Campaign Imminent: Walgreens taps new media AOR (Score 62)
Sales Lead: Walgreens just assigned its $200m media business to a new media AOR, Publicis's Epsilon, effective at the end of March 2023..png)
- In the past, Epsilon has worked on Walgreens's data analytics and related issues, but now that relationship has reached media AOR status.
- Walgreens has worked with WPP since 2017, when the two teamed up on a broader global marketing alliance with WBA.
- The appointment seems to have replaced incumbent media AOR EssenceMediacom.
- This hire concludes the review that kicked off in November 2022, which closely followed Walgreens's May 2022 appointment of CMO Linh Peters.
- The company will likely:
- Launch a campaign soon
- Shift strategy and spend
- Keep increasing national TV spend and return to higher digital spend
- Seek additional new agency partners
- Target demographic:
- Older millennials and Gen-X
Additional spending insights:
- Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: So far this year, Walgreens has spent approximately $41m on national TV commercials, almost double the approximately $21.1m spent within the same 2022 timeframe.
- Last year: The pharmacy chain spent around $98.9m on this channel in 2022 and 4% more, around $94.8m, in 2021.
- 2023 ad programming: Walgreens's 2023 commercials have targeted the Gen-X audience of shows such as NFL Football, The Golden Girls, Today 3rd Hour, Forensic Files, and NCIS.
- Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: The company has allocated roughly $10.6m toward digital ads YTD, only about half of the roughly $19.2m allocated within the same 2022 timeframe.
- YTD data: Since the beginning of 2023, Walgreens has earned ~1.4b digital impressions via Facebook (78%), Instagram (9%), YouTube (8%), desktop display (4%), and mobile display (1%) ads.
- Last year: The company's estimated full-year 2022 spend of $80.2m increased by 48% from that of $54.2m in 2021.
- Additional channel insights
- The company utilizes print (magazines), digital, local broadcast, OOH, and radio ads.
Additional agency insights:
- Opportunity: Get in touch soon to see if any additional agency reviews follow this one.
- Current agency roster:
- Epsilon: Media AOR (2023)
- VMLY&R: Creative and digital AOR
- Hill+Knowlton Strategies: PR AOR
- Ignite Social Media: Social agency partner
Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix.
