(For more of Philip Gaedicke's photos of the Target McQ Market, click here to be taken to the site HighSnobiety.com.)

Sitting across West Street from the Hudson River, with traffic zipping by at high speed, the shop could have been easy to miss. It temporarily occupied the ground floor of an empty warehouse, the entrance marked by split plastic drapes (think car wash), metal pins “piercing” the facade, arrow-in-Target-bull’s-eye stencils, and the spray painted graffiti: “Target McQ Market.”

The element of surprise continued inside. Dim lighting, androgynous poster models in klieg spotlights (“Rebel looks. Civil prices.”), and DJ Mel DeBarge spinning dance tunes like “December 1963 (Oh What a Night)” and “Could You Be Loved” set the scene for the McQ collection’s unisex styles.

The works of 10 New York City-based artists, such as paper sculptures with gesso and enamel by Chris Caccamise and computer screen savers by Trisha Baga, sprung from the shop’s clubby atmosphere. Curators roamed and engaged visitors in conversation. The pieces were chance finds amid apparel displays set in front of chain-link fences and rough-hewn, painted plywood.

“I like to present work in a different context for people who aren’t the usual art people,” said Caccamise, who didn’t expect to be sought by fashion production house OBO to create two sculptures for Target’s pop-up. A sense of the unlikely also inspired his “Fashion Designer ’09” and “Pat Benatar 1980,” pieces bringing the artist a $1,000 commission. An Alexander McQueen quote in The New York Times about the designer’s new venture with Target—“I’m bringing my culture to them”—struck Caccamise as “funny” and a show of “hubris,” and it became a type element in the “Fashion Designer ’09” sculpture.

Another surprise tactic was exemplified in a huge Domino’s Pizza giveaway that resulted from a computer snafu. It qualified for what Nulman, president of marketing agency Airborne Mobile, calls time-bombing, or “secrecy up front, explosiveness down the road.”

On the last day of March, Domino’s was scrambling to shut an inadvertent freebie: It mistakenly gave away $90,000 worth of pizzas, with one topping, at shops nationwide, many of them in Cincinnati and Salt Lake City. Playing around with key words in Domino’s online search engine, someone entered the word “bailout,” which still appears in the Web site’s Big Taste Bailout promotion. This triggered credit for a free medium pie at their local shop’s electronic cash register, even though the deal hadn’t been green-lighted at corporate headquarters.

When the dust cleared, 11,000 pizzas had been given away, as the password spread quickly online. In a show good faith (and humor) to people disappointed when it nixed the giveaway, Domino’s offered a free dessert order of Cinna Stix via blogs that had spread the “bailout” password and in cell-phone text messages to customers in its opt-in marketing program, said Tim McIntyre, vice president of communications at Domino’s Pizza Inc.

Marc Gobé, chief executive officer of Emotional Branding, believes people need change—and when faced with too much similarity they will disconnect.

Brands that surprise people can communicate with them, Gobé has said.

On Election Day, Oren’s Daily Roast, a New York City chain of coffee shops, introduced and gave away “Blend 44” coffee consisting of beans symbolizing and chuckling over Barack Obama’s Kenyan and Hawaiian (Kona beans) roots, his days at Harvard Law School (Ethiopian Harrar) and his two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles (L-a Minita Costa Rica.) The joke also references the 44th U.S. president’s junior and senior years at Columbia University and his family’s new District of Columbia address, with two kinds of Colombian beans.

Upon spotting a phone number on the right thigh of his customized Levi’s jeans, Nulman himself had a time-bombing moment. Nulman dialed the number and discovered the brand’s concierge service, which offered him and three guests a “Champagne-fueled, one-hour shopping experience” at Levi’s San Francisco flagship.

Another pow for Nulman was the discovery of his new, favorite, $9 pajamas at Wal-Mart that have supplanted his Paul Smith pajamas as his top pair. Stranded without lost luggage for two days during a recent ski trip in Idaho, he outfitted himself and his sons for just $279 at Wal-Mart. “Did you know you can get Levi’s for $25 at Wal-Mart?” said Nulman, who nonetheless was wearing a Dubuc-designed, Sgt. Pepper-esque navy jacket as a shirt and still prefers his denimwear premium and custom.