Target billboard

Here’s the sequence of events. (1) Last January Target mounted a billboard campaign in Times Square that showed (among other, more innocuous images) a young woman spread-eagled on the retailer’s bull’s-eye logo.

(2) Amy Jussel, the founder of ShapingYouth.org and writer for that group’s blog, placed a call to Target to ask about the female objectification in the image, adding in a blog post that as an ad executive, she couldn’t understand how the image passed through layers of approval without being flagged.

(3) Three days after her call, Jussel received an e-mail from Target saying the company was unable to respond to her request for more information about the ad because “Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.”

Jory Des Jardins, one of three co-founders of the BlogHer network, thinks that if Target believes its “core guest” isn’t creating and consuming content on the Internet, then the retailer needs to set a very early wake-up call. Founded in 2005 specifically to support and promote women bloggers, BlogHer now numbers about 1,600 active blogs—including Jussel’s—and by the end of 2007 was seeing 8.3 million unique monthly visitors.

“I just can’t figure [Target] out,” adds Des Jardins, BlogHer’s president of strategic alliances. “I’ve talked to many companies about blogging, and I hear about their fears all day long. “But most of them get the fact that there’s so much movement among women [to social platforms] that they can’t ignore them.”

In fact, Des Jardins points out, female audiences are showing a measurable migration from mass media to blogs and online communities. Last September Nielsen Media Research found that TV morning show viewership was down 10% among females 25 to 54 and attributed that drop to the rise of both more convenient online news and more relevant or authentic discussions in blogs or Internet forums.

“Advertisers may be nervous about blogs, but they have to face those fears, because women are moving to online spaces where they find affinities with others,” she says. “Seventy percent of the women coming online are moving into social networks and spending time there, so advertisers realize they have to play here.”

Des Jardins says that while she personally did not take issue with the Target ad under fire, she did object to the high-handed tone of the dismissal of a woman blogger’s legitimate questions. “In the past, when there have been situations where a blogger had an issue with a product, if the company responded in the right way it could immediately quell the uprising. Target needs to respond and send a message to the rest of the blogosphere.”

BlogHer’s own relations with big brands come mostly through its own ad network, launched in June 2006 as a way to monetize the community and pass a share of that revenue along to its bloggers. The BlogHer ad network now numbers about 1,200 content creators from the broader BlogHer community. Bloggers must apply to join the ad network.

The largest portion of those—700 out of the 1,200– categorize themselves as parenting bloggers. (Des Jardins says she only came to accept the term “mommy bloggers” when she realized that those members actually take pride in the name.) They and their readers are a demographically attractive bunch with plenty of marketer appeal: BlogHer internal research found that 64% of its parenting blog readers make more than $50,000 annually, that 50% still have children living at home, and interestingly that 53% of the readers have their own blogs, enhancing the “echo chamber” effect of any word of mouth within the BlogHer network.

Marketing in blog networks has its appeal, but it also poses some issues, mostly related to the quality of the content. The BlogHer ad network uses community managers, real live humans who check blogs continually to make sure they’re active, post at least twice a week in whatever subject category they’re assigned to and run ads in the agreed locations, such as above the fold. That kind of quality assurance, and the innate appeal of the bloggers in the network, enables BlogHer to charge for ad impressions rather than clickthroughs.

BlogHer also makes an effort to work with marketers to devise ad campaigns that match the interests and concerns of its verticals. “As a blog community, we know what our bloggers are already talking about and can integrate into those discussions,” Des Jardins says. “Marketers come to us because they’re not just slapping a banner ad on a site; they’re starting word-of-mouth and becoming the buzz.”

One of the first campaigns after the launch of the ad network, for a new premium zero-calorie sweetener, reached out to both health and parenting bloggers and readers with a survey meant to stimulate discussion about diets, eating and wellness. The advertiser was given three questions on the survey and a space to request a trial size of the new product. Des Jardins says 16% of the first 1,000 respondents to the survey asked for the sample.

And when General Motors wanted to get women bloggers talking about their 2007 Saturn models, they shipped a fleet’s worth into the 2006 BlogHer conference in San Francisco and offered test drives to the 700 attendees. “They got hundreds of blog testimonials out of that campaign,” Des Jardins says. “You don’t force women to write about cars, but we suggested they bring the cars and give women the experience.” General Motors came back to the conference the following year and will do so again this year as a platinum sponsor.

The key to approaching women bloggers, she adds, is to offer them experiences rather than pushing messages at them. “There’s always this fear among marketers: ‘What if we open ourselves up and they don’t appreciate us?’ But if you offer the experience and don’t force any viewpoints, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. GM got that, and it worked well for them.”

Dove tapped into the BlogHer ad network last year with an Oscar-related campaign to help publicize a contest for a user-generated commercial for its Cream Oil Body Wash to be broadcast during the awards ceremony. The company got 1,000 submissions and is running both the contest and the BlogHer as campaign again this year—now that the Oscars are back on the TV schedule.

Boca Foods, makers of the Boca Burger and other vegan products, is going perhaps a little deeper, underwriting an ongoing BlogHer promotion that will encourage bloggers and their readers to dialogue about the changes they resolve to make in their lives in 2008.

“Q1 is typically ‘guilt season’ in the women’s sphere, talking about losing weight or getting your life together, and we originally asked our top bloggers to create content that would help readers talk about this topic,” Des Jardins says. “Boca said they’d like to sponsor a contest for the best story about resolutions and send the winner to BlogHer ’08 [this year’s annual conference, in Los Angeles.] The women are already talking about this stuff, so it’s a no-brainer for Boca.”