As one of the country's largest and most prominent retailers, Walgreens has an active philanthropic policy. In its third consecutive year of raising funds to help end child poverty, Walgreens welcomed back Red Nose Day with comic cheer and a steady stream of celebrations and fundraising activities nationwide.
Starting April 17, the iconic Red Noses returned to store shelves at U.S. Walgreens and Duane Reade locations, kicking off a six-week charitable campaign leading up to Red Nose Day on May 25. Customers were encouraged to purchase their noses in-store or online, and to show support by wearing their Red Noses and participating in fundraising activities along the way.
For every Red Nose sold between April 17, 2017 and June 3, 2017, Walgreens donated $0.50 to Comic Relief Inc.'s Red Nose Day Fund, which helps lift children out of poverty in the U.S. and internationally.
The #RedNose campaign for Walgreens set out to showcase Walgreens' commitment to addressing child poverty. The campaign was charged with driving consumer awareness of the Red Nose Day partnership, supporting Walgreens' messaging around its commitment to reducing child poverty.
Communications objectives included driving Walgreens customers in-store to purchase a Red Nose from Walgreens or Duane Reade locations nation-wide and educating these consumers about Walgreens' involvement with Red Nose Day.
The challenge for this campaign was to achieve campaign objectives in an increasingly cluttered digital landscape. We did this by working with qualified content creators who were in touch with the needs and interests of their audiences. These talented content creators had worked hard to maintain their relevancy and the interest of their dedicated followers. Partnering with them gave Walgreens the opportunity to communicate with and activate an audience who was already focused, receptive to the influencers' content and interested in what they had to say.
The #RedNose campaign utilized a three-pronged strategy:
1. Create: the campaign utilized Walgreens VIP influencers (those who had previously worked with Walgreens and had an ambassador-type relationship) to tell the Red Nose Day story and drive their readers to Walgreens to purchase Red Noses. This group of proven and dedicated Walgreens ambassadors helped expand understanding of Red Nose Day through social shares, launch video syndication, and their own original content creation.
2. Amplify: The initial influencer posts seeded content for print and digital media placements, additional influencer syndication, and boosted social content. Through amplification, we maximized audience reach of VIP Influencer Content through a layered syndication approach which was optimized daily.
3. Engage: Influencers attended activations that amplified Walgreen's Red Nose Day initiatives while engaging audiences to contribute their voices to the cause and get involved. Engagement activations included; West Coast and East Coast Ride on For Red Nose Day Events, Facebook LIVE & Instagram Stories, GoodExchange Brand Champion engagement.
Partnering with these VIP influencers also offered Walgreens an opportunity to leverage the trust that they had built with their audiences through multiple Walgreens-related campaigns. These content creators had already laid the groundwork from which the brand could flourish. This type of third-party content ranks as more trustworthy to people than any brand-funded ad campaigns.
In partnering with Walgreens VIP influencers from top markets in the country, each with a unique voice and audience, the #RedNose campaign at Walgreens leveraged the influencers' excitement for the campaign and kept Walgreens philanthropic efforts front of mind for their audiences. The influencer's points of view and creative content educated audiences and communicated Walgreens commitment to tackling child poverty.
The good stuff? Sure, the campaign included standard content like blog posts; social shares across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest; live videos on Facebook and Instagram; Boomerangs; and Snapchat and Instagram Stories, but we combined this with digital and print hyper-local editorial UGC to reach an even wider audience across digital and print media outlets. We also syndicated top performing primary content via a large set of secondary influencers which further targeted audiences across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter; optimizing content to generate added awareness and engagement from audiences.
This campaign generated an exciting community response with more than 267K engagements, over 6,000 days of cumulative attention and saw the addition of #RedNoses to faces around the country. We achieved our goals of advocacy, education and awareness with the following impressive results:
