Data Is Guidance, Not the Bottom Line at Pearle Vision

There are many ways to view Pearle Vision’s brand identity: It's at once international, national and local; a retailer of fashion eyewear with a primary focus on eye care. When the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. almost a year ago, Pearle’s primary role as “the neighborhood eye care specialist” was even more central to its marketing communications as well as its services. While other major chains had to shutter and reopen under very different circumstances, Pearle’s shift from everyday care to essential care was relatively seamless. CMO Doug Zarkin spoke with Adweek ahead of our annual Challenger Brands summit on Feb. 25 about how the retailer's branding has continued to evolve in response to the phases of the pandemic. Adweek: How would you describe Pearle Vision’s unique brand identity and mission? Zarkin: When you think of Pearle Vision as a "challenger brand,” it couldn't be more true. But it couldn't be more interesting because Pearle Vision is a brand that's 60 years old. We were the first real brand in optical retail to bring together a best-in-class doctor with an unmatched commitment to care, and combine that with the finest assortment of frames and lenses under one roof. So it's ironic that 60 years later, a brand that really created optical retail finds itself in a position to be a challenger brand. For us, what is liberating about that is that it has given us a permission to really think differently. We think differently about what consumers expect from a healthcare services brand, from the doctor's side to the exam room, and what the retail experience needs to be. In a way, this is a continuation of our early efforts. When I joined the business nine years ago, I was given the permission to think differently about how we could once again regain our leadership position in what is now a very crowded space. Pearle Vision represents so many dichotomies: fashion retail and health care, international as well as local. How do you tie those various brand identity threads together? This is a terrifyingly exciting role that I have. The reason is because this brand is indeed the intersection between healthcare, high-end retail, national/international, franchise and local. Put all those things in a blender, and then you get Pearle. Fortunately, we’ve made great progress in shaping our brand identity to really speak to what is at the epicenter of all of those intersections. Specifically, Pearle Vision is a brand that is committed to genuine eye care from your neighborhood eye doctor. That's at the core. This is the north star for everything that we do. This is our brand positioning. At the conference, what I'll be sharing is how we have evolved to that positioning. It’s about how we uncovered real insights, not doing squarely what the data “told us” to do. We use and continue to use data as breadcrumbs to help shape our decision making, not make it for us. It’s how we ensure we live up to our brand positioning and connect with consumers emotionally and rationally through everything that we do. What were the specific pressures Pearle Vision faced this past year? At the heart of it, Pearle Vision is a healthcare services brand. Because of that, we were deemed to be essential care. So we were never fully shut down during the pandemic. However, we had to shift our model from everyday care to essential care. We had to communicate that at a neighborhood level to our patients. Imagine trying to live your life during a pandemic with a serious vision issue. We had to ask our patients to let us prioritize those in the community who needed our care the most during the pandemic. And we had to make sure that our community understood the need to put everyday eye care needs on pause, at least until the beginning of the summer, which is what we did. We at Pearle believe that trust is earned through a series of small moments and small things. So we didn't have to completely build an entire new process. What we had to do was continue to educate our neighbors about the precautions that we were taking, the small things that we were doing to give them a little bit of a better sense of safety and security so they could feel safe coming into our eye care centers.

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David Kaplan

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David Kaplan