#212: Circle K's Award-Winning "PLAY or PARK" Programme in Ireland

This episode of “Let’s Talk Loyalty” features a conversation with Eadaoin Keane, Head of Marketing for Circle K Ireland who won the “Best Loyalty Programme 2021” from the Irish Loyalty Awards for their “Play or Park” programme.

Circle K Ireland is a highly successful and well-known fuel convenience retail brand in Ireland, the market leader for food, fuel and convenience retail.

Having inherited the “PLAY or PARK” loyalty programme from the previous business owner, Circle K has continued the programme and further invested in the proposition.

That strategy has ensured that this award-winning programme, featuring gamification, rewards and charitable contributions, benefits the members and business in equal measure.

Listen to hear how Eadaoin and her team continue to build new campaigns within “PLAY or PARK” to support Irish Olympic athletes, connecting with customers through local community activations, growing the programme’s membership and ultimately winning the hearts of Irish customers.

Show Notes:

1) Eadaoin Keane, Head of Marketing for Circle K Ireland 

2) Circle K “PLAY or PARK” programme

Audio Transcript

#212: Circle K's Award-Winning "PLAY or PARK" Programme in Ireland (33m)
Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m your host, Paula Thomas. And if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world. This show is sponsored by Comarch, a global provider of innovative software products and business services. Comarch’s platform is used by leading brands across all industries to drive their customer loyalty powered by AI and machine learning. Comarch technologies allow you to build, run and manage personalized loyalty programs and product offers with ease.

Paula Thomas

00:00:48
For more information, please visit comarch.com. Hello, and welcome to episode 212 of Let’s Talk Loyalty today. I’m incredibly excited to be going back to my home country of Ireland to learn all about a loyalty program. There’s one, the Irish loyalty program of the year in 2021 “PLAY or PARK” is a gamification-based program that was created to really engage Irish motorists and increase footfall. And of course, drives spent in convenience stores to this incredibly successful fuel and convenience business is now owned by Circle K and the business continues to thrive as the market leader.

Paula Thomas

00:01:39
I’m delighted to be joined by Eadaoin Keane, Circle. K’s head of marketing in Ireland to explain how “PLAY or PARK” has won the hearts and minds of Irish motorists. Now for so many years, So Eadaoin Keane joining me from Circle K and Ireland. Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Eadaoin Keane

00:02:03
Thank you, Paula. Thanks for having me delighted to be on talking about loyalty today.

Paula Thomas

00:02:09
You’re doing some incredible work, Eadaoin and I think I mentioned to you off-air, that I’ve been a huge fan of the “PLAY or PARK” program way back to its very beginning in 2013. So you have a wonderful story to share with our listeners today, but before we get into that, can I just ask you in, I suppose, a personal capacity, Eadaoin, as a, as a regular everyday consumer, what would you say your favorite loyalty program is?

Eadaoin Keane

00:02:36
I would say my answer’s probably fairly consistent with others in terms of betas automatically go to the loyalty program. They’ve most engaged with others as a customer themselves. Yeah, for me, that would be the Boots loyalty program. So the Boots Rewards and their cards. And I’ve been a member of that program for a long time. I don’t like to say the year because it could show my age, but definitely since they’re in YouTube and definitely since I was in college and getting little, been able to earn points and use those points against makeup things are very, very important to college students when they’re making noodles. So for me, I loved it from then, you know, and what I like about it, it’s, it’s just been very, very simple.

Eadaoin Keane

00:03:22
It’s simplicity. It knows what the customer wants and it gives it to them. And I felt like it’s evolved with me since my college days. So I didn’t say so going in and picking up lipstick, you’re embarrassed. Yeah. It’s, it’s the one I probably engage with the most over the last 20 years or so.

Paula Thomas

00:03:41
Absolutely. Yeah. And, and I love what you said there actually Eadaoin that it evolved with your needs. I think that’s actually a very big insight because yes, you’re not the student by noodles anymore, you know, and I suppose our skincare has to evolve and there’s lots of different things. So, so I think we all share that incredible respect for sure. For the advantage program. And for anyone listening, I will say that we have agreed to have Boots on the show in a couple of months time. So we’ll be looking forward to releasing that. So one for you to listen to as well, hopefully

Eadaoin Keane

00:04:16
Tuning into that one for sure.

Paula Thomas

00:04:17
All right. Great great. So listen, as I said, there’s a couple of reasons I wanted to talk to you and everyone listening knows I’m Irish. And so quite familiar with the loyalty scene in Ireland and the player park program actually was an extraordinary creation when it started back in 2013. Were you involved at that stage Eadaoin or did you join after the company was taken over by Circle K

Eadaoin Keane

00:04:40
I joined when it was taken over by Circle K I actually joined in May, 2020, so like peak activity, I would say so, but I was aware of the “PLAY or PARK” program on admiring original. I thought it was great. And it’s really interesting actually how they are parked stars is what experiential rewards, where I can see more brands that you moving towards that area now. Yes, it was, it was a great one because it was, again, it’s simple for me, it’s so important for customers. What do I get out of it and what do I need to do to get that out of it? It’s just so simple. And that’s what I really, really liked by others. And it was like, it was very friendly campaign. It was very likeable. So all of that was really, really appealing.

Paula Thomas

00:05:21
Yeah. Yeah. You’re absolutely right. I think what struck me at the time was first of all, simply how many awards the program won. And so “PLAY or PARK” was on the international stage, probably the first I would say high-profile gamification based program. And I think you’re absolutely right. That’s very friendly name of “PLAY or PARK” and we’ll get into exactly what that means, but I always have this sense, you know, when fuel retail particularly, and I know certainly obviously convenience retailers where the big opportunity lies, but fuel is such a grudge purchase. So layering in that idea and experience, as you said of gamification was just a genius strategy from the outset.

Eadaoin Keane

00:06:04
Yeah. And I think, sorry. Okay. And before that, when it was Topaz, I really led the way in dash and game edification and then extend to get on to other things like our scratching manner or spending when games were added on people kind of know us for that now. And you can see if we launch a new game, people are talking about it on board, it’s looking what the prices are. And I got one today and I got this today and sharing tactics. I’m not sure what tactics there are to see people really engage with it. I mean, when we tease that these games are coming, people get, must be excited about it and are sharing it with their friends. And you see all these comments saying, Hey, it’s back, it’s back. So it’s, it’s great.

Eadaoin Keane

00:06:44
It’s great that we’ve built like that ownership of that space I’m in Ireland.

Paula Thomas

00:06:48
Yeah. And it must give you a lot of reassurances. Well, Eadaoin, I suppose, internally as much as anything else, because I think a lot of people listening around the world, you know, we run our loyalty programs and we, we do our business cases. And I suppose sometimes you get quite siloed in terms of, you know, what we’re doing and you wonder if it’s resonating. So to get back kind of feedback with Irish consumers, most of extraordinary.

Eadaoin Keane

00:07:13
Yeah. So positive. And, and you’re right with loyalty. I think sometimes in companies it feels like something it’s like a tick, the box or something that you must do. We must get a loyalty program in a really, you know what it’s all about. I haven’t worked with loyalty programs as long as maybe some other people have, but I have worked in retail for 20 years and I reached out to marketing, going to really is the lens. You know, it’s what you look at the business through. It’s about retaining customers. There’s different ways that companies do that. But I think the more companies can look at it that way and realize how just integrity this to the whole company, easier to sell internally, but also the easier it is to do the right thing for the customer as well.

Paula Thomas

00:07:54
Totally. And I really do remember actually being quite concerned 18 because it is often a case where, you know, the market-leading retailers we’ve talked about fuel retailer was previously known as Topaz. I think it was 2015 when Circle K acquired the business, if I’m not mistaken. And then I suppose my concern is always that, or maybe there’s a different set of objectives. Maybe there’s a different strategy, maybe player park won’t survive with the new management team. So, so do you know, was there ever a debate about it or how was it seen internally as a, you know, as a loyalty tool as you, as you’ve outlined?

Eadaoin Keane

00:08:32
Yeah, I think I was looking at the circle K acquisition externally, and I probably didn’t see the Circle K acquisition as a customer until a couple of years later, 18 months later when they started with the full rebrand. Yeah. And I worked in retail, worked for one of the discounters at the time in Ireland being a fairly small country. One of my colleagues had actually gone to work for Topaz. So I found a job on LinkedIn and just put their career with interest because I was very interested in the field convenience space as well. And all of a sudden this artist, they conference where everything was red and circle pain as if what is this Circle K? Okay. This is much just like I’ve never heard of these. And then all of a sudden under did an amazing role their program because all of a sudden Circuit K was everywhere on the roads they were at.

Eadaoin Keane

00:09:13
You could see them in action. You were driving, driving down the dual carriageway and being guys up there, replacing the blue with the rash. It felt a bit mysterious, but what really, I think brought it home for me, which I thought was great and really made me admire the brand is the campaign they did them to launch the K2 public. So they did it kind of around the right time, just when people were kind of wondering what is going on here and there, the main kind of hope with the campaign is new name, same people. So it was kind of like, It’s very simple, again, just really, really simple. It’s reassuring forwards, but it’s extremely reassuring for The campaign used real stuff.

Eadaoin Keane

00:09:55
And that’s in all my career, that’s an approach I’ve been reading found. It was actually using real people to speak on behalf of themselves and their experience, whether that being an employee or a customer or a supplier. And I thought that was lovely. It was just, just staff store managers and particularly retail staff, customer-facing staff, sitting in front of the camera and saying, you know, this is great. It’s really exciting. I’m really excited about the journey <inaudible> yeah. So I think unless it was absolutely necessary, there was no kind of whale to change, you know, everything and completely rewrite the book. And when it was already such a good loyalty program there, which was multi-award-winning, as you say, people were really engaged with them, really fond of it, just there wasn’t felt like there was a need to change that up.

Eadaoin Keane

00:10:42
It was really about how do we bring that back? We learned from it actually start, okay, we’re remarkably interested in how we could learn from that program. We take some of those learnings across our other business units as well, Richard, who, who sit on the team and he was part of that launch and did an amazing job. And he, he did just an amazing job of building that. I’m making it the worse winning program that it is.

Paula Thomas

00:11:09
Yes. And I remember writing about the program as well at the time, Eadaoin and seeing a wonderful and paragraph just as suppose it was in the Irish times. And it was just talking about this, I suppose, corporate philosophy as well for circle K about at steal with pride, talking about taking the best ideas in the business. So it does sound like the loyalty proposition for circle K in Ireland is, is certainly well-known with circle K globally by the sound of it.

Eadaoin Keane

00:11:37
Yeah, no, it is absolutely. And the things that we would have done that one other award shaped the areas like our digital stamps for our coffee, which was an industry for us in Ireland that is out of something that they’re taking into therapy use as well. You know, it’s, it’s always, imitation is always the best form of flattery when you’re doing something well. And you see what resellers in your market doing something similar. You’re like, well obviously we’re doing the right thing. We know we’re doing it because they’re doing it. But also because we know what’s working for our customers.

Paula Thomas

00:12:07
Yes. Yeah. Will you just explain the customer proposition of the “PLAY or PARK”? So the meaning of those again, simple, clever words. And how do consumers earn, I suppose, unburned, you know, just that basic proposition, because again, you know, there is a points currency there, which always makes people nervous in terms of the liability that can often come with that. But again, you guys have found a way around that, which I think is genius. So I’d love you just to talk us through maybe the consumer proposition and then maybe how the points is managed.

Eadaoin Keane

00:12:38
Yeah. So for the consumer you’re, and it’s very clear when you go into a store and look at any of our points of sale, anytime you purchase with us, whether it be fuel or whether it be something in our shop, you will earn points. As long as you obviously scan the card, you then use those points to enter into competitions. So you, as part of you will get treats every month and all of that kind of thing, but those treats aren’t related to your points at have minimum amount of points that you will get to, but you use those points to enter for experience rewards. So it’s always been a really big ticket, something that you’d probably not book yourself because it’s, you know, too far right there, like massive trip to New York, which, you know, a lot of spending money or the Maltese or Thailand, something that’s really attractive to people.

Eadaoin Keane

00:13:28
And you use the points to enter for those competitions and those, they there one every month. So there’s really good odds, I think, have actually been in those competitions as well. And what we’re expanding and I to know is, is more, maybe we’re going to keep those big ones, but then we’re looking at how can we bring the kind of smaller rewards in there? And another prize is to keep people interested, just things like we brought in things like iPads and stuff like that as well, but really it’s about using those points to win experiences. And that’s what it’s always been nice. Yeah. And, and I suppose from our perspective, it reduces the risk because your ice with points or in, in Bern, you know, from an internal perspective that come, you just kind of feeling, there’s a little bit of a lack of control there potentially.

Eadaoin Keane

00:14:11
And if you’re trying to put control on it, then you’re not doing the right thing for the customer. You’re, you’re, you’re starting to think a different way than by the way I have to serve the coaster. And you’re probably serving yourself better if you’re, if you’re trying to control the points. So for us, it was a lovely way of probably keeping a bit of reassurance internally that they all go towards entries and those entries go towards them price lands. So that’s, that’s, I suppose, how it worked on it was developed in 2013, we were probably not far out of recession launching a loyalty program at that time was a big step for any company to take. So I think it was absolutely the right move to do.

Paula Thomas

00:14:48
Yes. Yeah, for sure. As was. And am I right? Is it about 200 points that you need to play for one of these monthly experiences of a lifetime?

Eadaoin Keane

00:14:57
So once you wait for your 200 points, you’re able to enter a competition, put your entry in.

Paula Thomas

00:15:02
Absolutely. But you can also park your points, which I think is just a wonderful play on words for motorists.

Eadaoin Keane

00:15:11
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is, I suppose, as I said before, it’s really clear to the customer what they have to do and what they get out of it as well. So yes, he is in the simplicity there

Paula Thomas

00:15:20
And, but also what I love and I was looking at your prices at the moment, for example, I’d be much more interested in going to the mall deeds than Barbados, although I’ll take either clearly.

Eadaoin Keane

00:15:31
Yeah. I mean, during, I suppose, a lockdown, we were very conscious and we have a lot of conversations. Should we remove those kinds of competitions? You know, we need to, there needs to be some hope there that we want to be in on things, again, flying to these locations. We did however, intersperse that with other big ticket prices that people could probably relate to a little bit more. So things like those kinds of prefabricated cabins that you can get, you know, your home offices or mom cave or whatever you want to call us. So that was a competition on also just cash prices as well. But we were never going to step away from those big experiences because that’s what people aspire to.

Eadaoin Keane

00:16:11
Yes. I want to get away too. So we made sure there was still a very writing partial program

Paula Thomas

00:16:17
For sure, for sure. And then I don’t know whether it was player park 18 or, or circle K perhaps at the took on the sponsorship of Team Ireland. And obviously the Olympics had a difficult time, like everybody on everywhere and given COVID, but I would love to get a sense, you know, what was the idea behind getting involved with team Ireland? You know?

Eadaoin Keane

00:16:39
Yeah. I think for all us, for Circle K as a brand, I mean, they had that lovely campaign, you know, that the new name saying people, but there was a massive challenge enough to pause was an Irish owned brand on people had that affinity, you know, it had a very, very high level of brand awareness. And I think they are park maintain that definitely on the loyalty side, but just as a brand and their people relationships. It was a sense of a bit of mysterious brown stew. You know, it’s not an Irish brand, tried to bring a level of personality and community connection was massively important to certification and community connection and making the brand, I suppose, more not, we’re never going to make a round more Irish or pretend, but we can show how the brand is supporting Irish interests and needs of communities.

Eadaoin Keane

00:17:32
And that was the angle that was taken when it was decided to go ahead with the Olympics and the Paralympics partnership. And that was really range. There was a couple of insights there. It was, you know, the Olympics had had a difficult few years themselves, the huge amount of really, really good work with their athletes and bringing their athletes along their own journey. And for us aligning with somebody like the Olympics and Paralympics and supposed amazing organizations, both, you know, really pushed us to the forefront of customers’ minds of supporting Irish interests and needs. But where player pack actually came into that and added a lovely element, we’ll start linking it back to the communities.

Eadaoin Keane

00:18:14
So CircleK if you look at it, maybe like an almost like event with three circles and you had Circle K, you had communities and you have the athletes because another insight that can might as up people support the Olympics every four years, they get really behind us. Don’t really know a lot about what happens in the four years in between those events. So they know that athletes, you know, it was obviously train very, very hard. There’s a lot of people don’t even know there’s probably enough in the road or in the local villager using the same service station as they use. And what we wanted to do is probably use our program to bring people closer to that and bring those skills to the communities as a part of as well.

Eadaoin Keane

00:18:56
So what came up then was back another, I suppose, probably industry breakthrough in terms of using those digital coins. So when you generate your points, not only did you keep your points to enter your competitions, as you normally would, did you also, and you also generated digital coins for the athletes and then the athletes were given their own up where they could use those 60 coins as a currency to redeem that against you and streets and healthy food items from the daily or whatever it is, they were hunting for what they needed to, to help them on their training journey. What also we would highlight on our app where there was local athletes in different communities, where they were based around the country to bring customers.

Eadaoin Keane

00:19:37
Those are spots. It was a really, really nice campaign to do. And that was done without knowing what was going down the track in 12 months time with the pandemic and moving it field limping. So as a start-off point, the athletes were massively engaged as 176 athletes have encouraged the search on us that might not sound like a huge amount from bigger countries who have more athletes than the things for a country like Ireland. That’s huge. And I still, you know, I’ve been to a couple of Olympic events, some things like that, celebrating the athletes, and they will come up to you when they know where you’re from circle K and really express possibly how the program was for them on how it helped them, particularly on the field side. So, you know, a lot of them have to travel to go training all of that kind of stuff.

Eadaoin Keane

00:20:20
And you just want to treat five of our own brown certification jellies, you know, which are really, really good by the way, shut them out when you’re, you know, and they probably wouldn’t like to bet that that’s what they were buying. They did. Yeah. It was a really tangible benefits. So it, wasn’t just kind of just supporting and raising awareness. And we did that for the Paralympics book, for the Olympians on the pilot, they got something really tangible. They got something in their own hands, which was really, really gorgeous abortion on their journey. So that was part of our program. If you looked at parts of our program was a really strong program of in-store activation for 2020, and then obviously insert activation.

Eadaoin Keane

00:21:03
Anything in store pretty much was put on hold when everything hit in March, 2020, and we had to completely pivot outside. But what was so great for us is having that digital app for the athletes, cause that just continued as normal. And they were still able to get that support for most, no matter what was happening. And there, there were training at home, you know, some of the things that they did to replace their equipment, they could knock those departments, pretty individual look again, they would have said that was something that really kind of helped get them through just having that support from Circle K as well.

Paula Thomas

00:21:35
Absolutely. And I do love when a loyalty program can help build the brand. And particularly is, as you said, ID, you know, connected to community and connecting the athletes to their local community. I think that’s a brilliant idea and a lovely way really to, to, to make that, that feeling, the emotional loyalty, I guess, is what I’m getting to because we all talk about it. And so many people go, but I would, how

Eadaoin Keane

00:21:58
I know, I like one of the things we were really keen to measure was circle K, is involved in and supports the local community. And that’s what we’re raised rose, sorry, if that’s score increased by 83% of the stars of the campaign, when we measured it towards the end of the campaign, it was successful in connecting the circuit K on with the Irish consumer. And that’s really what we wanted to do, but whatever you like is not on is, is the afterwards engagement. They really got behind it. They shared all their channels. They used us benefited from it. And that was invaluable to us as well.

Paula Thomas

00:22:35
Yeah. Like your Venn diagram, it’s a win-win win. Huh,

Eadaoin Keane

00:22:41
Exactly.

Paula Thomas

00:22:42
Yeah. Yeah. And then you mentioned obviously the scores there, in terms of, you know, building community awareness with, with Irish consumers wanting other things, would you say play or park is being used to drive for the business of Circle k because at the end of the day, you know, this is, you know, again, a business with razor-thin margins, usually particularly with fuel. So, so how do you justify it? What are you measuring?

Eadaoin Keane

00:23:05
Yeah, I mean, we’ll measure, obviously we measure the bronze and that’s really nice things to be able to talk about. We also look at our sign ups, our engagement with the raised on signup program at the stars. And that’s really about maintaining that isn’t as if it costs much less to maintain it than it does to keep signing up new customers what we do. And we look at sales to loyalty members and hear they’re talking as well. And say, for example, during that campaign has been a really good engagement campaign. Our sales to loyalty members work 10.3%. So that’s obviously increased revenue to the business. So anytime we kind of turn on something like that, you know, we can see the results at our Joe’s, which is obviously when you kind of efficient as well.

Eadaoin Keane

00:23:45
Yeah. But also, you know, on the move more towards automation, we’re always looking and the background where people who maybe are drifting slightly there’s, there’s things that are happening in the background to kind of give them a nudge to give them an extra offer and get them back in our doors. And obviously that drives increased revenue as well.

Paula Thomas

00:24:02
Of course, of course. And I should have mentioned as well. We did have one of your colleagues from the carwash business on the show recently as well, and Lars Hecht talking all about the incredible subscription product and that’s working across three markets. And so that was very insightful. So just in general, I’m sure if you are working on anything, you won’t be able to say, but just what is your view of, of subscription as a form of loyalty 18?

Eadaoin Keane

00:24:32
I think it’s great. I think it’s, it’s something it’s something new and it’s something fresh for customers earn and burn and points. You know, some companies are doing it really, really well for this. Again, it’s, it’s locking in that relationship a little bit more in, particularly with things like car wash, it’s a regular thing you have to engage with. And it’s like, you know, it’s like feud, it’s like coffee, it’s, it’s part of your, your day it’s part of your, it could add, it could add to the hassle of the day or cause make your day better. If it goes well on something like a subscription service, where again, it just makes it easy for me, anything we’re working on or anything we’re looking at is around our three pillars and that’s, you know, ease person connection and value, but ease is so important to us and subscription really taps into that, that, you know, like anything that we do, any lessons we’ve learned is when we haven’t looked closely enough at how we’re making it easy for the customer, you know, we might have looked at some way that we’re rolling out an initiative.

Eadaoin Keane

00:25:34
There’s some technical issues around that and we’re like, we’re dealing and we’re looking very closely at how we can resolve those where we’ve learned lessons, where we haven’t maybe looked at, okay, how does this translate to the customer edge? They experience it. Is it easy for them? And if we can’t answer the question, if it’s easy for them, we shouldn’t be proceeding with us. So that’s where I see a subscription being really valuable, add onto bash and how we look at things internally.

Paula Thomas

00:26:00
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s music to my ears. And we did at one stage do an entire show about, you know, how simplicity for brands drives actually the corporate valuation. And there was some credible research done around all of that. And you only have to look at things like Google or Netflix or even McDonald’s, it doesn’t matter the sector with that mindset of ease and simplicity. You know, I think there was a term I learned at the time called cognitive overload and I was like, okay, yeah. Even the word itself is a, is overwhelming. So you’re totally right. We’re busy people. We want our loyalty programs to work for all us. And without having to jump through hoops, calculate the mathematics, you know, how, how Rich’s there’s or not.

Paula Thomas

00:26:44
And actually, I did also think when you were mentioning Boots earlier, Eadaoin, one of the reasons that I think we feel rather than actually know perhaps as consumers is actually it’s quite a rich program. So again, a very different casual of retail. I believe their rewards are about 4%, but that’s incredible. And again, they probably have the margins to do that, but you guys are doing exactly the same with the totally different mechanic and it’s really working so well.

Eadaoin Keane

00:27:11
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s so important for a feeling convenience retailer, to be looking at that way, because you know, our, our markets, our families on the road, they’re hardworking, there are people who’ve got places to be and things to do. They don’t necessarily want to kind of, they’re not going to wake up in the morning saying, no, can’t wait to get to my local fuel return and have a prize because they have nothing else to be doing. You know, they, they are, they do want ease. They do want less hassle in their day, wherever we can help them with that. I think that’s going to reap rewards for us as well as time.

Paula Thomas

00:27:47
Yeah. I love that term hardworking heroes. And that’s really nice. And you’re absolutely right. I suppose when we think about loyalty as an industry, starting with, you know, high powered executives flying first class, you know, the insights that drove those loyalty propositions compared to the hardworking heroes and what they need through your program are very different. So as I’m really loving the work that you’re doing to make it relevant for them.

Eadaoin Keane

00:28:14
Thank you very much.

Paula Thomas

00:28:16
Yeah. Wonderful. And I suppose as a closing note, I wanted to congratulate you on last year, you won two fantastic awards with the Irish loyalty awards and one was the technology and loyalty of the year, which was extraordinary. And then you won the overall the best loyalty program in Ireland. So you must have been absolutely thrilled with those.

Eadaoin Keane

00:28:37
We were a fiduciary and unfortunately I do have to call it Marion and the Irish Loyalty Awards. It’s amazing job for elevating the industry in Ireland as well, and really supporting it and driving it and keeping it alive. When, when Jeff keep moving and changing, it was supposed to be a live event. And at the very last minute, then more restrictions came in. So it moved online. So they did a lovely job of making everybody feel part of an event at the same time. And we sit at home, but my cocktail, my few … With my makeup and my earrings on. And it was, you know, first of all, it was great to see some of the other programs that were for words, because that’s how we learn. That’s how, you know, we see what’s going out there in the industry and what’s at the forefront, but to actually win in, you know, in the face of all of the quality that’s out there to actually win the best loyalty of origin, the industry, it was just amazing.

Eadaoin Keane

00:29:31
I mean, the company and we value loyalty very much within certification to actually win. That was a huge source of pride for everybody.

Paula Thomas

00:29:39
Yes, absolutely. And at the time that we are releasing this show, we will hopefully be meeting each other in Ireland again now. So the Irish loyalty so much is coming up Eadaoin. So I’m sure you have a few, few irons in the fire for the afternoon as well this year.

Eadaoin Keane

00:29:52
Yeah. And look forward to seeing what comes later. That’s going to be really, really interesting day.

Paula Thomas

00:29:58
It is. It’s going to be absolutely fascinating. So listen, Eadaoin. And that’s all of the questions I have from my side. And as you know, the show is broadcast globally, loyalty professionals all over the world. Super excited to hear what Circle K is doing with “play or park” in Ireland. Do you have any closing thoughts or other things that we should mention for our listeners before we wrap up?

Eadaoin Keane

00:30:19
No, I, I don’t think so. I think it’s really, if I was to say anything, give any advice, it’s by doing the right thing for the customer. If you’re doing that, I think you’re doing the right. You know, you can’t go far wrong if you’re doing the right thing for your customer. Yeah. Always have that in your mind with everything that you do.

Paula Thomas

00:30:35
I love that because actually I do think people feel it, you know, it’s one thing to, as you said, take the box, you know, and, and just to run something. But when you have that integrity around the program, it definitely comes through. So with that said, I’m just going to say 18 Kane from circle K in Ireland. Thank you so much from that talk loyalty.

Eadaoin Keane

00:30:58
Thank you for having me.

Paula Thomas

00:31:00
This show is sponsored by The Loyalty People, a global strategic consultancy with a laser focus on loyalty, CRM and customer engagement. The Loyalty People work with clients in lots of different ways, whether it’s the strategic design of your loyalty program or a full service, including loyalty project execution. And they can also advise you on choosing the right technology and service partners on their website. The Loyalty People also runs a free global community for loyalty practitioners and they also publish their own loyalty expert insights.

Paula Thomas

00:31:50
So for more information and to subscribe, check out theloyaltypeople.global Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. If you’d like us to send you the latest shows each week, simply sign up for the Let’s Talk Loyalty newsletter on letstalloyalty.com. We’ll send our best episodes straight to your inbox. And don’t forget that you can follow Let’s Talk Loyalty on any of your favorite podcast platforms. And of course we’d love for you to share your feedback and reviews. Thanks again for supporting this show.