How nine scorecards help Wavemaker win new-business differently
The Olympic Games may now have ended, but Wavemaker is far from dispensing with scorecards.
However, rather than give marks out of 10 for diving or gymnastics, the WPP media agency has hit upon its own system of scoring brands as a canny way of offering “consultant-grade” auditing and open doors to new-business opportunities.
Wavemaker has just been appointed to handle all media planning and buying for Well Pharmacy, the UK’s largest independent pharmacy chain.
Well selected Wavemaker following an initial project to review its current digital media strategy, having previously worked with Brainlabs for digital media services.
This is significant, given that the name “Unlock” was inspired in the first place by wanting to unlock growth opportunities for existing Wavemaker clients.
Rather than have to pitch for the account through an open process against rival media agencies, Wavemaker was able to have a speak directly to Well off the back of running an Unlock audit.
Chris Greer, a managing partner at the WPP agency based in its Manchester office, tells Mediatel News that Unlock kicked off a frank discussion with the brand about what it should do differently with its marketing.
“We have clients that have a need to be so much more agile. Perhaps there’s not a huge amount of legacy tech that can become a bit of a barrier,” Greer (pictured, above) says.
“If you look at Manchester, in terms of ecommerce and digital startups, particularly in fashion, they’ve started from a fresh base which allows them to evolve really quickly. We want to make sure we’re at the forefront of that digital transformation. Unlock enables us to, at the very least, make sure we are talking about digital opportunities.”
“[Well Pharmacy] recognises the need because pharmacies are going online. They have a footprint of 1,000 local stores and they’ve aligned with us to drive forward the digital business.”
‘It’s not standard’
Unlock is set up as an online tool in which a brand’s marketing performance is audited against nine disciplines, each of which are given a scorecard. These disciplines are:
- Search
- Content
- Social media
- Ecommerce
- Audiences
- Programmatic
- Video
- Sites and apps
- Technology
To judge a brand against these criteria, Wavemaker builds custom audit questions for each advertiser and uses a database of insights from previous clients – in the UK and internationally – in order to evaluate their answers.
“It’s not standard,” Greer insists. “It’s not about asking a basic question that any client could answer themselves; the critical thing is not necessarily answering lots of questions.
“It’s what the answers tell us and what insight we can get from it – that’s where the growth opportunity lies.”
Once the insights are generated for each category, Wavemaker benchmarks the advertiser against its business category and across other clients across the agency.
By being able to compare the advertiser’s performance in this way, Wavemaker is able to create the “roadmap” for growth with a priority list of actions.
Digital transformation of healthcare
Specifically for Well, this means digitally transformation the twin pillars of its business: enabling customers to book and receive online prescriptions efficiently; and its growing pharmaceutical-services offer in which people can learn more about particular treatments without having to speak to a pharmacist in-store.
Well was previously known as Co-operative Pharmacy but rebranded a year after the Co-operative Group sold the business to cash-and-carry chain Bestway in 2014.
The global pandemic – and three subsequent national lockdowns – has further accelerated the switch towards, and the demand for, digitally based healthcare providers and services.
Well has tasked Wavemeker with a specific focus on digital, search, social and display marketing as it grow its ecommerce operation and integrate it further with its 1,000 brick-and-mortar pharmacies.
Matt Peach, head of marketing at Well, adds: “In this digital era there’s an expectation that customers and patients are able to engage with businesses across all channels – especially digital.
“By working with Wavemaker on the initial digital audit we were able to fully understand where we needed to adapt our marketing activity to unlock potential growth opportunities and ensure all media activity meets the customer where they are – online.”