CVS Rebrands, Asks Customers to Share #OneGoodReason to Quit Tobacco

These days, it’s crit­i­cal for brands to com­mu­ni­cate a clear vision of what the brand stands for, and to viewed as empa­thet­ic to con­sumers. This builds trust, loy­al­ty, and ulti­mate­ly allows brands to win in their mar­ket. Does CVS’ rebrand sig­nal a bold new...

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

These days, it’s crit­i­cal for brands to com­mu­ni­cate a clear vision of what the brand stands for, and to viewed as empa­thet­ic to con­sumers. This builds trust, loy­al­ty, and ulti­mate­ly allows brands to win in their mar­ket. Does CVS’ rebrand sig­nal a bold new direc­tion for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal brands?


U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal retail chain CVS recent­ly announced they have stopped sell­ing tobac­co prod­ucts from their retail stores. They had announced in Feb­ru­ary that the sale of tobac­co prod­ucts con­flict­ed with their health care mis­sion and planned to remove tobac­co from their stores by Octo­ber, but they reached their tar­get ahead of sched­ule.

The Amer­i­can Phar­ma­cists Asso­ci­a­tion called on drug­stores to stop sell­ing tobac­co in March 2010 and CVS is the first large chain to cease doing so.

The move is indica­tive of the com­pa­ny’s wider pub­lic rela­tions ini­tia­tives and rebrand­ing. The deci­sion to remove tobac­co prod­ucts aligns to the com­pa­ny’s long-term health­care mis­sion, and as report­ed in Forbes reflects their recent rebrand­ing from “CVS Care­mark” to “CVS Health” as they seek to serve a “broad­er health­care com­mit­ment” and change the future health of Amer­i­cans.

#OneGoodReason, One Great Campaign

The announce­ment has made head­lines as an espe­cial­ly bold move by CVS, finan­cial­ly as well as strate­gi­cal­ly, and CEO Lar­ry Mer­lo has pub­licly voiced that the with­draw­al of tobac­co prod­ucts is expect­ed to cost the com­pa­ny approx­i­mate­ly $2 bil­lion in annu­al sales, or 3 per­cent of com­pa­ny rev­enues.

It rep­re­sents a brave com­mit­ment to their new health-cen­tric brand­ing and the mes­sage has been rein­forced by the com­pa­ny’s PR and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty.

Already CVS have had a huge­ly pos­i­tive response on social media, includ­ing con­grat­u­la­tions from First Lady Michelle Oba­ma. Ask­ing fol­low­ers to share inspi­ra­tional rea­sons for quit­ting smok­ing using the #One­GoodRea­son hash­tag, they’ve real­ly cap­tured peo­ple’s imag­i­na­tions and encour­aged users to engage.

The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try typ­i­cal­ly strug­gles to gen­er­ate mar­ket­ing mes­sages that res­onate with users, and CVS’ anti-tobac­co stance has cer­tain­ly made them stand out, as well as putting pres­sure on their com­peti­tors to join suit.

They have also sup­port­ed their posi­tion with research show­ing how the with­draw­al of tobac­co prod­ucts will ben­e­fit U.S. cus­tomers. In a soon to be pub­lished CVS study in the jour­nal Health Affairs, the com­pa­ny’s data sug­gests that bans at phar­ma­cies in Boston and San Fran­cis­co led to more than 13 per­cent few­er tobac­co pur­chas­es.

Fur­ther­more, as report­ed by USA Today, “Smok­ers did­n’t just switch where they bought cig­a­rettes and oth­er tobac­co prod­ucts, some stopped buy­ing them alto­geth­er. [This can be con­clud­ed because] about 900 house­holds in the two cities record­ed every­thing they bought after the bans went into effect.”

In an inter­view with Troyen Bren­nan, CVS’ chief med­ical offi­cer in the same arti­cle, CVS voiced that “if the results were extrap­o­lat­ed for phar­ma­cies across the USA, it would lead to 65,000 few­er deaths a year.”

A New Direction for Pharmaceutical

The with­draw­al of tobac­co prod­ucts from CVS and the suc­cess of the asso­ci­at­ed social media activ­i­ty is notable for a num­ber of rea­sons.

1. Prioritizing Long-Term Strategy Over Short-Term Revenue Streams

While there will inevitably be a direct hit on estab­lished rev­enues, the with­draw­al of tobac­co prod­ucts aligns to CVS greater com­mit­ment to improv­ing the health of U.S. cit­i­zens. To an extent, CVS is bank­ing on the oppor­tu­ni­ty that a clear, pos­i­tive per­cep­tion of their brand will be more valu­able than any income made from tobac­co sales.

2. Commitment To Wider Branding & Healthcare Messages

As their #One­GoodRea­son cam­paign shows, ceas­ing the sale of tobac­co prod­ucts enables them to tie togeth­er mar­ket­ing cam­paigns under the CVS Health brand. In a sense, it’s the sim­plic­i­ty of the mes­sage that is the most pow­er­ful, align­ing the brand to some­thing that their cus­tomers care about.

3. Multichannel Integration

CVS’ often release reports on the state of U.S. health­care, and this move enables much greater inte­gra­tion of their work across inter-depart­men­tal chan­nels. One of the most pow­er­ful ele­ments of the #One­GoodRea­son cam­paign, is the fact that it can be sup­port­ed by press releas­es, sur­veys, and reports from CVS which show the poten­tial ben­e­fits of ceas­ing the sale of tobac­co prod­ucts in town and com­mu­ni­ties with­in the US.

4. Setting A Precedent For Pharmacies

The move has put con­sid­er­able pres­sure on com­peti­tor phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal retail­ers to com­mit to health issues and also with­draw tobac­co prod­ucts from their stores. Health issues are a con­cern to us all, and CVS has shown they share that empa­thy with their con­sumers as a brand. It’s a very pow­er­ful mes­sage with which to asso­ciate one’s brand.

Conclusion

Over­all, there are many rea­sons why CVS’ anti-tobac­co, and com­mit­ment to con­sumer health can serve as a great exam­ple in inte­grat­ed and empa­thet­ic mod­ern mar­ket­ing. The fact that the #One­GoodRea­son cam­paign has achieved such wide­spread cov­er­age in both the news and media, as well as on social media is a tes­ta­ment to what can be achieved when a brand’s oper­a­tions are unit­ed under a sin­gle vision, which cham­pi­ons shared, empa­thet­ic val­ues that can win over cus­tomers and encour­age them to engage.


CVS’ work stands out as an exam­ple of bold and inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing. Could this be a new prece­dence for health-cen­tric phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal brands with retail stores?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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