Walgreens Has a 'Champion' at P&G

As the lone marketer on Procter & Gamble's Walgreens customer team, Matt Champion is charged with massaging the CPG giant's national marketing assets and adjusting them to best fit the 8,000-store drug chain and its shoppers."I call it marketing judo," he said. "I take the idea, and the momentum, and do that over-the-shoulder flip to make it just right for Walgreens."As the customer team marketing manager since March 2010, Champion works as part of the 40-plus-member P&G team based in Rosemont, IL, a short drive from Walgreens headquarters in Deerfield. (Among other team members are representatives from sales, supply chain, research/insights and finance.)Shopper Marketing magazine caught up with Champion in January, the day after the P&G vet attended the People's Choice Awards, the P&G-owned property for which Walgreens is official retail sponsor. On a high after attending the event with various members of Walgreens' management, Champion viewed the trip to Los Angeles as a de-facto celebration of the cooperative work surrounding the event."We're pretty proud about how some things have come together," he said. "We think we're doing some innovative and differentiated work to help Walgreens improve that shopping experience."Champion was speaking not only of the work P&G and Walgreens have done supporting the awards show, but also the partners' efforts surrounding an exclusive Vicks campaign for the cold-and-flu season that launched in September 2012. (For both campaigns, P&G worked with Chicago-based Arc Worldwide on creative and Neenah, WI-based Menasha Packaging on P-O-P materials.)Feeling Better with DayQuil/NyQuilP&G's exclusive marketing activity with Walgreens for the Vicks brand has practically become an annual rite of passage each fall, as it fits well with the retailer's overall wellness positioning.In the fall of 2012, the partners leveraged the manufacturer's National Football League sponsorship for the second time in three years, once again incorporating Vicks spokesman and NFL quarterback Drew Brees into the campaign."It's not just, 'Oh, we have the NFL as an asset,'" Champion said. "The NFL is a great way to depict [that] there are no sick-day benefits to consumers. You don't get to take the day off if you're not feeling well. And if you don't sleep, you're not going to have a great day. For the moms of the world — and all the folks who have to go to work whether you're feeling great or not — it's a really powerful way to bring the 'no sick days' idea to life."The partners deployed power wings, floorstands and dedicated endcaps in-store, as well as a humorous TV spot that showed Brees shopping in a Walgreens. (See "P&G, Brees Play on Walgreens' Team Again" in Related Articles.)Champion referred to one of the two endcap executions as a "drop-in" that required removal of two shelving units. (See Related Images.) The design integrated panels to communicate the product benefits. "We partnered and designed with Walgreens early to bring a different display structure to bear," he said. "It was designed for operational simplicity — out of the box, perfectly constructed, ready to go."[Shoppers] could find what they were looking for quickly, understand how it was going to help them get and feel better, and pick what they want; I've seen it, I've found it, and now I can get on with feeling better."Champion says the Vicks execution helps Walgreens with its equity. "Walgreens stands in consumers' minds as a place where I have problem and solution. If you look at the 'Answers' platform, it's founded around that idea. Hey, I have a question. What's the answer? This is an articulation."After deploying a modular rolling element on Walgreens "speed tables" in the 2011 campaign, P&G chose the endcap route in 2012."We found that [the 2011 display] never lived in the same space in any two stores," Champion said. "A store manager could put it almost anywhere. While it gave us the nice billboarding platform for sell copy, it didn't have the longevity nor the uniform placement that helped consumers identify and buy what they were looking for. You are not going down the seasonal aisle while you're looking for cough and cold. You're going to go look in the cough/cold section."Both store compliance and shopper navigation were considerations this time around. "We took the best of our tools of benefit communication, stopping power and design, and then integrated it into a place where consumers could find it no matter what store they go into in the country. And we worked with Walgreens to make it one of its mandatory display executions."Furthermore, P&G developed a custom SKU for Walgreens — a 12-ounce Dayquil and NyQuil liquid combo pack — in response to the retailer's problem/solution shopper insights. "We went to [P&G headquarters in] Cincinnati and said, consumers are really looking for this very simple solution," Champion explained. "The insight there isn't rocket science. It's what consumers are looking for. We want to help deliver it to them in a way that's convenient. A dual pack with a nice value behind it."For program metrics, P&G focuses on compliance and SKU velocity, among other things. "Were the endcaps up — making sure they are in the right place and put up appropriately, and that they are up for the duration so that it reflects our ad plans and TV," Champion said. "That's an operational success measure for the partnership."Also, how it performs for the consumer. SKU velocity impacts our inventory levels and shipments. If it's going too fast, we'll increase our shipment to make sure we get a mid-week delivery so that those endcaps have the associated product that's necessary ... especially in a year like this, when the cough/cold season has come on very strong."As of January, it was clear to Champion that the program was succeeding. "Walgreens is outperforming the rest of the market from a share standpoint behind our Vicks executions," he said. "That's because of these fundamentals: make something that's easy for stores to put up, designed for stores to execute, and make something that's easy for consumers to understand." People's Choice Awards"This is a red-carpet Hollywood awards show," Champion said. "This is a really, really premium, premier event, and Walgreens is the only partner that they have. Our goal is to build displays and programs worthy of the [show]."Walgreens took over sponsorship of the 39-year-old awards show last October from CVS/pharmacy and wasted little time before leveraging it. (See "Walgreens Becomes ..." in Related Articles.) Before the official public voting period began on Nov. 15, consumers were invited to visit walgreens.com or duanereade.com to make their selections for two awards categories. In stores, dedicated endcaps depicted celebrity fashion expert Tim Gunn, carried QR codes that linked to the online voting, and stocked various P&G products. From Oct. 28 through Dec. 13, Walgreens also worked with P&G on a sweepstakes that awarded a grand-prize trip to Los Angeles to attend the show.The partners also used Gunn in digital marketing efforts as well as in a spot that aired during CBS' live broadcast on Jan. 9. "Tim Gunn provides a face and a benefit," Champion said. "[Through Gunn,] Walgreens is bringing value to the People Choice Awards."P&G and Walgreens' efforts didn't end with the broadcast. The day after the show, leveraging the Walgreens-sponsored "favorite humanitarian award" given to actress Sandra Bullock, the retailer promised to donate $1 to the Warren Easton Charter High School in New Orleans (up to $100,000) for each Facebook "Like" it received within a month. (Bullock had helped restore the school after Hurricane Katrina.) Within 12 hours of the Facebook post, Walgreens had garnered more than 80,000 "Likes."That same day, Walgreens staged in-store "Night at the W" events for shoppers to meet with beauty advisors and obtain a "Red Carpet Guide to Glamour." (See "Walgreens Joins ...'" in Related Articles.) The events were "expanded" at flagship stores (see "Walgreens Builds ..." in Related Articles) and conducted "appropriate" to the location everywhere else, according to Champion.A one-day instant-win game accessible through Walgreens' mobile application awarded a trip to Los Angeles to attend the next People's Choice Awards in January 2014. The retailer also gave participants access to digital coupons."We're very proud of the partnership in-store, the partnership out-of-store, and the partnership behind the humanitarian award," Champion said. "It really helps to emphasize the Walgreens vision of helping people live, stay and be well. Coming off the Vicks work, I was really impressed with the caliber of the design work, and the impactfulness of the idea. The strength of the idea led to some really strong and innovative display executions."

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