Rite Aid Wants Customers to Know It’s Got Their Backs. Will That Cure Its Many Ills?

A few months back, Jeanniey Walden—just getting her sea legs as the new CMO of Rite Aid—set up a meeting with creative shop Leo Burnett. But what started as a simple meet-and-greet featured an unexpected surprise. “I saw some work that they had done that never made it to the light of day,” Walden told ADWEEK.

The agency had shot some creative work themed around the most common questions that customers ask at the pharmacy counter. The people on screen were actors but the questions were legit, recollected by the company’s own pharmacists.

“I thought to myself, ‘Why aren’t we doing something that’s casting our actual store associates on the front end and in the pharmacy, to bring that authenticity through?’” Walden recalled.

The results of Walden’s inner monologue resulted in a campaign that makes its debut today.

“It Means More” serves up three vignettes in which Rite Aid employees solve problems for customers in a pickle: a father whose daughter has taken shears to her own hair on class picture day; a harried mom struggling with her shopping list; and an older couple en route to the airport when they realize they’ve forgotten their prescription medications.

Plucked from real life, these scenarios also feature real Rite Aid employees. The company held a round of auditions for the roles, selecting four of its personnel to go on camera. As these associates dispense hands-on help, their smiles are the same ones they wear on the job. “Life never really goes the way you plan,” a reassuring narrator intones. “But that’s why we’re here.”

Taking a position

Management plans to get considerable mileage out of “It Means More.” Leo Burnett cut the three customer scenarios into five different spots—a 30-second anchor ad, plus four 15-second cuts. Portions of these will soon be visible throughout the chain’s 1,700 stores. “We’re going to take stills from these commercials and pull them down into store signage, onto our website and into our app,” Walden said.

Perhaps most significantly, the theme that the campaign introduces also represents a new brand positioning for Rite Aid. Headquarters wants consumers to associate its name not only with convenience, but with the sort of personalized, empathetic attention found in the mom-and-pop pharmacies of yore.

“Part of my research when I came on board was to look at what differentiates Rite Aid from every other pharmacy out there—not just the CVSs and Walgreens of the world, but the little neighborhood pharmacies too,” Walden said.

“When [I] talked to customers and associates, everybody was saying the same thing: They come to Rite Aid because it has a special connection, because the employees seem to know the guests that come in a little better.”