A man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation. \"My daughter got this in the mail!" he said. \"She's still in high school. and you're sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?" The manager didn't have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough. it was addressed to the man's daughter and contained advertisements for matemity clothing, nursery fumiture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again. On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. \"I hada talk with my daughter," he said. \"It turns out there's been some activities in my house I haven't been completely aware of. She's due in August. I owe you an apology." Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: \"if we wanted to gure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn't want us to know, can you do that? " Pole has a master's degree in statistics and another in economics and has been obsessed with the intersection of data and human behavior most of his life. His parents were teachers in North Dakota, and while other kids were going to 4-H, Pole was doing algebm and writing computer programs, "The stereotype of a math nerd is true,\" he told me when I spoke with him last year. \"i kind of like going out and evangelizing analytics.\" As the marketers explained to Pole and as Pole later explained to me. back when we were still speaking and before Target told him to stop new parents are a retailer's holy grail. Most shoppers don't buy everything they need at one store. Instead, they buy groceries at the grocery store and toys at the toy store, and they visit Target only when they need certain items they associate with Target cleaning supplies, say, or new socks or a six-month supply of toilet paper. But Target sells everything from milk to stuffed animals to lawn furniture to electronics. so one of the company's primary goals is convincing customers that the only store they need is Target. But it's a tough message to get across, even with the most ingenious ad campaigns, because once consumers' shopping habits are ingrained. it's incredibly difcult to change them. There are, however, some brief periods in a person's life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in ux. One of those moments ithe moment, really is right around the birth of a child when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs. But as Target's marketers explained to Pole, timing is everything, Because birth records are usually public, the moment a couple have a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts ofoompanies. Which means that the key is to reach them earlier. before any other retailers know a baby is on the way. Specically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester. which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts
