its brand of basics is an American treasure.
When you align these four critical dimensions–product, place, price, promotion–and deliver them through a system that empowers the employee to generate delight, you won’t need to remind anyone to smile.