The personal touch

Drug Store News, July 6, 1998 by Lisa I. Fried

In Tampa, a grandmother turns on her television set and sees Marsha McFalls, an Eckerd pharmacist, recalling an intimate exchange she had with a customer who has cancer.

"She came in, and I asked her how she was doing," McFalls recalls.

"And, she started crying and crying, and I apologized.

"And, she said, 'No, that was the best thing that could have happened. Everyone is concerned about my medication, and no one asks how I am doing.

"That was one of the most rewarding moments I ever had," McFalls concludes.

In Los Angeles, a newly married couple snuggle on their couch, flipping the channels, and see a Say-on commercial featuring a young couple awakened at 2:00 a.m. by their crying baby. The baby appears to be coming down with something, but it's the middle of the night. What can they do?

The voice-over has the answer: "At some drug stores, they seem to think people only get sick from 9 to 5. At Say-on, we know better. When almost everyone else is closed, there is a Say-on pharmacy nearby that is open all day, all night, all year."

In Indianapolis, a father waits to drive his daughter to soccer practice. This song, a key component of a new CVS television campaign, pipes out of his television:

"One at a time. We know you.

"One at a time. We show you.

"Care that touches everyone one at a time. CVS.

"One at a time. Dedication. One at a time. Consideration. Care that touches everyone. One at a time."

Call it the personalization of the drug store. Call it brand building. But, whatever you call it, one thing is for sure, drug store advertising is reaching new heights.

While most of the industry's drug chains still devote a considerable part of their budget to circulars, the industry's largest chains are committing more and more dollars to marketing and advertising programs that communicate benefits beyond the weekly sale items.

This year, Rite Aid will spend a whopping $200 million on advertising, a large percentage of which will be spent on brand-building efforts. Longs has increased its television advertising budget by 20 percent to 30 percent this year. Walgreen Co., which launched its first national television campaign this year, will spend more than $40 million this year on television advertising-nearly $10 million more than last year's television ad budget. American Drug Stores has been steadily increasing its television budget over the past four years.

"I am really blown away by the sense of brand building being done by the major chains," said Michael Robertson, executive vice president/ executive creative director for Bates USA, CVS's ad agency. "I've been in business 29 years, and you might see an ad for a drug store here and there. Now, it seems that they're there every time you turn around."

"In the last year or so, we have all recognized the importance of branding the store and using television to support those branding strategies," said Julie Gardner, vice president of marketing for Eckerd. "Television plays a different role than circulars play. It's a longer-term branding strategy rather than a weekly push to get people into the stores.

"We use television to create a destination in people's minds," she continued. "Our commercials talk about the store in general and then focus on specific destination points-beauty, photo, greeting cards and pharmacy. Realistically, people don't remember every word. The reality is that you want them to walk away with the personality of the store and what it represents to them."

The massive expansion of CVS, Rite Aid and Eckerd through industry consolidation, and the explosion of cable channels, are driving a more tactical use of television by several of the industry's largest chains.

"Drug stores have historically been behind other retailers in using television to build a brand image," said Beth Kaplan, executive vice president of marketing for Rite Aid. "Before all of the consolidation in the industry, the big drug store chains rarely competed directly against each other. With consolidation, the probability that you are competing against one, two or three national chains is much higher than ever before.

"Competition is much stiffer, so the need to brand is even greater," Kaplan continued. "Feel-good advertising isn't enough. You have to convince customers that you are better at something than your competitor so they go out of the way to shop in your stores, and you have to demonstrate to managed care providers that you bring more value to their customers."

The vast consolidation wave that has added thousands of stores to the store counts of Rite Aid, CVS and Eckerd has also created a new challenge for these chains: The need to quickly develop a solid brand image in scores of new markets in the past year.

In fact, the huge growth of CVS's store count after the 1997 Revco acquisition pushed CVS to completely rethink its corporate advertising. Television has played a large role in the new advertising strategy.

"We are a much larger company today than a year ago," explained Neil Guliano, senior vice president of advertising for CVS. "We have an organization of 4,100 stores in 25 states. From a media standpoint, we have more markets to support than ever before. We felt the need to take our broadcast advertising to a higher level."