December 7, 2024

Campaign Spotlight: Rite Aid Offers Extra Goodies to Customers 65 and Up

Introduced in 2010 to combat competition from other pharmacy chains and big-box retailers like Walmart, wellness+ provides participants 24/7 access to a pharmacist, discounts on merchandise and other benefits. The new “wellness65+” program — which Rite Aid announced in mid-June and began promoting June 30 through an advertising campaign by MARC USA of Pittsburgh — offers the same benefits, as well as a private consultation with a pharmacist and special discounts the first Wednesday of each month. Both programs have different membership tiers; members who purchase more become eligible for greater discounts and additional wellness benefits like a gym membership. There is no charge to become a member of either program.

Rite Aid operates more than 4,600 stores in 31 states, primarily on the east and west coasts, and in the District of Columbia.

Ken Martindale, president and chief operating officer of Rite Aid, said “attracting new senior customers represents a crucial growth opportunity for Rite Aid because seniors tend to be our best pharmacy patients.” Increasing the size of its senior patient base also lets Rite Aid provide services like immunization and medication therapy management “to a segment of the population that stands to benefit the most from the positive health outcomes these services provide,” Mr. Martindale added.

Tony Bucci, chairman of MARC USA, said television advertising for wellness65+ will focus on 21 major urban markets where Rite Aid would have “the greatest opportunity to enroll new seniors.” These markets range, in the eastern United States, from Boston, Hartford and New York to Washington, Louisville and Atlanta, and include western cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento and Portland, Ore. Based on the theme “How did I get here,” spots are running primarily on news programs and shows like “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy.”

One TV spot depicts a man in a bathing suit, standing by the edge of a pool, getting ready to dive in. The voice-over says, “Every now and then you gotta ask yourself, ‘How did I get here?’” The spot then shows the man having his blood pressure monitored by a Rite Aid pharmacist, and flashes the wellness65+ card, which the voiceover says helps members “feel and live your best.” As the spot concludes, the man dives into the pool and swims away; this is followed by the Rite Aid logo and tagline, “With us, it’s personal.”

“When you see the commercial, the people aren’t hip,” Mr. Bucci said. “They’re very personal, honest, sincere and caring. The idea is that people over 65 are fully enjoying life.”

Radio spots 60 seconds in length will run on news, talk, easy listening, jazz, classical and gospel radio stations in the same 21 markets where the TV ads run. In one radio spot, the announcer says, “You’ve had 60-some-odd years to prepare for this moment. Sixty-some-odd years that added up to a squishy, squashy backyard squirt gun battle. And it’s here that the question hits you. How did I get here? Is it just living in moderation? Or saving with gusto? Like getting 20 percent off your Rite Aid purchases every first Wednesday of the month with Rite Aid’s new wellness65+.” The spot concludes with the announcer calling the program “one more way Rite Aid is helping you stay here, now that you’ve actually gotten here. Here, soaking wet and slinking through your own rosebushes.”

A full-page ad running in AARP The Magazine depicts an older woman on an amusement park ride with a child. The headline says, “Here’s to suddenly remembering where laugh lines come from. Feeling and living your best. Rite Aid is committed to helping you realize it, with exclusive, new benefits for seniors.”

Last month Rite Aid also began a tour, which will run through March 2014, featuring a van decorated with wellness65+ and Rite Aid logos and photos of program participants. The van will visit more than 30 cities across the country. In each city, Rite Aid will partner with local organizations to host community wellness events for seniors and their families, like free health screenings, pharmacist consultations and seminars with local experts on subjects like fitness.

John Learish, senior vice president of marketing for Rite Aid, declined to quantify how much the company will spend to promote wellness65+. However, he said Rite Aid’s advertising expenditures in the second half of its current fiscal year would be “comparable” to what was spent in the same period in its last fiscal year, which ended March 2, 2013.

According to Kantar Media, Rite Aid spent a low of $40.1 million on advertising in calendar year 2009 and a high of $50.8 million in calendar year 2010. Its calendar year 2012 spending on all media was $13.5 million in the first quarter; $6.5 million in the second quarter; $10.3 million in the third quarter; and $17.4 million in the fourth quarter. Kantar Media also said the company spent $9.4 million on advertising in the first quarter of calendar year 2013.

According to Mr. Learish, wellness+ had more than 25 million active members — who had used their card at least twice in the previous six months–as of the end of the first quarter of Rite Aid’s current fiscal year. He also said program members generated 77 per cent of non-prescription sales and 70 percent of prescriptions filled in the first quarter of Rite Aid’s current fiscal year, both up over the same period last year; he declined to quantify these increases.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/business/media/rite-aid-offers-extra-goodies-to-customers-65-and-up.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Outside Group Starts Spending to Block Quinn

“She wants you to think that she’s a progressive, but on the issues New Yorkers care most about, she is always on the wrong side,” a male narrator intones. “All that’s clear when the smoke lifts is her political ambition.”

As a succession of blurbs from newspaper articles suggest that she has waffled on key issues, the narrator concludes, “When Christine Quinn doesn’t support our values, how can you support her for mayor?”

So goes a commercial attacking Ms. Quinn that, starting on Monday, is scheduled to appear on cable television stations like MSNBC and Bravo for three weeks. The 30-second commercial, the first of the mayoral race, comes quite early in the primary season, underscoring the competitive nature of the contest to succeed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

The commercial is not the work of one of Ms. Quinn’s opponents for the Democratic nomination, but of a coalition of left-leaning labor unions and Democratic activists who say they are not backing anyone in particular.

The organizers have pledged more than $1 million to the campaign and are spending $250,000 for the initial television advertising, said Scott Levenson, president of the Advance Group, which produced the spot. Another commercial is to be released this week, followed by several mailers and radio ads.

Ms. Quinn, who has been a key ally of Mr. Bloomberg, is generally viewed as the front-runner, thanks to a high-profile position and a high-octane style that has brought her admiration as well as enmity. With all the candidates vowing to spend no more than $6.7 million in the primary to qualify for the public matching funds, outside money promises to play a major role in a hotly contested New York City race for the first time since the United States Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case.

The coalition opposing Ms. Quinn is called NYC Is Not for Sale 2013 and appears to be a successor to a group that actively opposed Mr. Bloomberg’s 2009 re-election bid. It also includes an animal-rights group, NYClass, that has long fought with Ms. Quinn over horse-drawn carriages and other issues. But the coalition also includes Democrats who had previously been major donors to Ms. Quinn.

When informed of the commercial, however, Mike Morey, a campaign spokesman for Ms. Quinn, pinned the effort on one of her opponents, the public advocate, Bill de Blasio, who has ties to some of the coalition members and is viewed as a strong supporter of animal rights.

“This ad is paid for by a special-interest group, with strong connections to Bill de Blasio, working to circumvent the New York City campaign finance system,” Mr. Morey said. “If Bill de Blasio is the progressive he claims to be, then he should oppose this effort to undermine the most progressive campaign finance system in the country.”

A de Blasio campaign spokesman, Dan Levitan, said the campaign had not known of the spot until a reporter asked about it late Sunday, and he commented: “Nothing undermined our democratic system more than when Speaker Quinn overturned term limits and let Mayor Bloomberg spend $100 million buying four more years.”

In interviews, members of the group behind the ad said they were profoundly disappointed that Ms. Quinn had evolved from progressive activist to business-friendly centrist.

And though their preferences differ for now — one is leaning toward John C. Liu, the city comptroller, and others are likely to back either Mr. de Blasio or William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller — they all agreed on the need to highlight what they regard as Ms. Quinn’s faults.

These include her role in helping Mr. Bloomberg upend term limits; her stances on causes dear to progressives, like the so-called living wage and paid sick leave legislation; and her volatile temperament.

“All of us felt a kind of betrayal, so we all decided it would be A.B.Q. — anybody but Quinn,” said Arthur Cheliotes, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1180, which represents city workers.

Wendy K. Neu, whose family owns a recycling, shipping and real estate firm, and has donated more than $45,000 to Ms. Quinn since 2007, said: “She’s someone who doesn’t act on principle. She does whatever is politically expedient.”

Ms. Quinn has been on the defensive in recent weeks. She has been the target of attacks at mayoral forums, and her methods in distributing money to Council members — which some say has been vindictive at times — has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of last week’s corruption arrests.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/nyregion/outside-group-starts-spending-to-block-quinn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss