Walgreens celebrates the holidays with a special appearance by its store brands
Walgreens has launched a holiday campaign with celebrities and popular social personalities Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka that merrily position the retailer as a headquarters for the holidays — the place for tree lights, egg nog, batteries, wrapping paper and more. Headlining the campaign is a series of videos of the couple together, and while the ads don’t mention any national brand partnerships and don’t callout a specific private brand from Walgreens, the retailer’s store brand items do make an appearance.
Called #TrueHolidayStory, the campaign includes eight videos running online, a TV spot, print ads and more, and the content shows the happy couple getting through holiday planning and decorating. The videos are being featured on Walgreens’ social accounts as well as Harris and Burtka’s accounts to gain further traction.
The videos are cute and feature the retailer’s private brands such as a video of Harris struggling with tree lights only to be surprised with a box of Walgreens’ brand untangled lights. Another video shows the couple using Walgreens’ photo service to have holiday cards printed. The short digital ads may leverage subtle nods to the retailer’s store brands but the audience reach is not subtle — Harris has nearly 27 million followers on Twitter alone and his husband carries a solid following too.
It’s an interesting campaign from the lens of retail experts saying that private brand teams need to promote brands better over digital (more to come on that in Store Brands’ December issue cover story on how to continue store brand success).
This celeb-centric effort runs in tandem with other #TrueHolidayStory efforts from Walgreens featuring actual employees sharing holiday stories and where Walgreens helped in a pinch, as well as stories from actual customers. The retailer detailed the strategy in a post on its site.
Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens operates around 9,500 stores and carries several thousand SKUs of private label products, with more than 2,000 in health and wellness alone. The retailer recently spoke with Store Brands about its plan to expand its private brand presence.