Target has recently raised the bar for those national brands looking to “localize” themselves. Its aggressive new marketing campaign for its fresh food offering has recently landed in Connecticut, and it’s clear someone did their homework.

The campaign was somewhat unimpressive in its beginning stages. A billboard in New Haven simply read, “A new haven for fresh,” accompanied by bright photography of fresh eggs, fruits and vegetables. Not the cleverest line and clearly not one that required a ton of research into the local market.

Then a board popped up in Hartford with the headline, “Fresh. Insured.” Okay. Hartford is the Insurance Capital of America (a fact few know or care about outside of CT), so someone clearly did a little Googling.

Finally, the piece de resistance appeared on I-91, less than a mile from New Haven’s world-famous Wooster St. – “Afresh for your apizza.” For those thinking there are a few typos in this line (including my computer’s spell check), you are clearly not from New Haven.  “Apizza” (pronounced ah-Beetz) is a term for pizza used few places in the world outside of Italian-American enclaves of southern Connecticut and Naples, Italy, where the term originated.

Unless the head creative director on this campaign went to Yale, there is no way that someone would have known what a unique term this is to New Haveners without doing some serious homework or enlisting the services of a local creative team. In my opinion, this is far more impressive than when McDonalds throws a thick Massachusetts accent in its commercials to speak to all of New England, or when the local BMW dealership slaps their logo onto the national spot. Target made it cool for people to run to the store for detergent and milk; I guess it only makes sense that they somehow managed to make targeted marketing cool.