My visit to CVS/pharmacy headquarters

Disclosure: CVS/pharmacy sponsored my trip to Providence, Rhode Island, for their CVS Access bloggers’ event. I am a CVS ambassador blogger selected by CVS to represent their brand. All opinions expressed regarding the event, CVS/pharmacy and products sold in their stores are my own.

CVS holds an annual bloggers’ event for a few days at their corporate headquarters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island each year, and it’s really a fun and informative event. The bloggers in attendance (this year, 35 of us!) learn about all things CVS — what new programs are going on in the stores, what new merchandise is coming to CVS stores, and so on. It’s also a great opportunity to ask questions about all things CVS in person. Each day is filled with interactive presentations from various departments of CVS. Here are some notes on some of the various presentations I attended:

CVS ExtraCare program:

• 1 in 3 people in the United States have a CVS ExtraCare card
• However, only 15% of shoppers use the “Magic Coupon Machine” coupon center in store! (People, you’re missing out if you’re not grabbing all those coupons…)
• More than $2.2 billion in savings rewards were redeemed by shoppers in 2012
• Coming soon for ExtraCare: You’ll be able to enter your phone number at checkout or at the Coupon Center instead of scanning your ExtraCare card. How soon is this coming? October 4th!

CVS Beauty Club

• There are currently more than 13 million CVS Beauty Club members
• Beauty Club members scan their ExtraCare cards more than 108 million times per month!
• Note: If you’re not a member of the CVS Beauty Club, you should be. Register your ExtraCare card at www.cvs.com/BeautyClub. You’ll get $5 in ExtraBucks for every $50 you spend (precoupon!) on beauty, plus a 10% shopping pass for signing up and $3 in ExtraBucks on your birthday each year.
• Nail is CVS’ top selling beauty category.

CVS.com website

• Brian Tilzer, Chief Digital Officer of CVS, shared that traffic from CVS’ mobile-friendly site and the CVS app has increased nearly 250% from 2012 through the present.
• 50% of traffic to CVS.com is from mobile devices or tablets!
• Voice recognition is coming to the CVS app. You’ll be able to say things like “Refill prescription” to it.
• They’re working on making all of the Coupon Center offers available on the CVS app so that you could go paperless if you want to.
• CVS is exploring store pickup too – ordering online and picking your order up at the store.

CVS MinuteClinic

• There are 650 CVS MinuteClinics in the United States.
• MinuteClinics are staffed by nurse practitioners who can treat, diagnose and prescribe medication
• MinuteClinic is affiliated with 27 health systems around the country
• MinuteClinic offers a faster, often easier and more economical way to receive a diagnosis and prescription versus waiting for an appointment with your regular doctor.
• MinuteClinic is a quick and easy place to get sports physicals
• MinuteClinic also offers a weight loss program! Who knew? It’s covered by most insurance plans.

We also played games that quizzed us how well we knew facts about CVS’ various programs:

 

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My Weekly Ad

A good portion of the second day of the event was spent discussing the new My Weekly Ad, CVS.com’s personalized online ad that automatically shows you the products you buy most frequently in prominent, top-placement in your personal ad. I’ve blogged about My Weekly Ad before, and many of the savings bloggers in attendance, including me, expressed that we and our readers weren’t too sold on the idea of ads that featured what we buy most often. We like our paper (and paper-style) ads, and we don’t want to miss or overlook a deal if it’s buried deeper in the site than we might expect it to be.

Interestingly, the lifestyle and family bloggers in attendance overwhelmingly professed to love the personalized version of the ad. One blogger noted that she’d “busted” her husband for buying beer on his last CVS trip, because when she logged into her My Weekly Ad, she saw the beer featured among the list of “Things You Buy!” This brought up the topic of things we might not want to see in our lists..! CVS’ Chief Marketing Office Rob Price noted that they’ve already moved certain categories of products to a “blush” list – meaning, things that would make you blush! Products that might be “embarrassing” to have on a public list (condoms were mentioned as one of them!) won’t be shown on your My Weekly Ad.

Mr. Price answered all of our questions about My Weekly Ad, and there were many — is the paper ad going away? No, it’s not. But that led to a larger discussion of how long stores (not just CVS, but all stores) will have paper ads. Will they be gone in five years? Ten? Thirty? Time will tell.

Pluses of My Weekly Ad that I wasn’t aware of: When you create a shopping list with My Weekly Ad, your list shows you which aisles those items are in at your local store. If you select a different CVS location, the aisle list automatically updates itself to reflect the aisles at that specific store. At some point in the future, this feature will be able to show you the prices of the items at your local store too. I (and other savings bloggers) expressed how helpful this will be for us when writing matchups when there are items featured in the ad that don’t have prices listed.

During this session, we were also treated to a sneak preview of a new television commercial centered around the hashtag/tagline #WhatsYourDeal? First, we were shown a slide of Nick Cannon, Joan Rivers and George Hamilton. They asked us what all of these people had in common, and more than half of us immediately answered “Nothing!” Then, we watched the commercial, where the three celebrities were all shopping in the same CVS/pharmacy store. Each was asked “What’s your deal?” I don’t remember what Nick Cannon was buying, except that it seemed like normal stuff. Joan Rivers was in the cosmetics aisle muttering something like “I need all the help I can get!” And, near the end, they asked George Hamilton what his deal was. Bronzer – it was Buy One Get One Free! This was a pretty funny commercial.

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Your questions and answers

Several of us had questions about the HIPAA waiver customers must sign when registering for pharmacy ExtraBucks (you get $5 ExtraBucks for every 10 prescriptions filled.) This was in the news earlier this year when CVS rolled out the new “Fill 10, Get $5 ExtraBucks” promo, and many of our blog readers had asked about it. Why is a HIPAA authorization required for each person filling a prescription? As it was explained to us, any aspect of your healthcare record that is shared with another department requires a HIPAA waiver, and the only portion of your record that is shared is the number of prescriptions you have filled. This information is only shared internally with CVS so that it can give you credit toward your ExtraBucks. No medical information about the prescription is shared, and the program is owned and operated internally by CVS.

Later, in our focus group we discussed Pharmacy ExtraBucks further (more on that in a bit!) and someone asked why a competitor (Walgreens) does not have shoppers sign a HIPAA waiver to take advantage of their pharmacy rewards. Our panel leader said that she had no idea, but legally, even for something as small as the number of prescriptions being filled, that’s part of your record being shared with another department, and they believe that technically Walgreens should be asking you permission to disclose that. CVS’ HIPAA authorization is to protect both them and you. Your HIPAA authorization is valid for one year, and if you want to cancel it at any time, you can visit www.cvs.com/rxrewards-cancel.

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Other things you may not know

Midway through the second day of the event, we took a break to go for a short walk. CVS’ corporate headquarters are located within a large industrial/business park, and we headed across the parking lot to visit a business called New England Opinion. New England Opinion is a focus group facility where people can participate in discussions or panels on a variety of topics. CVS uses New England Opinion to get people’s opinions on everything from house-branded product packaging to store promotions. And, even more surprising? CVS owns New England Opinion too. But the company is so successful in its own right that other brands and companies (Ford Motors was one mentioned) also pay to host their own focus groups there. Consumers are paid for their participation and opinions. We were told that CVS often has to look outside of Rhode Island to Massachusetts and surrounding states for panelists for CVS brand research, as CVS employs so many Rhode Island residents that the general public opinion of them within the state is perhaps “too” favorable!

Our tour of New England Opinion ended with our large group of bloggers splitting into focus groups to discuss how we explain ExtraBucks deals to our readers and the Pharmacy ExtraBucks promotion.

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Fun stuff!

In addition to all of the sessions that bloggers attend, CVS’s bloggers events work in a lot of fun activities for us too. During our first night, we dined at an Italian restaurant in Rhode Island with a beautiful view of the sunset:

 

Each dinner table had a team member from CVS corporate at it, who good-naturedly picked our collective brains about what we like and don’t like about CVS. At our table, we ate with Judy (I’m sorry that I don’t remember her last name!) and she was in charge of all the food coupons that print at the Coupon Center! She was fun to talk to. She asked if we had noticed anything new lately, and we correctly guessed that the coupons printing at the Coupon Center have become more generalized. A coupon for “$1 off Planters nuts” is now “$1 off any brand of nuts,” — “.75 off Snickers” has become “.75 off candy,” and so on. She asked if this was a welcome change, and we agreed that it was — it gives shoppers more flexibility as to what to spend these store coupons on.

With my friends Laura from MyDFWmommy.com and Melissa from ConsumerQueen.com.

Here, I’m discussing something with Rachel from MashupMom.com, but in retrospect, I could not tell you what it was. Whatever it might have been, apparently she’s disagreeing with me :)

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Salma Hayek Nuance

During the second evening, CVS transformed a suite at our hotel (the Providence Omni) into a Salma Hayek Nuance day spa for attendees. We experienced makeup applications, manicures, massages and blowouts with Nuance products. I’m already a Nuance junkie as it is, but it was fun to see what new items are coming for the Nuance line and try them out. Salma herself was not in attendance, though we would all have loved to have seen her!

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Essence of Beauty

Our second night’s dinner took place at a restaurant in downtown Providence, and it was a kickoff event to introduce several new Essence of Beauty scents and items. Essence of Beauty is one of CVS’ house brands of skincare, body lotions, body wash and so on. The new Essence of Beauty products are free of artificial dyes and parabens, which I like. And with scents like “Vanilla Wishes” and “In the Tropics,” there’s likely something for everyone to enjoy. We received a gift bag with one of each of the new scents at dinner, and our dinner’s menu was inspired by many of the fruits and vegetables used as ingredients in these natural skin care products — think candied grapefruit, butternut squash soup with brown butter, and more.

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It’s Christmastime!

On the third day, we headed down to breakfast and saw that the room had been decorated for Christmastime, complete with a Christmas tree, fireplace, and wrapped gifts on the table for everyone. Christmas music was playing, and the Starbucks was even serving gingerbread lattes! Over breakfast we had an energetic Yankee Swap, stealing and trading gifts. Each one of the presents were items that will be featured in CVS stores this coming holiday season.

I ended up with a Dream Lites zebra in the gift swap! (And yes, even though it’s partially pink, my kids were thrilled with this once I brought it home!) Other goodies I saw people winning in the swap were a Mickey Mouse waffle iron, a retro-styled telephone, a plush bath robe and a freestanding wood wine cabinet. My friend Jen B from MommyBKnowsBest.com had won that awesome Mickey waffle iron, only to have someone steal it and give her:

Yes, that’s Justin Bieber Girlfriend perfume. She was a good sport about it. But you can imagine how much fun this swap was with the wide variety of wrapped gifts we were passing around!

CVS/pharmacy is turning 50 years old this year, and the CVS Beauty presentation focused on the ways beauty products have changed over the past 50 years. We were shown many of the new beauty products that will be hitting CVS stores soon, including Toni & Guy, Hollywood Fashion Secrets beauty and style aids and the SensatioNAIL gel nails kit.

This portion of the conference is a little like an episode of “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” as you take home one of each product shown in the presentation. Of course, this is a lot of fun for all of the bloggers in attendance, but as our Beauty Bags noted, this is also so we can try them all out and see what we might like to host giveaways for on our blogs so we can share them with our readers too.

The three-day event ended with a 50th Happy Birthday CVS party and some large cupcakes. Yum!

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Wrapup

I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of working with CVS/pharmacy for a few years now. As a blogger who’s worked with a variety of stores and brands, I can honestly say that all retailers should be taking notes on how well CVS utilizes bloggers and social media to spread information about sales, promotions, and product offerings.

While these annual events are a lot of fun for us, they’re brilliant events from CVS’ perspective too. Obviously, there are significant expenses to bringing this group of bloggers together each year, but consider the value to CVS. Instead of paying a market research firm to research what shoppers are doing at the store level and how they feel about various promotions, CVS can simply ask us directly. We speak not only for ourselves, but collectively, the millions of shoppers who read our blogs each week as well. There’s tremendous value in cutting out the middleman, putting us in a room together and asking “What do you think of this?”

We are also on camera for most of the entire event. A camera crew follows us everywhere, documenting everything, and we’re asked to provide our opinions on a variety of products and promotions in video segments each day. After this event, CVS has hours of video footage to go back and refer to for their own research and promos too, which I’m sure they love!

Conversely, these events have the effect of endearing bloggers to CVS too. It’s wonderful to know that not only is a company paying attention to how its shoppers are using social media, but that they’re also there for us too when we have questions. We don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get an answer for our readers when there’s a question about a promotion. CVS’s marketing and social media team is always quick to respond to inquiries, as again, they know how many of their shoppers are utilizing blogs to help select what they want to buy each week and where they want to shop. Every time I’ve contacted CVS with a question, I’ve received a prompt, “from the top” answer that I can share with you. As a blogger, I could easily name stores that at best, hold social media inquiries at arm’s length, or worse, have no blogger outreach at all. CVS, you are doing it right!

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Disclosure: CVS/pharmacy sponsored my trip to Providence, Rhode Island, for their CVS Access bloggers’ event. I am a CVS ambassador blogger selected by CVS to represent their brand. All opinions expressed regarding the event, CVS/pharmacy and products sold in their stores are my own.