Duane Reade was facing an invisibility issue. The drug store chain was struggling in a crowded marketplace, surrounded by legions of Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aids, and Health Marts. With competition on every side, Duane Reade wasn’t giving their customers a reason to choose them—and they weren’t.
At the NRF show last month, there was a lot of buzz around Duane Reade’s rebranding. In an effort to give customers a reason to choose their drug store, Duane Reade began positioning itself as an iconic New York brand. The new tag line is “New York Living Made Easy.”
What is it going to take to make this approach work?
A Heck of a Town: Understanding the Power of Place
At the heart of Duane Reade’s rebranding efforts, we find the passionate relationship New Yorkers have with their hometown. There are at least 8.2 million people living in New York right now. Every single one of them has their own unique, complex, nuanced relationship with the city.
When we start examining this relationship, we have to begin with a discussion of animism. Animism is an ancient, universal, and persistent tendency among humanity to attribute inanimate objects with the traits, abilities, and behaviors of people. As David Hume explains it, “There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious.”
In other words, if you want to know your customers, you want to know the places that they hold dear. The reason this is important is because people see these locations as an extension of themselves. If you know what they love about their town, you know what they love about themselves—and you can deliver that in your store.
Duane Reade began their rebranding with a bold, colorful new look, as well as private label products featuring New York-themed packaging, such as Morning Rush Coffee. That’s a good beginning, but in order for this approach to work, the chain needs to demonstrate that they have an authentic, genuine right to claim status as an iconic New York brand, things need to go further.
One way in which Duane Reade demonstrates they get what it means to be a New Yorker is demonstrated in their store design and layout. When New Yorkers are getting to know each other, one of the very first questions they ask is “What neighborhood are you from?” It is understood that a person from TriBeCa is going to be a very different person than a person from Red Hook, and both of them are going to be very different than someone from Liberty Park.
Neighborhoods are a fundamental form of social organization in New York. Rather than putting stores into neighborhoods, Duane Reade brought the neighborhood into their stores. Traditional category organizations went out the window, replaced with three distinct product zones: How I Look, How I Feel, and What I Need Right Now. This set up demonstrates an understand of their customers’ worldview and life experiences; a tangible demonstration of why they are a store for New Yorkers.
Will the approach catch on, or will we see this campaign losing steam in a New York minute? We think it’s got legs, provided Duane Reade remains committed to maintaining a deep understanding of their customer base. Putting their customers first is going to make it easier for Duane Reade to stand out in a crowded field.