What you need to know

• After three years of groundwork, TerryWhite Chemmart is pushing its retail media network, TWC Connect into omnichannel. 

• The pharmacy chain has built an in-house sales team, led by ex-Mamamia and Seven West Media exec Amy Booker, to take the offering to market, reporting into market and retail media head, Janice Hoogeveen. 

• Hoogeveen has spent the last 18 months working with international retail media advisor, Colin Lewis to devise the go-to-market strategy, which Lewis sites as critical to success in an increasingly mature and competitive market – i.e. “you have to realise that you’re in a media business, and you have to position in the market”.

• For TerryWhite, the ambition is a slice of the fast-growing global health, wellness and beauty market, and it’s positioning its offering as a “health-powered retail media platform”. The group is up against market incumbents in both pharma and supermarket categories, with Chemist Warehouse’s retail media play said to be worth as much as $600 million in revenue. 

• Initially launched with sponsored search, TWC Connect will soon have its own screen network, and is planning a full programmatic push into offsite channels. 

• The offering is grounded in first-party data derived from 2.5 million rewards members and 7.2 million script patients, spanning 626 stores nationwide.

• Against a fast-moving category, the gradual roll out has enabled TerryWhite to keep its “training wheels” as it grows its media chops, per Lewis.

• According to Hoogeveen, it’s going to plan, with the retail media unit tracking against its targets just six months after officially launching with sponsored search in January. 

When TerryWhite Chemmart first set its sights on retail media three years back, it didn’t yet fully understand the journey it was going on, says the Brisbane-headquartered pharmacy chain’s head of marketing and retail, Janice Hoogeveen.

“We probably woke up to the opportunity 12 months in, where we could say there was an opportunity to look at ways of using our first-party data in a way that we hadn’t before,” she tells Mi3. That data, per Hoogeveen, was much like that of any other retailer – except it was largely derived from consumers who engaging in health and wellness services, like booking a vaccine.

“We have a huge rewards program with 2.5 million members. We have a health app. So we knew we had a lot of data,” she says. “We’ve used that data previously for things like understanding patient profiles to better tailor services towards them, but we hadn’t really thought about monetising our data in this way.”

A year later, TWC Connect made its debut via a partnership with Australian retail media tech hot shop, Zitcha, launching with sponsor search assets that went live in January. And now, after getting up-and-running with onsite, the offering is going fully omnichannel, with Hoogeveen and team in the end stages of an RFP process to find a screen network provider and programmatic on the horizon.

But before all of that, the pharmacy needed to find a model – and positioning – that could go up against pharma and supermarket incumbents, within an increasingly competitive and congested retail media environment. 

Merchandising origins 

Heading up TerryWhite’s marketing since 2018, retail media is only a relatively recent addition to Hoogeveen’s plate, though one she says is aligned with the historical place of trade merchandising within the business.

“I think we were in the business of retail media before we realised we were in the business of retail media,” she explains. “Because we are a retailer, we have a really strong merchandise team who are dealing with the brands and have obviously traditionally been negotiating on space in-store, planograms. We also have a very robust catalogue program.”

Hence, retail media was a natural fit. “We’ve been developing packages and ways to build the brands businesses for the best part of six years,” says Hoogeveen. That’s long included television campaigns built by an in-house creative studio, out-of-home advertising, plus the TerryWhite Chemmart Rewards Program – which got a major update and new app interface ahead of the retail media launch last year.

For Hoogeveen, the decision to move into retail media wasn’t just an opportunity for a new revenue stream, it was also necessary to keep up with its competitive set. Many of its brands are also stocked on supermarket shelves, making a proposition that was commercially differentiated mission critical. Thus, six months out from the 2024 launch, TerryWhite brought in international retail media advisor, Colin Lewis to finesse the go-to-market strategy. 

They landed on building out a sales capability in-house, led by former Mamamia and Seven West Media sales head, Amy Brooker, who joined the business in May.

Per Hoogeveen: “We assessed different ways of doing things. We’ve seen what is working in Australia. We’ve looked everywhere, and we’ve elected to develop an internal team reporting into marketing.”

For Lewis, that means TerryWhite is able to go to market with its proposition, “knowing that it’s actually mapping to everything and capabilities that the organisation has”.

“Ultimately, it’s one we recommend, simply because the ownership is there and the incentives are aligned.” This is unlike external models where it can the incentives are a “little trickier to manage because they don’t know your business that well”, says Lewis.

Media proposition 

Getting the proposition right was also key to ensuring TWC Connect didn’t fall into the same trap as many retail media businesses do – i.e. “great at being retailers”, but not so great at the media part, per Lewis. That required a change management process, and critically, development of a clear and “attractive” proposition that sets the offer apart from competitors.

“Five years ago, [you could] just launch a retail media business, and the money comes in,” claims Lewis. “Now, there’s competition in the market across the globe, and you have to realise you’re in a media business, and you have to position in the market.”

It’s particularly true for businesses that need to compete against dominant category incumbents – locally, Chemist Warehouse’s $600 million retail media business might just wear that crown in pharma.

“You have certain businesses that are very powerful in marketing – major grocery chains in the US such as Walmart will have market dominance. They can kind of do what they want to do… because they’re part of the overall fabric of business and you’re always going to take those calls. But for everybody else, you’ve got to have some sort of unique position in the market,” explains Lewis.

In the case of TWC Connect, it’s the ‘health powered retail media platform’. Lewis says the positioning taps into a “longer term mega trend” around health, wellness, and beauty, which is a “growing market in every single country across the world, across all demographics”.

“So, it’s even better that you come out and say, this is the part of that we wish to own,” he adds

Hoogeveen notes it’s a scale play too, pointing to TerryWhite’s footprint of 626 stores across Australia.

“You can imagine that from a regional penetration point of view, we’ve got a broad coverage.” That coverage amounts to 7.2 million script patients, for whom advertisers can access de-identified data if they’re looking to, for example, “target a segment of people with some sort of condition”.

Slow and steady

Omnichannel is the next frontier for TWC Connect after spending the last 12 months getting the bones of its onsite offering down pat and building out the measurement piece, which went live in March. Now, Hoogeveen and the team’s focus is on leveraging its first-party data for offsite media, with a screen network also on the horizon, once a partner is appointed.

Once the screens are up and running, there are also plans to get into programmatic trading, which will be managed externally by TerryWhite’s Brisbane-based media agency turned sales partner, Media Merchants.

“[We’ll definitely do] programmatic – because we do a lot of outdoor media, we do a lot of connected TV. So, we’re familiar with it, but we’re not doing it directly ourselves at this stage.”

The gradual approach reflects best practice, per Lewis, who likens TWC Connect’s initial foray with sponsored search to “training wheels”.

“Search exists within a controlled context. Whereas screens are in a store, there are a lot of other retail things happening, there’s operations and the tech is different. So, if you go out with that your risk factor at launch is higher,” he says. 

The patience is paying off, says Hoogeveen, with the retail media unit on track to hit its targets – though she didn’t divulge numbers.

“We’re very mindful this needs to be – where possible – additional income that’s coming in, and we’ve had quite strong uptake from our brand partners in terms of sponsored search. So we’re definitely on track, and we definitely have a robust growing plan in place for the long term.”