Challenge
“Before 2020, we were focused on annual, in-person meetings,” says Peter Strella, Director of Communications & Creative Media Services at Rite Aid, referring to large-scale town hall or all-hands meetings. The Rite Aid team needed a way to connect their associates at a larger scale, all the while aligning these innovative goals with their internal resources. Of course, when the pandemic hit, the team at Rite Aid had to move quickly. “COVID-19 accelerated our transition to using video,” says Peter. “We knew that if we wanted to connect our team in a meaningful way, we needed a virtual live event platform to do it.
With over 50,000 employees and nearly 60 years in the retail business, Rite Aid is no stranger to innovation. So in 2020, in light of social distancing restrictions and COVID precautions, the drug store giant took to video to build a new solution for a decades-long problem. “Demand is high across departments for internal communication,” says Peter, “Associates want information, and they want to see leaders in person. But like a lot of retail companies, we have bandwidth challenges.”
In response, Rite Aid ventured to stand up their first-ever virtual town hall and spoiler alert, it engaged more associates than they had in over a decade of in-person events, and they did it all with Vimeo. Here’s how.
