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In the last 12 months, Target has publicly walked back its long-held DEI commitments, faced a weeks-long boycott from customers, and become one of several corporations that diminished its annual support for NYC Pride. But when June 1 rolled around, the company still trotted out its annual collection of Pride-inspired, rainbow-adorned merchand, for a number of reasons, its not landing well with queer customers. This years collection includes a series of apparel printed with slogans like Authentically Me and Glowing with Pride, rainbow-hued cat and dog doys, and, oddly enough, a couple of Pride-themed collectible bird figurines. Since the merch debuted, customers have been quick to notice an issue: Several of the items labels are printed with lorem ipsum filler copy. Targets pathetic 2025 Pride collection has arrived, one Reddit post on the subject reads. According to a spokesperson, Target is aware of the error, which it says originated with a vendor, and is working to address the issue. But for many customers, this labeling oversight feels like both a symptom and a symbol of larger issues at Target. For years, the company has turned Pride Month into a full-on branding extravaganza, releasing entire collections in stores and showing up as a sponsor at Pride parades across the country. In a series of events starting in 2023, though, Target has capitulated to rising conservative pressure, dialing back its Pride merch, ending its DEI commitments, and, this year, retreating from Pride parade sponsorship. Taken together, these factors make Targets 2025 Pride collection feel, at best, like a desperate bid to save face, and, at worst, like an attempt to cash in on a community that its too afraid to support outside of store walls. Targets retreat from Pride Target first launched pride products in 2015, and largely continued to expand its Pride-based inventory in the years following, openly doubling down on its support for the queer community during a bout of transphobic backlash in 2017. However, starting in 2023, the brands approach to Pride has been in flux. In May of 2023, CEO Brian Cornell told Fortunes Leadership Next podcast that the companys DEI efforts had fueled much of our growth over the last nine years. Mere weeks later, though, Target removed some items from its annual Pride collection after receiving an influx of conservative pushback, and even threats to its employees, over the items. The waters have been increasingly muddy for Targets Pride efforts ever since. In 2024, the company scaled back its Pride Month sections from all stores to only select locations and online. Then, this January, as companies across the country stepped back from DEI initiatives under the Trump administration, Target announced a series of its own concessions. The brand shared it was concluding certain goals and initiatives tied to racial equity in hiring, no longer participating in external surveys from the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization the Human Rights Campaign, and renaming its supplier diversity team to supplier engagement, shifting its focus away from explicitly courting brands with diverse ownership. To many loyal customers, this announcement felt like a betrayal, especially given that Target had previously been more vocal than its corporate peers on DEI initiativesand that the company has profited annually on Pride Month. This sparked a boycott of the brand that caused foot traffic to drop and share prices to plummet. In the aftermath, the Twin Cities pride parade announced that it would no longer accept Target as a sponsor. And, according to NYC Pride spokesperson Kevin Kilbride, Target was one of several brands that either backed out, reduced its contribution, or asked for its involvement to go unpublicized in the event. Targets retreat from Pride is part of a larger trend this year of corporations choosing not to renew their sponsorshipa pattern thats left many queer consumers wondering if corporate support was always just rainbow washing, or an attempt to signal affinity with LGBTQ+ customers merely to profit off of them. The [queer] community has been completely abandoned by a number of major companies, across a lot of brand categories, Joanna Schwartz, a professor at Georgia College & State University with a specialty in LGBTQ+ marketing, told Fast Company in May. The current prevailing wind is out of a far more conservative place, and companies are trying not to make anyone mad, but the companies that were really trying to make an easy buck off of the community were the first ones to leave. ‘Now they’re trying to keep getting our money, while denying our humanity’ Now that Pride Month has officially arrived, Target is left in a sticky situation. The company is attempting to walk a tightrope between avoiding a conservative outcry for its Pride merch while also striving not to alienate LGBTQ+ customers (who, according to a 2023 study by the investment adviser LGBT Capital, hold an estimated $3.9 trillion in global purchasing power). This year, Targets Pride collection looks fairly similar to last years and is, once again, only available in some locations. In a statement to Fast Company, a spokesperson shared, weare absolutely dedicated to fostering inclusivity for everyoneour team members, our guests, our supply partners, and the more than 2,000 communities were proud to serve. As we have for many years, we will continue to mark Pride Month by offering an assortment of celebratory products, hosting internal programming to support our incredible team, and sponsoring local events in neighborhoods across the country. Regardless of its intentions, Targets Pride merch is coming off decidedly hollow for queer customers this year, given its backtracking from the community at large. Whenever its time to profit off Pride, Target rolls out the rainbows, one X user wrote. But when it comes time to actually stand with the queer community? Crickets. Your Pride merch means nothing without a spine. On Reddit, users under a post regarding the unfinished lorem ipsum tags expressed discomfort with parts of the collection. One of the items is a moving truck figurine decked out in the lesbian flag and the phrase “Move N,” a reference to the concept of U-Hauling. Per Urban Dictionary, the slang term pokes fun at the stereotype of the speedy act of moving in together after a brief courtship between lesbians. One commenter called the figurine insulting AF. Others pointed out the lack of any reference to the trans or nonbinary communities. Still others were generally frustrated with the companys unreliable support. Gay folks never asked for Target to sell cheap low quality merch with rainbows splattered all over it, one user commented. All we asked for was to be treated fairly and allowed to live our lives. They made this shit to get our business. Now they’re trying to keep getting our money, while denying our humanity.
Category:
E-Commerce
Everyday, Uber books more than 30 million rides around the world. Each of these trips tells the company something about its customers. Where theyre going, what theyre doing, and when they are there. Then there are the tens of millions of Uber Eats orders processed each day, which clocks what people are buying, how often, and when. Combined, you have an incredibly valuable collection of data for other brands to use in order to get our attention. Now, Uber is officially launching its own in-house Creative Studio to help brands to do exactly that. The new division of Uber Advertising will be working with brands to create not only adds on its digital platform, but custom IRL experiences like special ride offers, giveaways, and more. Ubers global head of sales Megan Ramm says that this is more about formalizing something brands have been asking for given how the companys platform is such a natural bridge between our online and offline lives. Uber is where we feel culture shows up in real life, says Ramm. When something big is happening in the world, we see it on Uber. If it’s an event or a product drop, a concert, or even coming home from the office, it’s all happening in real life. And we’re seeing that’s when and how brands want to connect with people that are using the platform. The rapid rise of retail media networks in recent years is well-documented. Everything from store shelves to ecommerce apps have become media opportunities for advertising. Dentsu research has reported that 75% of US consumers are influenced by brands advertised in-store, and eMarketer reported that U.S. Retail Media Ad spending was up by $4 billion in 2024. This new offering from Uber makes perfect sense. The company has already long utilized the captive audience on its apps as a vehicle for brands to get our attention, now its expanding that to actually working to craft a wider variety of ways for brands to do just that. Custom creative Tech platforms like Google and Facebook, as well as media companies like The New York Times and The Atlantic have long had in-house creative teams helping brand clients connect with users on their platforms. Previously, brands could (and still can) buy ad space on Uber platforms directly or programmatically, with their own creative. What the Creative Studio offers is an expanded, more bespoke option of what those ads can be, and how those brands show up on the Uber platform and in users’ real-life Uber experience. When you look at retail media, it’s really culture that converts, says Ramm. And that’s what’s happening online and offline. We’re launching this Creative Studio to help the premium brands we’re already working with, and others, to tap into that flow with experiences that feel organic to both the brands and Uber. The new Creative Studio worked with Diageo in late 2024 on a holiday campaign that gave Uber Eats users the chance to order a caroler or Christmas tree directly to their doorstep. In May, La Mer partnered with Uber Advertising during Formula Ones Miami Grand Prix. The Creative Studio worked with the skincare brand to give Uber Premier riders the chance to Go Home with La Mer in an ultra luxury vehicle, with surprise free gifts from La Mer inside the car. @livelikeria Late nights just got a glow-up. From May 24, @LA MER has teamed up with @Uber to bring beauty sleep straight to your backseat. Select an Uber Premier in Miami between 6PMmidnight and you might just end up in a La Mer luxury ride with deluxe samples waiting for you. #LaMerPartner original sound – Ria Michelle Ramm says that Uber Advertising has surpassed an annual revenue of $1.5 billion, growing 60% year over year. Our audience is sophisticated, they like to see things in real-time, and engage with things in real-life, she says. We’ve seen that in our Gen Uber research. So this is about connecting the experiential with the customization of what you’re getting on the platform.
Category:
E-Commerce
Five public pools in Newark, New Jersey, just got an unusual upgrade. Painted in bright neon colors and sporting far-out shapes, five custom-designed cabanas have been installed on the decks of these public pools, one at each location. Created by second-year design-build students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design, the cabanas offer seating, shading, and a generally unconventional poolside experience. The cabanas are the result of a 15-week college-wide design project involving roughly 170 students. Initiated through a long-standing relationship between Newark’s recreation department and NJIT senior lecturer Mark Bess, the project was aimed at filling a large void in the city’s public pool offerings. The pool areas didn’t have any types of amenity at all. It was essentially concrete platforms. There was nothing there, Bess says. This provided some useful function as well as giving the students an opportunity to stretch out a little bit. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] A public private partnership was formed between NJIT, the city of Newark, and the logistics real estate company Prologis, which provided $16,500 in funding for the cabanas. Cities don’t often have the budget for state-of-the-art amenities like this, so this public-private partnership is a model for how municipalities can find creative solutions to improve public resources, says Donnell Redding, director of Newark’s Department of Recreation, Cultural Affairs and Senior Services. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] Erin Pellegrino, an adjunct instructor at NJIT, worked with students on the designs, and held regular reviews with city officials and Prologis to review the ideas taking shape. Participating students initially came up with dozens of concepts that then got whittled down to 10 finalist ideas. Through 3D design and scale physical modeling, the students landed on five final designs that they then built themselves. The cabana designs range from familiar lounge chairs to more experimental shade structures. We actually try to avoid using the word cabana at the early stages, says Pellegrino. We try to tell students this is a pavilion. It needs to host sitting and laying and, you know, relaxing . . . perhaps even eating and communicating. So we try to give them verbs instead of nouns. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] One of the cabanas is a row of chairs with rounded backs and an overhang that folds from behind like a crashing wave. Another is a geometrical puzzle of benches, tables, and walls that looks like its made out of Tetris blocks. Another resembles the metal fingers of an arcade’s claw machine, draped with fabric shade cloth. We give them a long leash, particularly early on, Pellegrino says. That usually results in some really interesting ideas. Then, when they have to build it, and they have to sit in it, that’s when they start to refine it and bring it back to reality. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] Pellegrino and other NJIT instructors helped ensure the designs were feasible from a variety of perspectives, including the $16,500 budget provided by Prologis, the liability the school faced by putting these objects in public places, and even logistical issues like how much each cabana weighs and how it would be transported from the college to the pool. The cabanas were installed in late May. Pellegrino says an in-kind donation from a local paint store of about $3,000 worth of paint and other finishing materials should set the cabanas up to survive for at least five years, if more aren’t requested sooner. I would love to do it again. There’s certainly room for more of these things at most public pools and other kinds of public spaces, Pellegrino says. But that’s going to be dependent on money, like everything else.
Category:
E-Commerce
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