Duane Reade's New York State of Mind

Hello Everyone!

Earlier this week I had the utmost honor to be a guest blogger for Shopper Insights in Action.  I learned quite a bit and met many great people!

Today, I would like to tell you about the talk by Joe Jackman, Duane Reade's CMO, which covered how that drugstore went from convenience destination to desired destination.  It's truly a "if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere" kind of New York story.  Honestly, I was excited for the preso because, as a former New Yorker, I remember my Duane Reade shopping experiences well... and not always because they were like running through a meadow of beautiful flowers.

Shopping at Duane Reade is like breathing -- vital but not always conscious.  It's a part of NY cultural fabric and before it's transformation, it felt like as you went from store to store the only thing in common from store to store was its name.  There was no consistency in format, layout, etc.  As you traverse the streets of NY, that's charming because every neighborhood in every borough (what up, Brooklyn?) has its own vibe.  But it's not charming when you're trying to have a quick, easy drugstore experience.

It's easy to say that New York is a brand (watch this Jay Z video to understand why).  But it doesn't mean that Duane Read was a viable brand on par with that of New York (or Jay Z).  And that was at the core of the research work to wort out how to revitalize and reinforce Duane Reade as a #1, top of mind drugstore shopping destination.

What did they learn?  Quantitatively, they knew they had the highest sales per square foot but that they were at the risk of being overrun by CVS and Rite Aid because those two brands bested Duane Reade in every single research dimension - ouch!  Qualitatively, they found numerous sites/blogs devoted to how much New Yorkers loathe the store.  Double ouch!  Net net: if they didn't do anything, they'd be gone like a New York minute.

They essentially learned that while Duane Reade stores are ubiquitous, it didn't mean ubiquity meant ease. Consumers told that they were bored, needed information, craved engagement and wanted things that would pique their interest to pull them into the store and keep them once they got in.  Duane Reade took the time to learn who their shoppers were and, significantly, who their shoppers weren't and honed in on three segments that represented their sweet spot.  And their sweet spot is nicknamed Maria, a busy ethnic minority woman living and working in multicultural New York.

So, they learned who their shoppers were and what they wanted.  Many companies would make subtle changes and hope for the best.  Duane Reade underwent a top to bottom change which not only required engaging with their customers and earning their loyalty but engaging their employees and earning their loyalty as well.  Many companies focus on the former but forget that it's an internal and external rebranding initiative!

Duane Reade decided to "own" New York.  And their new tag line "New York Living Made Easy" does just that.  It acknowledges that living in New York is a unique experience and that it can sometimes be hard.  It also lets you know that shopping at one of their stores now matter where you are in any of the boroughs will make it easier to navigate the city's landscape.  It's peace of mind in a concrete jungle.

In their stores, it's top to bottom format redesign with bright colored, well lit and easy to navigate aisles.  Cosmetics sections appear more inviting and the pharmacy is redesigned to look more professional so you can feel confident in asking for recommendations while waiting for your prescription.  It also allows for an employee fingerprint: one of the stores lists all the employees' favorite things to do or see in New York.

Duane Reade wants to reflect its New York heritage, a New York sense of humor and the "soul" of the brand.  The store redesign speaks to some of the quantifiable things shoppers wanted in an ideal store but the advertising reflects some of the intangibles.  Here are some funny gems that were on some NY cabs:

• Germs are everywhere and so are we.
• One place even tourists can find.
• Where the toughest people get the softest toilet paper.

The beauty of all of these initiatives starting with the research shows a wonderful sense of alignment and understanding of the long term goal of business survival and business triumph.  It's not an easy task to have the discipline to understand the research, devise the segmentation, drive internal and external branding initiatives, redesign the store to service the modern demands of "Maria" and reintroduce the brand to millions of skeptical, jaded New Yorkers.

This discipline allowed Duane Reade to go from being at risk to being acquired by Walgreens for over $1B.  Not bad, eh?  Have you shopped at Duane Reade recently?  Please share your thoughts!  And, join us on Facebook!

Best,

Parissa Behnia

Idea Chef

678Partners@gmail.com

678Partners.com

LinkedIn

Baby Registries and Customer Experience

Hello!

Thanks to everyone for the live feedback, comments on Facebook and here on the last post.  I had fun writing it and researching it.  And by researching, I mean that I watched that Huggies commercial multiple times.  Hey, I'm easily entertained.

Last month, I told my Budget car rental escapade (here, here and here) and it turned into an excellent discussion of why (and how) Jet Blue (here) and Zappo's (here and here) get it "right" when it comes to customer experience.  I also pointed out data from the always reliable Bruce Temkin to demonstrate the causal link between customer experience and business results.

In other words, customer service and customer experience matter.  We know that there are top line and bottom line impacts when we don't pay attention to either.  And, by this point, the fact that they matter should be more a "preaching to the choir" as opposed to a "teaching moment" for business people.  *sigh*

A friend was recently invited to a shower and the shower hosts instructed those invited to visit myregistry.com to purchase from the list the guest of honor compiled.  Easy enough, right?  Nope.  She had to call in reinforcements and when she couldn't find them, she asked me to navigate it with her.  It was probably one of the most complex things I've seen in a while.

Have you been to myregistry.com?  It's a consolidator of store items into one master registry list.  After you sign up for an account on myregistry.com, you can add a "Add to My Registry" button much like you can add a "Share on Facebook" button to your browser toolbar.  You can visit any site you wish and if you happen upon a must have item, you simply click "Add to My Registry" and it's added to the master list.  You can also sync all of your store registries so, again, it becomes a neat one stop shop.  In theory, it's a gift registry tool for good especially for the discerning, discriminating, time strapped or nervous and for people looking to give gifts.

In practice, it's a gift registry tool for good only for the discerning, discriminating, time strapped or nervous bride or mommy to be.  It can be painful for everyone else because though one can sync lists from larger department store registries, it's also possible that the registrant can choose one item across multiple, obscure, small sites which, as luck would have it, was the case for my poor friend.

See, the guest of honor had visited multiple smaller retail sites and chose multiple products, many with price points in the $5 - $15 range and her master list reflected all of her great choices.  The problem becomes when you make a selection.  In my friend's case, if you want to choose multiple items, you're directed to multiple sites with multiple tabs open on your browser.  You have to actively select what you want to purchase and go through checkout multiple times (your billing address, the shipping address, credit card info, message, etc).  After you go through that, you're to go back to myregistry.com to update the master list.

In other words, there's no link between the master list and the site from which you're purchasing at any step of the purchase process.  And, there's no roadmap to explain why multiple windows open when you select an item, that you need to go through multiple checkouts and that you need to return to the master list to update it.  Figuring it all out takes a lot of time, a bit of confusion and a smidge of aggravation.  Completing the purchases takes a whole other chunk of time, a bit of confusion and a smidge of aggravation, too.

In the grand scheme of things, this might not be "important" at all.  It's not on the scale of the oil spill nor does it solve high unemployment.  But, it still matters because of how we perceive others' appreciation of our business.  As consumers, we have choices.  And, as I mentioned in my last post, this unstable economic environment has made us savvier and warier consumers.  Our antennae are now trained to pick up "value for money" as we purchase.

As we've said so many times before, the minute by minute customer experience matters.  Sure, the "Add to My Registry" button is functionally a great idea but one wonders how much research went into actual user experience?  Did they consider scenarios like the one my friend went through?  And if they had, why didn't they build an explanatory roadmap so people don't spend time spinning their wheels trying to figure it all out?  In other words, why didn't the customer experience matter?

It comes down to strategy, lack of strategy and/or the failure of strategy.  You might recall my posts about stress testing from last week (here and here) with this anecdote being a good practical example of why we need to test and retest strategic and tactical premises.  On paper, the linkages to multiple sites makes sense but its failure in practice showed a lack of care and precision in execution.  The end result: aggravation instead of joy in buying a gift as well as resolution to never use myregistry.com if one can help it.

What's your take?  I love those comments!

Best,

Parissa Behnia
Idea Chef

678Partners@gmail.com
678Partners.com
LinkedIn