“Black History Month is a sacred time when we honor our legends and extraordinary ancestors,” intoned a video Target posted to Instagram last February. As if to underscore just how sacred, over January and February of last year, Target commemorated Black History Month seven more times on Instagram, for a total of eight posts on the platform, where it has 6.1 million followers.
Previously, Target posted about Black pride and history during Black History Month a total of eight times in 2021, six times in 2022, and 11 times in 2023.
This year, Target posted about Black History Month just once.
It was in a February 2 post that highlighted what it called its “#BlackHistoryMonth collection 🤎” of products from Black-owned and founded brands. That post (which Target also shared on Facebook), drew an avalanche of negative comments from Instagram users, who called out Target for championing the month just nine days after it announced it was rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, as we reported.
So did Target plan to post about Black History Month more this year, but stop after it was excoriated by commenters for that post (and for every post on various subjects since)? In repeated requests for comment, Retail Brew asked Target why it posted about Black History Month only once this year, and whether it considered it part of its decision to curtail its DEI efforts. Target did not respond to our questions, as it had not for our four previous recent stories about its DEI turnabout.
“They’re running scared”: Lola Bakare, a CMO advisor and inclusive marketing strategist and author of the 2024 book, Responsible Marketing: How to Create an Authentic and Inclusive Marketing Strategy, told Retail Brew she used to hold up Target as “best in class” when it came to the topic of her book.
We shared our findings with Bakare about the company dialing back its posts about Black History Month on social media this year.
“The whole thing is disappointing,” said Bakare, referring to Target dialing down both its diversity efforts and social media commemoration of Black History Month.
Bakare was not inclined to attribute a sound strategy to Target for its approach.
“Quite simply, they’re running scared,” she said.
Bakare lauded Costco for resisting the Trump administration’s demand that companies dismantle their diversity efforts. As for brands like Target that did capitulate, they did so out of “perceived risk aversion” rather than “real risk aversion,” she said.
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Target is “letting down consumers that have built trust in them over the years based on their bullishness of embracing the power of DEI,” Bakare said.
In each of the four weeks following Target’s DEI pullback, foot traffic fell in its stores YoY, as it did at Walmart, which also curtailed its DEI program, according to Placer.ai data; foot traffic at Costco, which resisted pressure to dump its DEI program, saw foot traffic rise YoY for all four weeks.
Target is “working against their business interests at this point when their goal should really be to do everything that serves their business interests,” Bakare said.
Spot check: Target appears less wary of Black History Month when it comes to advertising.
Retail Brew asked iSpot.tv, which tracks TV and streaming advertising, to compare Target’s campaigns for a Black History Month commercial it ran in 2024 compared to one it ran this year.
Since debuting on February 5 of this year until February 26, the spot had received 117.5 million household TV ad impressions, more than the 104.4 million ad impressions last year’s spot received over roughly the same period.
However, while Target spent much more on national TV advertising during the period this year, it did not spend proportionately more on its Black History spot. Last year’s expenditures to advertise its Black History Month spot accounted for about 24.4% of Target’s overall spend for the period; this year, it represented only about 10%.
Citing “several” unnamed advertising executives, a recent Ad Age article reported “marketers have trimmed initiatives around Black History Month.” The article continued, with confidence if not evidence, that “Ad Age has observed a noticeable decrease in Black History Month campaigns this year compared to the recent past.”
To be clear, though, the preponderance of criticism on social media against Target is not about the company not spending enough to advertise its Black History Month merch; it’s about Target unapologetically backpedaling on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In response to Target’s only Black History Month post on Instagram this year, a popular comment as this article was published, with more than 11,200 likes, came from @mseaston725.
“So you want to PROFIT off black culture, but not invest in it,” the comment stated. “Got it.”