🔥 Off Target: In Community #138

Your weekly spark at the intersection of community, culture, and commerce

In partnership with

Great content starts with a story. Learn to tell it.

Every brand that wins online has one thing in common: a content strategy that's built to last, not just a blog that gets updated when someone has time.

HubSpot Academy's free Content Marketing Certification covers the full picture — from crafting a compelling brand story, optimizing for search, creating videos that convert, and measuring performance in a way leadership actually understands.

14 lessons. Practical frameworks trusted by marketers around the world.

Whether you're building your content strategy from scratch or formalizing a structure around existing actions you're taking today — this is the course that makes it click.

Start the course free — and finish with a strategy that scales.

Was this newsletter fwded to you? Make sure to subscribe here for more.

💥 Today’s Highlights

  • The Wellth 30 Lunch & Reception is coming up!

  • The Culture Gap is costing brands

  • The Mixdown event returns for Advertising Week NY

  • I’m hiring an Operations Lead

  • Your weekly jobs roundup

🗓️ Join us for the Wellth 30

On September 9th, we’re celebrating the senior leaders building enduring brands, communities, and culture.

Space is limited for this invite-only lunch and reception in the Meatpacking District, NYC. Are you able to join us? Reply to this email, or reach out to us at [email protected].

🔥 And now, for your weekly spark.

Off Target.

Target just pulled a Halloween costume from its stores after customers said it evoked blackface.

Someone approved it. Someone designed it. Someone reviewed it. Someone put it in front of other people. Someone decided it was ready to sell.

And still, nobody saw what thousands of customers saw almost immediately.

I've actually been in a room like that.

At a company I worked for, a team was developing a logo for a new product. The moment I saw it, I saw something else entirely: a striking resemblance to a historical hate symbol.

Nobody else in the room or on the team had noticed.

In fact, they questioned me. Maybe customers wouldn't see it. Maybe it wouldn't be a big deal.

I told them: if we produce this and even one customer posts about it on Twitter, we're screwed.

So I suggested we test it. Take a small group of customers, show them the logo, and simply ask what they see.

We did.

The feedback came back: they saw what I saw.

The logo went back to the agency. And once everyone saw it, they couldn't unsee it.

It’s hard to know how much money, time, and embarrassment I ultimately saved the company. But I know it would have been a hell of a lot more expensive to find out after launch.

I've had a much less dramatic version of the same thing happen, too.

I was in a leadership session at another company where several senior executives were defining our culture. Someone suggested “we're always on” as a positive values statement.

I was the most junior person in the room, and I remember thinking, er... I don't think people are going to like that.

They were trying to communicate commitment, but what employees might hear was: you are never allowed to turn off.

We changed it to “we're all in.”

Same ambition. Very different message.

That's what gets interesting about Target.

The question isn't just how a costume like this gets approved.

👉🏽 It's who might have seen the problem earlier, and whether they were close enough to the decision to say so.

That's the idea behind the latest in Wellth, where we look at Target alongside Ralph Lauren's work in Oak Bluffs and Starbucks Korea's recent cultural misstep.

Brands have more ways than ever to understand their audiences. Research. Focus groups. Social listening. Customer data. AI.

And we're still capable of missing things that seem obvious once someone points them out.

Maybe that's because knowing what people do isn't the same as knowing what something means to them.

That second part often comes from being close to the people experiencing it, and that's one reason community matters to me.

Not because having more people around you automatically makes you smarter.

It's because the right people can show you something you couldn't see on your own, but they have to be close enough to tell you.

And you have to be willing to hear it.

📌 The Decision Formula

Before the next decision gets made, ask:

👉🏽 Who experiences this differently than I do?

👉🏽 Who would notice something I wouldn't?

👉🏽 Are they actually close enough to influence the decision?

And maybe most importantly:

👉🏽 If they tell me something I don't want to hear, will I actually listen?

You don't have to take every piece of feedback.

But you should know what you're not seeing before you decide you've got the whole picture.

🔥 Sometimes being off target has nothing to do with your aim.

🎟️ Save your spot for The Mixdown

We’re back during Advertising Week NY with The Mixdown cocktails event, in partnership with OpenX.

Join us on Thursday, October 8th from 5:30-8:30pm ET for an evening of community and connection with fellow brand marketing and media leaders.

Make sure to register to save your spot.

✅ Now Hiring

Is someone you know considering what’s next for them? Here are a few roles with people hiring across the network. I list roles here every week, so stay tuned and make sure to spread the word.

💥 Operations Lead — Hue (I’m hiring for this one!)

💥 Sr Manager, Product Marketing — NY Times (multiple other roles)

💥 Sr Manager, Growth Marketing — DuckDuckGo (multiple other roles)

ICYMI Last Week:

💥 VP, Enterprise & Field Marketing — Diligent (multiple other roles)

💥 VP, Impact — RED

And before you go, consider who else might value this newsletter and what’s coming up on YouTube. Make sure to fwd this newsletter onward to them too. They can subscribe here for more directly in their inbox.. 🔁 

In community,

Fahad