Priceline is ramping up marketing around its health business this year targeting women with messaging to remind them to take care of their own health as well as their family's.
The activity starts with the release of the results of the Health Age questionnaire it ran late last year in partnership with Pacific Magazines to find the gap between people’s real age and the health age.
It found that women put their families first ahead of their own health so the retailer is kicking off events designed to encourage into stores by offering them easy ways to solve problems like high blood pressure or simply how to be more active.
Ita Buttrose has signed up as a health brand ambassador for another two years and Priceline has inked a three-year partnership with the Adelaide Thunderbirds netball team and will roll out activity targeting grass roots netball communities.
Netball is the largest participation sport for women in Australia with 1.1 million registered participants and around 3 million participants each weekend. General manager of marketing Mark O'Keefe says the brand will use the partnership to better communicate its health credentials to female consumers.
“We've been a beauty brand for 30 years but only moved into health in the last 10 years." He said the health push remains "a work in progress because one third of our stores don't actually have pharmacies". The plan is to increase its footprint and grow the number of pharmacies in the franchise.
“Would a traditional pharmacy sponsor awards, work with publishers or partner a netball team? Probably not, but we don't want to be a traditional pharmacy.”
Some 60,000 people filled out the survey, almost double the size of the brand's health survey two years previously. TV advertising helped the push, said O'Keefe.
Priceline increased marketing spend by $5m last year, and plans to maintain the level this year, with the majority going into TV. According to Nielsen data, the company spent $13.3m on main media in the 2013 calendar year.
The health and beauty retailer is currently on the hunt for a new media agency and is holding a pitch understood to include incumbent Media Merchants, two GroupM agencies and likely one of the Omnicom stable.
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