STRATEGIES

It’s a Good Day to be a Major Walgreens Advertiser

You probably don’t think of the place you pick up your prescriptions as “trendy,” but that’s exactly what Walgreens became this week. On Thursday, the drug store chain unveiled Walgreens Advertising Group (WAG), an in-house media network for advertisers.

• The announcement comes soon after similar moves from CVS and Home Depot.

Walgreens is currently working with more than 30 advertisers within WAG—and most of their wares are already sold at the chain. “We are finding ways to make it as easy and seamless as possible,” Luke Kigel, WAG leader and VP of Walgreens integrated media, told Ad Age. 

Zoom in

Why WAG? Because third party cookies are basically like oatmeal raisin cookies (ew) these days, the retail media offering for brands is essentially a way for Walgreens to use its first-party data.

If you’ve ever entered your email or phone number into a Walgreens pin pad, that’s just a tiny glimpse into the first party data advertisers in the Walgreens network now have access to, courtesy of its 100 million+ member loyalty program. 

• For example: With WAG, Walgreens advertisers can cross check their own first party data with Walgreens data to better target users based on their Walgreens buying behavior. 

iSpy an ad...where? WAG has a few benefits for existing and future marketers. It offers...

• Walgreens.com ad placements
• Ads in Walgreens’s 9,000 Walgreens brick and mortars
• And digital media ad placements on Facebook, Pinterest and Google. 

Zoom out

Back in March, Ad Age wrote, “According to Forrester’s annual predictions report, 2020 will result in the growth of marketers becoming media players…Forrester predicts that any retailer with more than 500 million unique monthly site visitors will explore its own media business.” 

The Covid-19 of it all: It’s no coincidence that essential medical outlets like Walgreens and CVS, and home improvement store Home Depot, were among the first to develop said media networks. 

My takeaway: The pandemic accelerated an existing need for innovation from ad sellers. Essential businesses that have first party data on consumer trends quite simply possess both the information and the funds to deliver on that imperative.

TV

Discovering Yet Another Streaming Service

The streaming wars got even more crowded this week—Discovery Inc. unveiled Discovery+, a partially ad-supported streaming service, set to roll out in early 2021. 

The deets: The streaming service has two tiers, an ad-free one and an “ad-lite” one.

• Discovery+ “ad lite” serves viewers five minutes of ads per every hour watched. 
• Despite the “liteness,” the company claims that eventually, “Discovery+ will bring in three times the ad revenue of its linear TV networks,” per MediaPost. 
• More advertising launch partners will be announced in the coming weeks, but so far Discovery has Boston Beer Company, Kraft Heinz, Lowe’s, Toyota, and PepsiCo on board. 

“With a lower ad load, we are able to serve more personalized ads that are not only endemic to the programming they appear in, but that are more relevant to our subscribers,” Discovery’s President of U.S. Digital Products and Marketing Karen Leever told Ad Age. 

Why it matters: That “no more than five minutes of ads” rule seems like the most intriguing aspect of Discovery+ for marketers thus far. Viewers could be more receptive to ads with decreased information overload. 

SPONSORED BY SAILTHRU

We Don’t Usually Spill The Marketing Beans...

Lots of folks wanna know how we got where we are today—which is from a shabby-chic college dorm room to a media powerhouse that’s making business news sexy. 

We would love to say Morning Brew has more than 2.4 million subscribers purely because of our media business acumen, comedic wit, and news writing genius. 

But that’s only part of the story. 

The other part has to do with Sailthru—the integrated marketing solution that helped us become a bona fide media company (and not end up in spam folders). To learn more about how Morning Brew utilizes Sailthru, we chatted with Jenny Rothenberg, our Head of Growth and marketer extraordinaire.  

So if you are wondering how to best connect with today’s audiences, give our article a read. You’ll learn about the ways we use Sailthru—and what their platform can do for your business.  

Sail into our article with Sailthru here.

PUBLISHING 

On Turning Spotify Wrapped into Branded Content

One could say Spotify wrapped Wrapped—its annual campaign rounding up each user’s favorite music of the year—pretty nicely, crafting an extensive omnichannel gratitude-themed campaign to promote the product.  

So it’s surprising that, with all the resulting press it’s gotten, more brands haven’t repurposed the trend for content yet. 

One brand that has: Plant-based “chicken nugget” startup Simulate played on the Spotify Wrapped trend this week on its “Nuggs” Instagram (post shown above), making the trend its own. Andrew Watts, the startup's director of marketing, told Marketing Brew that: 

• “I think it’s important for brands to not only have people on the team who are attuned to these trends, but also senior management that trusts them to execute [them] swiftly to achieve maximum impact, even if this fast process might not go through the usual approval channels.” 

Looking ahead: Whether you’re looking to use Spotify Wrapped as a branding tool for your agency, your clients, or your brand, Spotify rep Erin Styles shared with Marketing Brew that “as far as how we're advising advertisers with Wrapped, we have something fun coming on that front,” so stay tuned.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Visa tapped Wieden+Kennedy as its new creative agency after moving away from BBDO, with Publicis retaining its global media account.
• Twitter is making frequency capping available for all ad campaigns on the platform.
• The Atlantic hired Wired Editor in Chief Nicholas Thompson as its new CEO.
• Havas is accelerating its customer experience focus, choosing Facebook’s Liz Roche as general manager, chief strategy officer for Havas CX.

SPONSORED BY VALIDITY

Actionable insights for uncertain times. No, not the title of the blockbuster action movie Morning Brew is writing; that’s what you get when you download Validity’s e-book. Validity has been updating marketers with email trend data and insights from across the industry, and now all that action-packed knowledge is neatly packaged. Tailor your email strategies to 2021’s opportunities with Validity’s new e-book.

FRENCH PRESS

Marketing tips to make you fancy

SEO: To learn more about SEO while grocery shopping, driving, or going on one of those long quarantine walks because there’s 0 else to do at home, listen to one of these 17 SEO podcasts for 2021. 

Celebs: If you’ve ever wondered about the value of celebrity investment in brands, read this TechCrunch article about what I am personally deeming the Ryan Reynolds Effect. 

Crew: The Brew’s own Director of Growth Jenny Rothenberg has an AMA coming up here. 

CMOs: Add these two upcoming CMO Series episodes to your calendar—Farryn Weiner, CEO and founder of Farrynheight, and Garrison Yang of Facebook Disruptors. Then click here to catch up on any of our delicious marketing chats you might have missed. 

METRICS & MEDIA

Stat: CBS has sold between 75% and 80% of its Super Bowl LV ad inventory, leaving about eight to 10 spots remaining.

Quote: “To a generation of ad executives who parented our peers, ‘fun’ was the teenager’s ultimate currency; boredom, our biggest threat,” Amelia Diamond for The Cut on that one Hayden Panettiere Neutrogena ad from 2007. 

Read: DIP 030: Big things, smol packages—aka the most recent edition of Emily Singer’s newsletter Chips + Dips. I especially enjoyed this edition’s “dip,” in which Singer explores “the place of bigger, needs-based businesses within the wants-based direct-to-consumer landscape.” 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Marketing Brew stories from the last few editions.

• Daytime TV is the new primetime TV
• The 10 most viewed Black Friday ads
• Burberry’s Claudia Plant is the new CMO of Hunter Boots