{"id":789,"date":"2018-06-27T17:04:38","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T21:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/?p=789"},"modified":"2018-06-27T17:05:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T21:05:10","slug":"branding-reflects-the-market-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/?p=789","title":{"rendered":"BRANDING REFLECTS THE MARKET STATUS!"},"content":{"rendered":"

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/oU1dHTzgiko” \/][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n

PRESS PLAY>>TO VIEW THIS MONTH\u2019S WELCOME VIDEO<\/p>\n

BRANDING REFLECTS THE MARKET STATUS!\"\"<\/p>\n

During my 15 years as head of marketing for Eckerd Drugs, we constantly monitored what our competition was doing to gain market share.\u00a0 Not just other drug stores, but discount stores, food chains, and direct mail<\/p>\n

sources needed to be watched to be sure we could keep our market share growing and our top-of-mind awareness at its peak.\u00a0 Of course, there is always one direct competitor a store watches more closely than others and for us, it was Walgreens.\u00a0 While they were in more states and markets than Eckerd, and (at that time) we had the top share in almost all markets, they were the most like us and often were right across the street vying for the same customers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"During the \u201880\u2019s, I never was that concerned that Walgreen\u2019s would beat us in advertising.\u00a0 While they were aggressive with weekly promotions and multi-media budgets, their ads were pretty mundane and repetitive, and they never scored highly in the ad research that we conducted.\u00a0 However, where they excelled was in their expenditure to develop the digital systems that would provide them with more timely sales and inventory data than we could only hope to imagine.\u00a0\u00a0 This insured that they would have the right items in the right stores in the right quantities.\u00a0 As we learned in our own strategic research, this would be a dramatic competitive advantage as they matched Eckerd store for store and their market share reflected it was working.\u00a0 As Walgreen\u2019s grew and Eckerd dissolved, this\u00a0capability also enabled them to communicate more effectively and more directly with their customers on an ongoing basis and that has paid great dividends in building loyalty and increased sales per store and per customer.<\/p>\n

Add to this technology an aggressive growth plan with new stores and acquisitions, and it\u2019s not surprising that Walgreen\u2019s is a major factor in the total US economy.\u00a0 So much so, that las week the company replaced General Electric as one of the benchmark Dow Jones<\/p>\n

\"\"Industrials companies.\u00a0 However, it is more than just significant revenue growth.\u00a0 Walgreen\u2019s has built its brand on an understanding of what has happened to the US economy and to the country\u2019s consumer buying habits.We are becoming a service-oriented country and with the increased demand for health care products, it has served as a perfect storm for Walgreen\u2019s to grow its market share despite even more competition than ever before.<\/p>\n

General Electric is no slouch, but the company that Jack Welch built, I believe has been more focused on organizational systems and structure than it has on understanding where the customer growth is really coming from.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, they are still a factor in consumer appliances and related products, but their major focus on everything from jet engines to media networks to railroad locomotives has made it less representative of what is impacting our economy and the American consumer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s critical to anticipate customer trends well in advance\u2014as Walgreen\u2019s did in the early \u201880s by committing to technology\u2014in order to be ready to respond not only in marketing but in having the infrastructure and logistics to be able to meet the changing needs.\u00a0 Only then, can a company improve and build its relationships with its customers and remain relevant with it marketing messages and its offerings.\u00a0 The successful companies today (and tomorrow) are the ones who realize that their brand is not just a marketing slogan or new name, but rather it is the relationship with a customer who sees value in doing business with them now and in the future.<\/p>\n

[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/oU1dHTzgiko” \/][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] PRESS PLAY>>TO VIEW THIS MONTH\u2019S WELCOME VIDEO BRANDING REFLECTS THE MARKET STATUS! During my 15 years as head of marketing for Eckerd Drugs, we constantly monitored what our competition was doing to gain market share.\u00a0 Not just other drug stores, but discount […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}