Digital transformation has been on the agenda of organizations for years but, thanks to COVID-19, this year has become a crucial time for companies to plan for and implement it across industries. Today’s guest is Walgreens’ CMO and Senior Vice President, Patrick McLean, who joined the company in November of 2019. Pat is responsible for the vision, strategic direction, and performance of all Walgreens’ marketing activities, and the majority of his tenure has been defined by the global pandemic. In this episode, we talk about the hundred-year-old retailer’s response to COVID, and how marketing will help push Walgreens forward into a digital future. We discuss safety measures, marketing strategies, e-commerce, and brand versus performance marketing, and Pat explains the ways in which the Walgreens of the future will be a digital, omnichannel value proposition. Tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

• A few keys headlines that will impact multi-location brands, namely Apple’s search engine.
• Pat’s fun fact: He actually wanted to be a Broadway musical star.
• How Walgreens’ COVID marketing plan has changed, like suspending the printed circular.
• As an essential service, Walgreens quickly went into action to protect staff and customers.
• Some of the protective measures that Walgreens put in place across their 9,000 stores.
• The moment Pat realized everything was going to change came with shelter in place orders.
• Pat saw this experience as a compressed version of customer insight and brand strategy.
• Walgreens started to provide content that was broader than pharmacy-related information, which was a learning point.
• Pat saw a huge increase in customer engagement thanks to their new marketing strategies.
• There was also an increase in e-commerce, but they should have been better equipped.
• In future, there will be significant investment in e-commerce and omnichannel experiences.
• Pat found there were a lot of parallels between this job and his previous role in retail banking.
• Brand versus performance marketing – Pat fundamentally disagrees that there’s a difference.
• While Walgreens can do a better job of localizing marketing, they are known as a local brand.
• Walgreens strives to understand the needs of the communities in which they operate.
• Feedback loops between individual stores and marketing – there is direct communication.
• How Walgreens has evolved their North Star metric of optimizing for profit per customer visit.
• Advice from Pat – he thinks you have to be able to speak the whole language of marketing.
• Pat believes Facebook is struggling with identity – they need to revisit their value proposition.
• Pat listens to a lot of marketing podcasts and uses them as means of staying current.
• Pat thinks it would be interesting to hear from some of the leaders at Target about their readiness for e-commerce.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Patrick McLean on Twitter

Patrick McLean on LinkedIn

Walgreens

Search Engine Land

Taking Brand Action

Good to Great

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