Kim Feil, CMO at Walgreens Shares Insights at Chicago CMO CLUB Dinner - The New Positioning of a 108 Year Old Brand

14 CMOs met in Chicago last night to share ideas and listen to Kim Feil, CMO at Walgreens discuss the role of innovation in her first year at Walgreens. Here is a short video of Kim discussing a few key points from her discussion on the new positioning of a 108 year old brand.


My take aways from the discussion include:
1) Know what business you are in – We all focus day to day on program execution, designing the next great campaign, etc. Kim spend significant time thinking through this important question and equally important, facilitating with other execs in the company the answer to this important question.
2) Consumer are no longer defined by demographics – We had a great discussion on the fact the ways many of us have approached customers, that have worked for us for years, no longer work. Also the importance of understanding your net promoters has never been more important.
3) Define a position that people get. If everyone in your company, your stores, your franchises, etc. can’t clearly see your position and why you are different, better, or the place to go, rethink your position.
4) Pick something that will show, not tell them, about your positioning. If you are rolling out new positioning, make sure you demonstrate your new positioning in actions, training, reward programs, etc.
5) Invite everyone to participate in building your brand. Company wide excitement and pride matters. Think of ways to include everyone in your positioning and how you plan to win in your industry.
6) If you come into a new CMO role, don’t assume prior poor performers will continue as poor performers under your leadership. Many people get stuck reacting to direction, and are under utilized. Kim noted a number of stars in her organization were not stars in the prior invironment.

Kim launched their new positioning September 8th to good early results and excitement within Walgreens they haven’t seen in years.

CMO CLUB Roundtable Call with Patty Azzarello, "Building Credibility and Relevance with your Stakeholders"

Patty Azzarello, CMO Coach within The CMO CLUB led a active CMO roundtable call with 8 other CMOs on the topic of "Building Credibility and Relevance with your C-Level Stakeholders". A number of great topics covered include:

Delete “Brand” from Brand Strategy, it’s Business Strategy

Branding is not a Marketing Job, it’s everyone’s job

Translate vs. Educate (If you are always educating your peers on marketing then you are not relevant)

Your strategy is where you put your resources

What is your personal brand? Decide then reinforce with everything you do

Not only understand your CEOs key priorities, but use the words he/she uses to describe the priorities

You need to think through a function by function blueprint for branding across every department in the company.


Click hear to listen to Roundtable - MP3 File