The Nuclear Scenario (Walgreen’s)

There are various modalities and senses of urgencies that flow through the upper echelons of executives at major corporations. Most of these individuals realize there is a time to grab market share as well as a time to plan a strong counter defense to against any and all plausible business, nuclear scenarios. Sometimes they’ve got to get into the boardroom and realize that the strategical direction that they are taking their company is concretely and 100% absolutely even more vital than the sugar coated, feel-good marketing messages that they continue to beam out into the ethos for all of the letdown customers to hear. Thus, drawing an even bigger divide in customer’s thought space re: the brand and what it really is vs. what they’re getting told it is.

For some time now we’ve been speaking about the transformation of the consumer into the prosumer and the shrinking of the discretionary and disposable income of the ever shrinking middle class – and for that matter – every class.

Ladies and Gentlemen – Walgreen’s is facing a nuclear scenario.

They made a gross miscalculation that, for whatever reason, is 180 degrees from their brand promise that they’ve made to their customer base. Not only has their chief, national rival seized on the opportunity – now we’re beginning to see smaller players seize the opportunity to deliver on the C3 (convenience,control and choice) model to send CVS through a nuclear meltdown and we’re at a point in which the nuclear fallout is abound.

I will whole-heartedly admit that I don’t know the entire situation with express scripts, but what I do know is that getting it remedied is no longer an option – it’s imperative – it needs to be prescribed.

I personally am beginning to feel embarrassed for them as they run a ton of TV weight accentuating their brand promise at the very same time that they’re trampling it with everything that they’ve got.

Customers hear and see with their eyes re: the varying degrees of separation when a company sways from their brand’s message and is not being truthful.

This is a textbook case in which the psychology in the marketplace is automatically turning their own marketing spend on-top of itself and causing things to simply get more out of control.

This isn’t mission impossible – this is mission mandatory. They need to turn this around quickly and then rebuild the trust that they’ve lost with the millions of customers that they left swinging in the wind.

As humans we only know one notion of what a relationship is.

And whether that relationship be with a brand, a friend or a convenience store – all of the relationships are built around trust.

Time to turn things around – and rebuild trust.