Story-driven content marketing...from the heart

CHALLENGE: Stand Out in a Competitive Market

One of British Columbia’s most trusted brands, London Drugs, had successfully expanded across Western Canada, with 78 stores in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. They had established a strong online presence, but wanted to strengthen their storytelling on blogs and social channels to ensure that their personality—rooted in truly Canadian helpfulness—shone through.

It wouldn’t be a win if we didn’t make their online audience love them and trust them even more than they already did.

SOLUTION: Define Clear Narrative Pillars that Underpin Truly Engaging Content

Through a discovery process that partnered our content strategy pros with London Drugs’ senior leaders and whip-smart marketing and communications teams, we identified and clarified the brand story they wanted to tell through their content marketing.

Three narrative pillars stood out: they are compassionate and helpful toward their customers and community, they are profoundly motivated by their legacy as everyone’s local pharmacy, and they are intensely proud of being a privately owned, Canadian company.

We then worked with the brand team to hone in on the key people that London Drugs wanted to reach and engage with their online content, ultimately producing a series of detailed personas that the team referred to by first name (“I think DJ would really like this kind of post…”).

Using this vital information, we helped to craft messaging that supported the narrative pillars on each of London Drugs’ social channels, nestled within a robust and cohesive content strategy designed to grow audience reach, to cultivate key ‘niche’ groups within that larger audience, and to substantially grow engagement and loyalty.

As a part of London Drugs’ content strategy, we also helped to refine a look and feel for their visual content and to establish a tone and voice for written content that would tell the right stories, in the right ways, on the brand’s social channels.

Over the next 4 years, we continued to work closely with London Drugs’ communications team on a daily basis to help plan, create, deliver, and measure the results of high-quality blog and social media content. It was truly our pleasure to work with such a lovely team!

RESULTS: Targeted Audience Growth and Significantly Expanded Brand Reach

The results of a truly effective partnership quickly became clear, as we set in place a new schedule and suite of tools for content planning, production, and review of performance that made life easier for everyone on their team charged with promoting products, conversing on social media, and reporting on campaigns. We helped grow London Drugs’ audience, too: the blog audience increased by over 262% over the first two years, and blog readership in Alberta (an area particularly targeted for growth) grew by 316%.

In total, ECHO Storytelling helped the brand to grow the brand’s overall audience (across all channels) by more than 30%, including a 60% increase in Pinterest traffic, and an 800% increase in Instagram followers. Social engagement, healthy to begin with, also grew by 10% on Facebook, the company’s most important and established social platform, and by 300% on Twitter.

Best of all, our teams worked together to craft quality content that told truly engaging, helpful stories to an audience that loved the brand. Every month we delivered new content that delighted and engaged the London Drugs audience. That’s a win, in our books.