Walgreens has decided to partner with Local Response, a startup that “helps marketers respond to real-time consumer intent.” With the partnership, Walgreens now auto-sends foursquare users a Halls cough drop ad via Twitter when they check into participating stores.
While the idea of location-relevant advertising sounds quite efficient, the resulting bot-like method of spamming users on Twitter is sure to leave a nasty taste in many mouths. The tool, provided by Local Response, makes it possible for brands to search through public social media data to aggressively advertise directly to consumers.
So far, Walgreens has sent out 5,000 Halls messages in January via Twitter, and has continued to do so into February. This is in addition to other methods of advertising like promotions directly on the Foursquare platform. If you take a look at the company’s Twitter page, you’ll see how it has turned into an utter mess.
@Smartticus Not ready for the cold & flu season? Stock up on HALLS WARM-UPS cough drops today. Get more info here: bz.lo.cr/INr
— Walgreens (@Walgreens) February 8, 2012
Here’s how it works, from Ad Age‘s report:
Using a tool from startup LocalResponse, For example, when customers check in to any of the chain’s 8,000 stores through mobile apps such as Foursquare or Yelp and publish “I’m here!” to Twitter, Walgreens messages back: “Check out Halls new cough drops in the cold aisle.”
At the moment, this seems more like a misguided attempt to tap into social media than a clear new way of reaching customers. Honestly, having professional and helpful staff at every store sounds like a much more practical and useful investment for the chain.
This method of social advertising spamming also fails in two ways.
- Smartphones are always buzzing for the type of user that’s willing to check into a drugstore on Foursquare, making it possible for users to never see the coupon until they leave.
- I personally have no need for Halls cough drops unless I’m sick, and a lot of fellow shoppers will likely share my feeling of irrelevance. If Walgreens does decide to dig into my tweets and profile for relevant keywords, I’d be even less likely to visit the store for privacy reasons.
What do you think? Is this marketing angle a good idea, or will it just alienate users from checking in at all?
I agree. This is not marketing but spamming. I am surprised to see this from walgreens..
I wrote a case study on them just a month ago and was impresses with the integrated and personal way they reached out to me via Twitter and snail mail after I tweeted a photo and conversation w/my son while at walgreens..
My guess is this is the result of a small team who made a fast decision, was sold on a bright shiny tool and either didn't have the expertise internally to make a proper decision or chose not to. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and hope it is the first.
It is important for biz's of any size to really think all decisions thru. What seems like a cool automated tool & a nice way to acknowledge a check in can be perceived very negative even if the sender has no clue.
Wow, this is a lesson to all wanting to use social media for business.
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LikeAdam,
I don't care what your statistical data says, as a customer, Twitter user and Foursquare user this sort of marketing is annoying. Now that I know Walgreens will spam me with annoying ads for checking in, my first choice would be to choose an alternate pharmacy. If no such choice is available, I certainly won't be checking in at a Walgreens again. And if more stores start responding to Foursquare check-ins with spammy advertising, i'll eventually quit using Foursquare.
Instead of responding with statistical data, perhaps you should listen to what people are telling you about annoying advertising.
In the mean time, i'll steer clear of Walgreens.
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LikeHarrison-
You ask the question, "Is this marketing angle a good idea, or will it just alienate users from checking in at all?" Since I/we have the actual data (I'm looking at it right now), I think it's good marketing. I generally try to avoid me-search and instead trust the real data and insights we have available to us.
As I stated for an interview with the tonia_ries at the Real Time Report, “We have strong insights that guide our decision and safe guards in place to always make sure we are providing value.” http://therealtimereport.com/2012/02/08/walgreens-partners-with-localresponse-to-tweet-customers-who-check-in/
We don't spam. Our consumer feedback has been fantastic and if it changed, we'd make adjustments. That's part of the social framework we have at Walgreens. We do look to provide real time, in-store, local value for our customers. And the overwhelming response has been positive. Here's an example: http://laurenhuston.com/using-social-media-to-fund-flu-shot-vouchers/
We'll continue to blaze a trail, learn and augment as needed. With this program we've learned a lot since Day 1 and I'm confident that our approach was solid...the data validates our belief.
Adam Kmiec
Walgreens
Director, Social Media
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LikeAdam Kmiectonia_ries Adam - what segmentation are you doing for this campaign? Are you sending the tweets to everyone who checks into FourSquare or are you targeting them based on some type of demographic or conversation keywords? We have 4 bags of cough drops sitting in our cupboard from the last few times one of our family members was sick. Even if we were visiting to pick up some type of cold remedies those visits would be few & far between. Our family visists @Walgreens at minimum one to two times a week. We are usually picking up everything from last minute teacher requested school supplies, holiday gifts (valentines is good example), grocery items we forgot, Nexxus hair shampoo or the list goes on. I trust you that this is within your strategy. However, I am interested in your opinion on the negative feedback you are receiving as well as the fact your tweet stream now looks like a spam stream? You know I am a big fan of yours and absolutely loved the way @Walgreens personally reached out to me during the holidays after a real time twitter conversation I had w/your social team while at the store. I think it is really important the team listens to the feedback you receive. Yes, you may make a few happy with the cough drop coupons/ads. However, what about the folks who don't respond or voice an opinion or simply now have a brand imprint within in their mind of the Walgreens twitter stream being about cough drops which they at the time had no interest in? What happens if you continue this path and send another ad that is irrelevant. In a world filled with so much noise this just doesn't make sense to me. I would love a real time discussion and welcome you to come back on the #GetRealChat as early as this Tuesday to share your strategy and insight to clear the air and help us understand.
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LikepammktgnutAdam Kmiectonia_ries@walgreens Unfortunately, I can't share the segmentation strategy publicly, but I can say that there is one. For example there are business rules in place to make sure specific markets, stores and customers don't receive the message. We also auto-tweet less than 3% of the time. As for the negative feedback, we expected and were prepared to see and read commentary coming from pundits, questioning our approach. But, so long as that negative feedback is coming from those pundits and not our customers, I'm ok with it. To date, we've had more than a 97% positive to negative ratio for sentiment (hand scored not auto) from our customers. While the Halls offer might not appeal to everyone, the concept seems to have some traction. Unfortunately, I've never seen a product or a program that everyone loves. Even the iPad had dissenters :) As we break new ground and continue experimenting we're bound to ruffle the feathers of commentators. But, our focus is on our customers, not the media (traditional and digital) that are analyzing our approach. Shoot me a note at adam.kmiec@walgreens.com - we can share more offline. Thanks.
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Like@Adam@Walgreensadamkmiec pammktgnut Kmiec tonia_ries has done in the social space. Remember, I had you on #GetRealChat as a result of being in your store & recvg great comms from your team.
I think you should be careful not to bucket pundits with people who are real evangelists & want to see you succeed.
It also seems you are confusing to some degree "risk" and learning. Your response seems to state you really don't care what people think.
I'll be interested to see what happens with the campaign over the coming weeks. Hope your assumptions are right. My gut and insight tells me you should maybe have a bit more open mind to the feedback you receive.
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Likepammktgnut Pam, our focus is our customers. If we saw negative feedback in mass from our customers. We'd of course make adjustments. Actually, we made several adjustments throughout the campaign based on customer feedback. I can appreciate that you are a customer. So am I :) But, we don't value any 1 person's voice over another's in our community. Even, my voice, is often tuned out in favor of what the insights and our community are saying. We value the collective voice of our community. Right now, the feedback, both quantitative and qualitative has been universally positive, save for a few bumps. For example: https://twitter.com/#!/search/walgreens%20social and that's just a high level review from twitter. To be clear, when I say pundits, I mean people who's job it is to provide commentary. Even when we receive positive praise from pundits, as we did in the AdAge article, we don't let that cloud what our gut, insights and community are telling us. We can't let overwhelmingly positive or negative coverage from the media drive our decisions. But, data, insights, strategy, results and our community should be driving those decisions. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I'd be happy to catch up with you live. I feel like that's demonstrative of being human and open to feedback. If you do want to connect, I'd be happy to talk. Thanks.
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LikeHarrison - it would be interesting to find out what the users really think. There are plenty of examples of brands successfully messaging customers based on some expressed interest (via on content or location), Pop Chips is a great example of a brand doing it right, so I wouldn't necessarily write off all unsolicited Twitter messages as spam. That said it's a fine line -- Toyota's Superbowl Camry spam campaign is a good example of doing it wrong. Do you have any evidence that users who received the Walgreen messages are upset?
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Liketonia_ries Auto messaging coupons to users is spammy and an innapropriate use for Twitter -- in my book, at least. But you are right, there is a chance that all 5K shoppers really appreciated the message about cough drops. In that case, it would be hard to call it spam. I just doubt that's how they felt.
If it happened to me, I wouldn't be outraged. Just slightly annoyed, and turned off about ever checking in again.
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LikeHarrison Weber don't think we've seen the last of these kinds of campaigns - will be interesting to see if companies figure out how to do it right. Like, oh right, Harrison Weber is the one who hates coupons but he did just tell a friend he would kill for backstage passes to see this band he likes ... maybe we can send him just one teensy automated tweet to give him these passes we have?
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Liketonia_ries This kind of campaign will definitely continue becoming more and more common. But here's the problem with that:
If Walgreens sends me messages about Halls, and Guitar Center sends me messages about guitars and Tropicana sends me messages about orange juice, it will all start to become one giant mess that distracts Twitter users from real forms of non-automated communication. It's like an ad that the companies aren't paying for, and once it gets out of hand, Twitter will have to step in.
"One teensy automated tweet" will become a big deal when everybody does it. It's a cold and stale method of reaching fans -- even if it actually yields results at the moment.
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