Loyalty Stories 13: Where TikTok Science Meets Loyalty – Caroline Parkes

Charlie

Welcome to Loyalty Stories, Antavo’s podcast on customer loyalty and loyalty programs. I’m Charlie Hawker, partner manager for UKI, Benelux and Nordics. Antavo is a technology vendor that powers loyalty programs all over the world. We help various great businesses such as KFC, Benefit Cosmetics, and other global automotive, fashion companies and other amazing verticals. In this podcast, Loyalty Stories, we dive into the trends around customer loyalty and loyalty programs. 

We talk about that with industry experts around the world to pick their brain to learn what’s next for loyalty. Today’s guest is Caroline Parkes from RAPP. Morning Caroline, how are you?

Caroline

Hi, I’m good thank you, very glad to be here.

Charlie

Excellent. Looking forward to diving in. First off, would you mind introducing yourself and the company that you work for?

Caroline

Sure. So yeah, Caroline Parkes, I’m the Chief Strategy Officer at RAPP. We’re one of the UK’s largest customer experience agencies. So we share some of your clients, and KFC, but also working with clients like Ralph Lauren, Mercedes, lots of global clients, lots of fashion brands. So yeah, some really great kind of clients.

I’m super pleased to be here because I introduced myself in a pitch last week as the Queen of Loyalty. Self-appointed, maybe in my agency. But I’ve hit my 30-year anniversary this year of working in this industry. I know, don’t tell anyone. And working on loyalty programmes, I think, has been one of the favourite parts of it, of what I’ve done over those decades. So yeah, really pleased to be here talking about this today.

Charlie

Oh, fantastic. I’m really looking forward to this. I mean, to draw on that kind of wealth of experience, that kind of, that career of yours, really, really interesting. You must have a fantastic vantage point, both kind of the trends that we’ll go into later on that you’ve seen develop over those 30 years and then, and then what, what you, with that knowledge, what you think is coming down the line. So you’re really looking forward to kind of diving into, all of that. But first off, when we ask everyone this one, what’s your favorite loyalty program and why?

Caroline

So the loyalty program that’s sort of closest to my heart is Boots Advantage Card. And this is both professionally and personally. So I’m gonna go with personal first. I’ve always loved the mechanic of AdCard. And that kind of, that used to be positioned as treats was for many, many years, it was all about treats. And I very much held onto that in the way that I redeem my points. 

So I may have used my points perhaps 20 years ago when I was a bit skimp before payday for a sandwich, but I do tend to save them up. So my last redemption was on a very expensive Tom Ford perfume that I treated myself to on my birthday. So I do kind of use it as a sort of little present to self.

Charlie

Nice. Yeah.

Caroline

But the reason, I guess professionally, it’s close to my heart is because I’ve worked on it at several different agencies over the years. I was working on Boots number seven in, gosh, I think it was 1997, which was when the AdCard was just about to be launched. And yeah, so I’ve sort of seen it evolve over the years and I’m really proud of some of the work that I’ve done on it.

Charlie

That’s fantastic. That must be, I mean, you’ve kind of lived through the whole Advantage Card thing. It is just that it’s one of those cars that’s so synonymous with loyalty and so synonymous with the brand as well. If we talk about Boots, everyone says your Boots Card, like it’s just, it’s so ingrained, isn’t it?

Caroline

Yeah, it is. It’s kind of in grading culture. And I think it’s really interesting what they’ve done in the last year where they’ve reduced the points. So it was four, now it’s three, but they’ve given a 10% discount on all of their own label products to add card holders, which I mean, it’s funny, I still call it the AdCard as well. Of course, it’s not a card anymore. I mean, I’m sure there are people who still do have the card in their purse or wallet, mainly purse.

But I think it’s interesting the way that they’ve evolved the proposition and the way that they’ve created the kind of mini clubs, like parenting club. I was involved in the launch of the over 60s club many, many moons ago. But I do, so I have a sort of special fondness for Advantage Card. 

But I think if I was creating a loyalty program from scratch today, going down the points collection route, depending on the client, I suppose, wouldn’t necessarily be the right way to go now. I’m certainly seeing in a lot of the research that we look at and work that we’ve done at RAPP that instant gratification is much more important than long-term collection. And I think that really plays to, you know, we’re in a cost of living crisis. And also, you know, we live in the world of TikTok, where everything is instant, and this kind of idea of long-term collection perhaps isn’t quite cutting it as much anymore.

Charlie

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? That kind of what, what a different world it was in, I think you said 97, 98, when that card was launched, that what, that they kind of kickstarted loyalty, I reckon in the UK around, it was just points that was what was available to loyalty everywhere and it’s evolved and it’s definitely stood the test of time. 

But it will be interesting to see how that evolves, moving forward with a brand new world we live in today where instant gratification, things like, you know, viewing habits, I think for kids, it’s like 30 seconds or less sometimes that you’ve got to grab their attention, those sorts of things. 

So it’s going to be really interesting to see how with, with this specific example, how it, how it evolves. As you said, it’s already gone through a, like a, probably a seismic shift for, for the, for the program in the reduction of points, but then having to discount the, not having to, but they did discount the own brand products. It’s, it’s a fascinating world, isn’t it? About how things will change.

Caroline

I think also you can’t disassociate a loyalty program from the brand. And I think that Boots has some challenges as a brand right now. If you think about whether you’re, if you’re, you know, if you’re really into beauty products on the high street, Superdrug is just so much more innovative has been for years. So if you’re particularly, if you’re kind of at the younger end of the market, then Boots has got a challenge there.

if you’re in my kind of part of the market, you know, my beauty products are now bought on Instagram and it’s about what Sally Hughes tells me is good rather than just kind of going into Boost by my number seven. So you can’t, you can’t disassociate a loyalty program from what’s happening with the brand as a whole. And I think it’s really important for loyalty programs to recognize that and recognize different shopping behaviors. 

And I feel that maybe that’s where whilst I have a special place in my heart for it. Maybe AdCard could be doing an awful lot more that could be more interesting.

Charlie

Very interesting. No, no, totally, totally. And I think we’ll maybe we’ll dive a little bit more into those emerging trends later on. So you’ve obviously had a very distinguished career within loyalty, but is there one or two kind of stand out, projects you worked on, clients you worked on that you’re most proud of, across your career. It doesn’t have to be at your current role. It could be across, across the career.

Caroline

Yeah. Can I give you three?

Charlie

Yes you may, of course you may.

Caroline

Okay, so I’ll start with the AdCard. So a really specific thing that I think is really important when you talk about a loyalty program. So when I talk about loyalty programs, I often talk about kind of the covert and the overt. So the overt is, you know, the advantage card is an overt loyalty program, is an overt proposition that you can buy into and is understood.

But it’s the covert, is what you do with the data that actually makes it incredibly powerful. So I remember being in a room, this will have been, gosh, yeah, let’s not name the dates, it’s like really, really long time ago. But when I was pitching to, I was pitching for Boots and locked in a room with a guy called John Wallinger. 

And we came up with this idea about rather than Boots sending out a magazine to all of its advantage card holders every month, which is what it used to do many moons ago, what if we sent a much smaller piece of paper with some coupons, but the coupons would be personalized and there would be one coupon which would give you a double points every month. 

It was called a DPDU, double points, double usage coupon. We came up with this idea and we won the pitch. That piece of paper with the coupons has generated it will be, you know, it was, I think last time I looked at it 500, 600 million pounds in incremental sales. 

This was last time I looked at it, which was some time ago, it generates huge amounts of incremental sales. It’s the way that you use the personalized coupons that are offers now on the app, which are the really powerful thing, not just the kind of the overt, oh, collect points and redeem them.

And then at another agency about 10 years after that was launched, when I was working on Boots again, it’s a boomerang client. I’d like to go back. We’d done some analysis on this piece of paper, it was called the quarterly mailing. And I noticed that 25% of recipients never did anything with it. So we were thinking, well, rather than, we could just not mail them.

That’s a lot of money to spend on 25% of the same people. But what we did was we tried, instead of sending them 10 coupons, we used classic kind of behavioral science and we just gave them one. And we gave them one and we found that unlocked. They sort of put them in this kind of training program to start using them. And then they got more and more and more. And we kind of reeled people in that way.

And again, the incremental sales that were generated from that. So it’s that kind of use of data that I’m really interested in, not just the building of a proposition. That’s my first.

Charlie

Yeah, just on that one. I mean, it’s just amazing that was your kind of innovative idea, just locked in a room and kind of like what those war rooms are fantastic to be in sometimes, aren’t they? And they’re great. 

And then, yeah, and then it’s, but how you talked about how much it’s incremental sales for that brand, but other brands have copied that. And then the incrementality on the other brands is just, you know, I can’t even think of that number, but it’s massive and that’s fantastic.

Caroline

Yeah, I’ll go to some maths on it. It’s certainly more than 500 million in incremental sales by now. But yeah, you’re right. My second kind of proud moment is, so about six or so years ago, I was doing some consultancy work with an agency and they, we effectively built a loyalty program for one of the JD Williams brands, so kind of big fashion kind of powerhouse based in Manchester. 

And their brand was Simply Be, which was for curvy women. And it was the first time because I wasn’t working in a big agency and I was kind of doing a lot of the work myself because I was kind of working on a consultancy basis for them. 

I was sort of effectively doing a lot of the heavy lifting. And I effectively architected the entire kind of reward structure and kind of the whole program. I didn’t come up with a name. We were working with a branding agency who did all the kind of look and feel. But it was just really interesting to kind of start something totally from scratch, rather than take something on board and make it better. 

And I’ve noticed that the program looks like it’s gone off the boil a bit. It’s called Simply Be Perks. But the reason I was really proud of it was I did in its development, I did a whole load of interviews, one-to-one interviews in real life with plus size influencers. And it was getting that kind of insight about the audience and about how it was so important to make them feel good and feel positive and also create this community 

Because there’s a real community in this plus sized group that is really powerful and has got even more powerful in those sort of five or six years since it was launched, that it was tapping into that community aspect was really powerful. And so I feel with that one that, yes, it was about driving you incremental sales, it did, but I feel like perhaps I made a bit of a difference bringing people together and that’s really important to me.

Charlie

And it’s fascinating kind of having done, you know, the end to end, you’d owned all of the, you know, the data, the number crunching, all of that kind of logic behind it. 

Caroline

It wasn’t just me, of course there was a whole team at the clients as well.

Charlie

Of course. Yeah. Sure. And then, but then you’ve done the kind of the computing kind of bit, but then it came to life with the human element. So it was bringing the two worlds together that kind of brought that, that to life and made it, you know, personal again, it made it a community, as you say. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah.

Caroline

I totally see why you’d be proud of that one.

Charlie

Yeah, of course you can. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Caroline

And then my third one is a RAPP one and in more recent. So again, two and a half or so years ago, we pitched for KFC. And it’s one of those brands, isn’t it? That I think it’s probably quite marmite. But if you love KFC, I think for extreme, I think there are more people who love it, the balance is tipped. 

But it was the first time I did something different at work in terms of choosing who was gonna work on the pitch. And I kind of held an audition because it was one of those ones that everyone wanted to work on. And so I effectively held an audition amongst my team and said, if you wanna work on the pitch, come along to a session, bring some thoughts around this along. And rather than just looking at who was available, who had resource.

I looked at who was most innovative and who was most passionate. And and out of that, we won the pitch. And but we’ve created and so I’m really, you know, I’m proud of it, because again, it’s the kind of the people that I assembled rather than me sitting there and kind of working out the mechanics personally. But we launched something called the KFC Arcade about 18 months ago, and it really has you know, it’s quite revolutionary in that category. 

So if you’re McDonald’s, you still got that kind of classic, you kind of have to wait an awful long time to get your burger by which time it will be cold and moldy. But with KFC, it’s instant gratification. So it’s all about, we looked into TikTok, gives you the reason why it’s so addictive is because it gives you a dopamine hit. So we were kind of looking at how can we use that kind of instant, not just the getting of something but also the mechanic of how you get it. 

So we introduced, if you’ve purchased something you then get to play this game in the Arcade which unlocks something which you get it instantly. So it was a very different mechanic, totally opposite to points collection and powered by, and I love the language behind it, we call it the Chicken Algorithm, which means that people receive things, but we make sure that it’s, and it’s fair as well, actually it’s not biased towards particular types of customers, but what we do is we cap it. 

It all kind of works from a commercial point of view as well. So it’s good commercially and it’s good for the customer.

Charlie

Yeah, fantastic and powered by Antavo. So, which is obviously fun, which is fantastic as well. I mean, it’s just to add to that. I mean, it’s won three loyalty awards this year. I was lucky enough to go to one of those, one of those ceremonies. It was just, it’s so well received as a, you know, an innovation within the category. Yeah, it’s fantastic. 

Caroline

Yeah, and we’re just starting to kind of see all the kind of results coming through now. It’s super exciting. So I’m the Vice Chair of the DMA Awards and we’ve got our judging next week. So I’m super keen to see how well it does. We’ll obviously go silently because we have very strict policy around judging and but in fact you should come and judge, Charlie. You should be part of that.

Charlie

Yeah, I’ll be well up for that. That sounds fantastic.

Caroline

Let’s get you in next year.

Charlie

Absolutely. I’d love that. I mean, I’ve worked at digital agencies and now in ad tech as well. So yeah, that’d be a fantastic opportunity. I’d love that. But just one, just to go back to one of the points you made around kind of the dopamine and kind of the instant gratification and then cause, because loyalty and marketing kind of brand awareness and brand kind of loyalty as our in general is so complex.

And kind of there’s so many different things that kind of go into it now right down to like a neural and biological level it’s amazing what you’ve got to think about these days when you’re creating these and innovation can come from can come from everywhere right?

Caroline

Yeah, I think so. I think having, yeah, innovation from every, I think, I think, do you know, that’s one of the things that’s, I mean, I, I’ve been in, in working in advertising, partnership, loyalty, digital, whatever kind of CX direct marketing agencies, as they used to be called for a long time. 

And I think the thing that’s really changed in, in my role is data has always been there. That’s always been the kind of key part of kind of my job. But now, if you think about marketing science and how we use that data and how we connect it via technology to kind of really power innovative customer experiences, I think I spend a lot more time now thinking about the experience rather than the marketing, which is quite a kind of, it’s a shift in the way that I guess I kind of approach things now.

Charlie

Yeah, absolutely. And just the mechanics, the push pull mechanics, what the expectations are totally different. I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s fascinating. I love working in this industry. I just, I can’t hide that. It’s just, it is brilliant. And there are new challenges and stuff that’s coming down the track. That’s going to be interesting on how that all works out, but, yeah, we’ll dive into that. 

So over kind of, you said that you’ve got, as I said, long distinguished career within this industry, but could you pick out a couple of the big changes you’ve seen in recent years in the loyalty industry that have really challenged you or things that have been very positive for the industry from where you sit?

Caroline

Yeah, I think perhaps the role that loyalty programs can play in a cost of living crisis. So, you know, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Aldi and Lidl don’t have kind of, do they have loyalty programs? I don’t think they do.

Charlie

No, I don’t think they do. I mean, they may do in the near future, but not yet.

Caroline

Yeah, but if you don’t have the choice to go to an Aldi, I’m lucky. I’ve got one just up the road in shipping Norton where they sell a lot of champagne. 

Charlie

They’ve got a great gin as well, award-winning gin.

Caroline

It’s that kind of Aldi. But if you, if you’re not lucky to have kind of access to, you know, to, to a really kind of low cost supermarket, to be able to get extra, to be able to get savings. I think it does make a difference. So, to be able to have those points at the end of the month. 

So if you can’t afford to buy some tampons, that’s a real challenge. So I think that they can play kind of a role. I think that’s really kind of interesting.

I think the key thing for me is around the way that social has changed loyalty. And I’m really interested in, there’s a kind of a, there’s sort of your traditional loyalty programs where I said they’re kind of branded programs and you know what the benefits are. And yes, there’s lots of stuff under the surface, kind of like a, a swan, I suppose, a swan, with all the data, yeah, probably, yes. 

And then you’ve got your kind of covert loyalty programs, which are, they’re not branded, but you’re part of something and you’re receiving emails and they’re highly personalized and, you know, there might be other kinds of customer experiences as well. 

But you’ve then got your kind of social programs and just that if you think about the way that hashtag communities have developed. So brands like Samsung and Apple, Google, have really kind of leveraged almost the kind of the power of the hashtag to create a community and also using community management to interact with people who are posting interesting content and to share it is almost a it’s a different way of thinking about loyalty. 

I think that’s really fascinating and now we’ve kind of got into an evolved version of that which is almost little mini loyalty programs with micro influences. So something we did for Samsung, for example, at RAPP a couple of years ago is we, for a launch of the S22, we created, which was a new phone, we created a band of people called the Epic 22. 

So we did this kind of getting people to  to audition almost with their content to be part of the Epic 22, who would then help us create content to launch this new product. And, and they became a kind of a group of, it had a brand, there were rewards, there was a kind of like, you know, this is what you’ll get if you’re part of it. And if you do more, you’ll get more. 

And it’s almost kind of a, it’s almost like a kind of little loyalty program. Kind of in itself amongst a small group of people who then have a disproportionate impact on other people who are interested in the brand, but just a totally different mechanic.

Charlie

Wow. No, that’s fascinating. Fascinating. And you see kind of that hashtag culture is it’s everywhere as well. Now, could it, if, I thought the rugby world cups on as we recording this and, Scotland have the hashtag #AsOne and it’s just this, and it’s just bound to that whole nation behind that hashtag. 

And you can see that done with brands. They’ve probably learned it from, other brands. So as you mentioned, like the Googles and you know, if Samsung’s have had those, those things, so it’s really interesting that kind of building a community in that social.

Caroline

Yeah. And that’s a lovely example, isn’t it? The hashtag that they’ve chosen in itself, its name is all about creating a community. Yeah. I love that.

Charlie

Yeah, no, it’s fascinating. Yeah. It’s really, really loved that. Okay. So that’s, that’s kind of looking back. And then now if I asked you to grab your crystal ball for a second, and think about some trends that are coming down the track, I mean, yeah, I’d love to see kind of over the next, you know, 12 to 18 months or beyond, what you, what you think is coming, for the world of loyalty.

Caroline

I think that I was actually going to talk about the kind of influence of communities, but I’ve just done that.

Charlie

That’s fine. No, you can. No, no, please, to be honest, go, go further on the influencer thing. Cause I think there’s, there’s more to unpack there. But yeah, or yeah, grab some new ones. Yeah.

Caroline

Okay. I’m gonna grab a new one. And it’s about, you know, I was talking about how increasingly it’s about the customer experience. I feel as though loyalty programs to date have been very much about the app experience, maybe some push notifications if people have gotten switched on, most people don’t.

And very kind of much incumbent on the consumer going into the app, I feel like there needs to be a shift, which is a more kind of omni-channel, fidgetal kind of, so I’m in the shop, or I’m in the KFC, or I’m in Boots, or I’m in Ikea, and there is, it’s more about the experience that I can get that’s personalized in some way while I’m in real life experience. 

So whether that’s because I’m using my app and it’s interacting with what’s happening around me, because it knows that I’ve walked into a particular area of the IKEA store, for example. My experience might be different if I’m in the marketplace, whether or if I’m upstairs in one of the rooms. 

And I feel like that’s the kind of new frontier that really, most of what we’re doing at the moment, it’s incumbent on somebody to go into their phone and do something. It’s like, how can we get people to how can we get, you know, there’s got to be a different way of just a switch on your notifications. 

How do we get, if people are on their phone the whole time, how does it recognise that I’ve just walked into a KFC? Am I welcomed?

Charlie

Yeah. And do you think, do you think that, yeah, exactly. Get that welcome or whatever it, because you walk in probably you’re on your phone looking, reading a text message or something like that as you walk in. So, but do you think that that, that kind of experience is an expectation that the audience has for things to evolve or something that the brand wants to get in front of the, in front of the audience?

Caroline

I think it’s a customer led expectation actually. And if you look at, so if you’re, if you’re a, you know, if you’re a Boots or an IKEA,  you’re probably not going to be leading the way. You’re probably going to be learning from some smaller brands who are really kind of innovative in a particular area. 

It’s a little bit like in banking, I suppose. If you’re,if you’re Lloyds or Barclays, you’re never going to be able to beat Monzo or Starling at their own game. But there are other things that you can do because you have the might. So, you know, I think it’s about, I think consumers often kind of get new expectations from whether it’s within the same category, but smaller, or whether it’s just from experience something elsewhere that they kind of think, well, why, you know, that you know, if that’s interesting, why can’t I have it? 

Why can’t I have it here? So I think there’s a bit of both. I think there’s a bit of both. I think it’s incumbent on people like me and my colleagues and you to be thinking about the kind of what’s next. But I don’t think it’s just about, I think it would be arrogant of us to think that it’s just about what we kind of serve up that makes the change.

Charlie

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Caroline

It’s a bit of both.

Charlie

And it’s interesting to see, cause you don’t know what you don’t know. Right. So if it’s like, we didn’t know that, you know, we would do all of our banking in an app now, rather than, you know, go to a cashier or log in on a, on a desktop. Whereas now it’s the only thing I do is just, I do it all via the app. And that’s not because as you said, the app, the apps were kind of invented or kind of grew, vast numbers of them through financial services. 

It was other types of industries that they were imitating. And it’s the imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Right. So it kind of starts somewhere and then, then grows. And then you kind of go, Oh, the app doesn’t work today. That’s really annoying. And your, my expectations levels are so much higher. So as you say, it’s kind of which goes first. It that that’s why I asked it, cause it’s a really hard one to answer.

Caroline 

Yeah, it’s a bit like using ChatGPT that, you know, it’s an amazing engine for it’s kind of like your, you know, helpful assistance to getting to some answers quickly in a way that’s richer than Google. But, but that might then kind of make you think about well hang on a moment if I’m thinking about searching for something on ASOS or Boots or IKEA or, you know, somebody who’s got a kind of huge inventory, that my experience should be more interesting. 

I think you kind of make, you start making comparisons, don’t you? Or just, you know, given that, you know, huge swathes of the population spend almost every waking minute on TikTok, that is probably the way that its algorithm and the way that it serves content is probably gonna have one of the biggest effects on the way that we have to think about customer experience everywhere.

Charlie

Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Yes. And it kind of comes all comes back to that. Harvesting the data, understanding it, turning it into information that you said at the top, which is just, you know, fascinating. And so I’ll move into kind of the final question now, and it’s kind of around, loyalty program and the tech behind it. So what are kind of the main features like, like must have features you think, going forwards for, for loyalty tech?

Caroline 

I think personalisation or individualisation at speed and at scale is critical. I think the covert loyalty programme, whether it’s the covert part of a branded loyalty programme or just what a brand does with its customer data to deliver a better experience, it’s the covert part that really drives the incrementality in sales.

So the ability to provide individual experiences, everywhere. So whether that’s in my inbox, in my app, as I walk into an Ikea and there’s a welcome screen that says, hi Caroline. Cause it’s recognized my face. I don’t know, but the ability to give me that kind of individualized experience, I think is critical.

And that’s certainly something that all kinds of studies you look at, you know, this high expectation amongst customers that experiences will be individualized. So I think that’s the critical in the, that’s what people like me are looking for, from people like you to how can we actually kind of physically make that happen? 

I mean, I spend a lot of time on a wall. We have a tool called the affinity loop, gets us to kind of look at customer experience from a really customer centric point of view. So it doesn’t matter about channel. It doesn’t matter about kind of group or objective. You kind of look at it from a customer experience point of view. And we often come up with, we come up with loads of ideas all of the time that then just are not physically practical. So it’s that, if there are, that connection between the ideas and what’s actually possible, that’s where the magic happens.

Charlie

Great. No, and yeah, and it comes down to that available data to kind of power those decisions. And that’s fascinating. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think that’s definitely something that needs to be there.

Caroline 

Yeah. The other thing is around the data that’s available. I think increasingly, you know, five years ago, it was all about kind of, you know, data capture and progressive data capture. And if you join, so ASOS have always done it really well when you sign up to ASOS, there’s a kind of preference center, you know, kind of what style are you? 

Are you more kind of pink lipstick or black lipstick? Are you curly hair? Are you straight hair? Whatever, there’s a kind of whole sort of style preference, which then helps ASOS to identify the content that they’ll serve to you. I think there’s a move away from that as we are able to pull from all different kinds of data sources. 

And aggregate that data to give whether it’s cohorts of customers or individual customers a more individualized experience. So, you know, we always used to talk about the weather API, which is just a bit kind of hackneyed and being done to death. But there are so many different data signals now that we can pull together. 

I mean, we’re really lucky. I RAPP his part of Omnicomm and we have this entity called Omni, which allows us to get all data from all kinds of different sources, like dunnhumby, one of them, for example, that allow us to, from a kind of media kind of targeting point of view, reach audiences in a really kind of granular way. And I think that’s really exciting.

And I think that’s where the, as, you know, agencies like mine, companies like yours, are able to find ways of bringing that data together and then bring it to a customer in a more, not always in a kind of a pull, in a how can we reach the customer more, where they are, not just in their phone. That’s really exciting.

Charlie

Yeah. And, and not be limited by what’s available now. Like think about what data could we get in there? Like, so where the data great or, you know, there’s always the classic ones of pollen counts or air traffic. And those, there was a brilliant BA campaign where they did out of home and they tracked the flights that flew over the top of it was fantastic, but that was all data powered and then, but now it’s kind of like, no, we’ve got so much choice, let’s get as much in there as possible that’s useful, and where we can use it.

Caroline

Yeah. It’s like where, but also I think putting data in the hands of, in the hands of internally staff, colleagues, whatever the brand calls them. So at RAPP we did a really interesting, and we started this really interesting program last year. And we’ve, actually again, we’ve won some awards for this. We called it “Loyalty from the Inside”, where, and we kind of realized that for Ikea family, the key to success isn’t just getting customers to use it. 

So as you know, kind of getting people to show that they have a card at the till is really critical because otherwise we don’t get the data. But actually, almost more important, it’s the colleagues, getting them to ask, getting them to talk to their customers.

So we started this program called, we called it Loyalty from the Inside, which is effectively playing back all the data around the kind of family driven sales in every different Ikea store and kind of creating competition between the stores. 

And we’ve just done it this summer, linked to the, we did a kind of world cup. So kind of linked to the women’s world cup theme. And then, and it’s really, it’s really made it again, it’s driven the incremental sales. It’s driven has been phenomenal because we’ve kind of recognized it’s not, don’t just, don’t just think about your customer as the audience, think about your colleagues, your staff, as critical to.

Charlie

Yeah, to empower the programs, right? And then just, and the B those kind of loyalty brand ambassadors in the stores, they, they’re the front of, they are front of mind. They are as they’re using it, they’re the people in front of them. So then what is that positive experience going back to those, the neurons firing, the dopamine levels and all those sorts of things is yes, it’s all ties in. Oh, this has been absolutely fascinating, Caroline. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

All right, that’s a RAPP. Thank you very much, Caroline, for being here. I really, really enjoyed that. That was absolutely fascinating. I think we drew on all 30 years of your experience in this area at that time. So yeah, thank you very much for your time. 

I think that my favorite part was when you, we were talking around, the impact that, you know, we have to take into account, you know, dopamine levels and the neuropsychology of the whole thing. Every element, every touch with a brand can be brought into that loyalty program and played back. I think that’s a fascinating, fascinating build on the industry as a whole. I’m excited to see how that kind of moves forward. 

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Also, please visit RAPP and talk to Caroline about how they can help you. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll catch you next time.