The Loyalty Roast: Challenging Loyalty Myths (#791)

Paula: Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty & Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals.

Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty & Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Paula: Today’s episode is hosted by Charlie Hills, Chief Strategy Officer of Mando, a UK based agency that uses smart data to create brilliant partnerships and rewards that really work.

Charlie: Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty & Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Charlie: My name is Charlie Hills, Chief Strategy Officer of Mando, WPP, Specialist Loyalty Partnerships Promotions and Rewards Agency, and a proud host for Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Charlie: My guests today barely need an introduction.

Charlie: I’m delighted to be interviewing Carly Neubauer, the co-founder and MD of Elevate Loyalty and Loyalty Economics, and Adam Posner, the CEO and founder of The Point of Loyalty.

Charlie: Today’s episode is a little different as rather than learning about one program, we’re going to learn all about the loyalty roast and even do one or two live.

Charlie: So listen in to learn what’s ready to roast in the world of loyalty.

Charlie: If you work in loyalty marketing, please join us every week to hear the latest ideas and insights from other loyalty experts around the world.

Charlie: Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Charlie: I’m absolutely delighted to have you both on the podcast.

Charlie: I know you’re regular guests and Carly, you’re one of our co-hosts as well.

Charlie: So welcome to the other side of the screen.

Adam: Hello.

Adam: Thank you.

Carly: This is very weird and exciting.

Charlie: It must be really funny to be on that side.

Charlie: But today’s episode is a little bit different.

Charlie: Normally, as our listeners and our viewers know, we talk about different loyalty programs and we bring in different loyalty program leads or hot topics in loyalty at the moment and really focus on that.

Charlie: But today, we’re going to do something a little bit different because Adam and Carly have invented something very cool called the Loyalty Roast.

Charlie: Now, some of you may know that, some of you may know what it is, some of you may have seen the Hollywood versions, but we’ve now got our very own loyalty version.

Charlie: But before we get into the Loyalty Roast, I wanted to start out because you’re both also loyalty experts by asking you some of our standard podcast questions as well.

Charlie: First question for you, Carly, what’s your favorite book about life, business or loyalty or all of the above?

Carly: So firstly, thanks, Charlie.

Carly: This is, it is cool and we need to be on the other side.

Carly: But I was interviewed by Paula Thomas a few years ago, legend, and my answer to this question has not changed.

Carly: I love this question and I love asking you, I guess, this question.

Carly: For me, it is called a book called Behave by Robert Sapolsky.

Carly: I brought it along to show.

Carly: Nice.

Carly: Robert will be thrilled.

Carly: Yeah, of course.

Carly: Big plug.

Carly: It traces the timeline of why we act the way we do.

Carly: It’s all about human behavior and why we act the way we do.

Carly: It talks about the seconds before making a decision, years before making a decision, even centuries prior to our actions.

Carly: So it’s very, very cool.

Carly: I love it.

Carly: I highly recommend it.

Carly: I have a huge stack of books beside my bed and they rotate all the time, except for this one, it does not go other than maybe right now, but it stays, it stays.

Charlie: I love it.

Charlie: That’s so good.

Charlie: That’s so much more high brow than what I’ve got next to my bed.

Charlie: We’re in summer season here.

Charlie: I don’t know for our global audiences, we’re absolutely cooking in the United Kingdom at the moment, and we’re completely unsuited to it.

Charlie: Though I have switched to my summer holiday reading, which is complete science fiction trash and romances and all terrible things.

Charlie: I must add some sensible books back in, so I’ll buy that one and take it on holiday as well with me.

Charlie: I will.

Charlie: I’ll add it in.

Charlie: What about you, Adam?

Charlie: What’s your favorite?

Adam: I didn’t know we’re going to talk about beds and books next to the beds, but my favorite one, in fact, I always say I put it under my pillow.

Adam: So yeah, we’re talking about bedtime stories.

Adam: Mine is Unreasonable Hospitality.

Adam: And I think you may or may not know that one by Will Godara, which is an unbelievable book about treating your customers or your guests.

Adam: It’s a hospitality story.

Adam: It’s about a restaurant in New York and it’s a business leaders book, Chapter 18, is all about legendary moments and how you create legendary moments for your guests.

Adam: I absolutely love this book so much because I’m all about loyalty moments of magic and the way that at a restaurant, you can listen to what people are saying and then deliver a legendary moment.

Adam: It’s just so perfect.

Adam: But it’s a great business book as well as a loyalty about treating our customers and loving them more.

Adam: So yeah, that’s my book.

Charlie: Nice.

Charlie: Now that’s unfortunately distracted my brain.

Charlie: Now I’m just thinking all about the legendary moments I’ve had in restaurants where people have done that.

Charlie: How cool.

Charlie: That’s a lovely thought and two fantastic recommendations.

Charlie: So thank you both very, very much to get us started, which brings us on nicely actually to loyalty.

Charlie: There’s lots of fantastic programs in hospitality and restaurants.

Charlie: That’s certainly in the British market, an area that’s exploded for us in the last two years.

Charlie: But do you have a favorite loyalty program?

Charlie: I know Adam, you’ve got lots that you like, but is there one that really stands out?

Adam: Well, one that I loved six months ago and it recently broke my heart, because they changed the proposition.

Adam: But I’m still going to talk about why I love it, even though they change it because I’m sure Charlie, you’re noticing and Carly are noting a lot of programs are going through reviews and restructures and valuation changes.

Adam: I guess this one could have been caught up by the CFO, but I’m just guessing without knowing.

Adam: But it’s from a group here called Super Cheap, Super Cheap Auto Club.

Adam: Why I loved it in the past is their proposition was credit back the difference.

Adam: Essentially, it was if you buy your car seats on a Friday for $100, and they go on sale on Monday for $80 because you’re a member, $20 is automatically credited back into your account.

Charlie: Nice.

Adam: That’s brilliant because it solves a problem.

Adam: I’m very much about program solving problems and builds trust and transparency.

Adam: And guess what you do with the $20 that came back into your account automatically?

Adam: Well, if you’re not going to answer, I’ll tell you, you go back and spend it and spend more.

Charlie: Nice.

Adam: And that’s what I love so much about that program.

Adam: But unfortunately, sadly, broke my heart, somebody decided it wasn’t working for whatever reason.

Adam: But that’s why I love that program so much.

Charlie: Well, I think that’s a big theme that we are seeing at the moment, actually.

Charlie: And we’re going to bring that into the Loyalty Roast later, actually.

Charlie: We’re going to talk about programs changing things and perhaps dressing up changes as benefits when they might not be.

Charlie: But before we get into the roast topic, what about you, Carly?

Charlie: I know you’ve got lots of favorite programs as well.

Charlie: Hopefully, there’s one that hasn’t broken your heart.

Carly: No, but this one really worked on me though.

Carly: Even though I know how loyalty works, it’s totally got me.

Carly: So recently, a few weeks ago, I was shopping for some baby presents.

Carly: I’ve got some new babies in my life, not mine, but in my life.

Carly: I went back to this quite well-known baby store in Australia.

Carly: I went in, chose my items, went to the counter.

Carly: I’m buying my items and they say, are you a member?

Carly: I said, well, I was but a long time ago and they looked me up and still a member.

Carly: They then said, okay, you get the member discount still and the member deals and all the offers.

Carly: But because you’re returning member, this month, for the next month, we’re going to give you an extra over and above sort of win back, come back, thank you for coming back kind of deal.

Carly: Okay.

Carly: I’ve been back four times since then.

Carly: Wow.

Carly: My loss aversion is kicking in.

Carly: They’re doing all the right things.

Carly: These babies are now getting spoiled.

Carly: I’m shopping more than ever before and I know exactly how it’s working.

Carly: It’s literally loyalty psychology at its best and it’s working on me and now I’m back.

Carly: So I’m crediting that one as my favorite at the moment because my deal is available to next Thursday.

Carly: Guess what?

Carly: I’ll be back in before then.

Charlie: So thank you.

Adam: You want to tell us the brand, Carly?

Adam: What’s the brand?

Charlie: She’s keeping that one secret.

Charlie: She doesn’t want them to change the CRM campaign.

Carly: Everyone just has to explore the retail environment.

Carly: Yeah, everyone’s going to explore the retail environment.

Charlie: Oh, that’s fantastic.

Charlie: I love that actually, because I’m equally passionate about behavioral sciences.

Charlie: It applies in loyalty and how we bring that to life and I still fall for it.

Charlie: So even though I understand the psychology of it, I know what they’re doing.

Charlie: I know what we’re designing in programs to actually tap into those core principles.

Charlie: And then when you see it, but it still works.

Charlie: It’s just fantastic.

Adam: Because you’re human and that humans are driven by emotion.

Adam: Hey, Carly.

Carly: Oh gosh, here we go.

Carly: We’re starting the debate already.

Adam: We started the roast before we even introduced it.

Charlie: This sounds like a topic you guys debate, but I’m going to stop you there because we are going to talk about that in a minute as part of the roast.

Charlie: So before we get into our mini roast today, and hopefully our listeners are really looking forward to finding out more about this format.

Charlie: I thought it would be really useful to set a bit of context so that people understand what we’re talking about in terms of the Loyalty Roast, because perhaps not everyone will be familiar with it.

Charlie: So a question for you, Carly.

Charlie: What is the Loyalty Roast?

Charlie: Then I’m going to get Adam to follow up with, why are we talking about it?

Carly: So Loyalty Roast, it’s an event, just a small group event that we’ve been holding.

Carly: Effectively, Adam and I discuss some key topics across the industry that we see in Loyalty Experiences, the loyalty programs we work in, or the ones that we’re consumers and members of.

Carly: And we discuss and debate the best and the worst and challenges and fabulous things that we see across loyalty, the industry and the programs.

Carly: What do you think, Adam?

Carly: Is that right?

Adam: That’s pretty much, but I think that’s a little bit sanitized.

Adam: What we really do is we roast the programs, Charlie.

Adam: We actually have a go, but we don’t mention names.

Adam: We are a little bit professional sometimes.

Adam: We may not call out a brand, but we’ll certainly look at all these aspects of programs.

Adam: And this event, I think that Carly and I have worked on, done a few of them already, is that it’s raw, it’s not sanitized.

Adam: And that’s what we’re solving for, because we sat one day and we were a little bit bored and tired of, and with all due respect to all the events around the world, we thought they were pretty much same, and we wanted to do something that would actually create a bit of a spark.

Charlie: Nice.

Charlie: And where did that spark come from?

Charlie: Was it just from your relationship and your working history together, or had you seen something external that kind of inspired you with the idea?

Adam: Yeah, that’s an interesting one.

Adam: I don’t know, Carly, correct my memory here, because sometimes it fades.

Adam: I feel like we were having a coffee and we’re thinking, we’ve got to have an event where we can feel safe, where we can say what we’re really thinking, like a lot of people think things but they never say it.

Adam: So we want to do something with an exclusive group of people in a safe environment, and we want to just have a go at loyalty programs, say what we feel in order to lift them.

Adam: So we say we want to roast them, we want to toast them, and that’s where, like Carly said, oh my gosh, that’s it, Adam.

Adam: Let’s roast programs, let’s call it the Loyalty Roast and let’s do it.

Adam: Before you knew it, one coffee, caffeine, Charlie, what it can do to people.

Charlie: Very important.

Charlie: What about you, Carly?

Charlie: What’s the point of it for you?

Carly: Well, we did start, we disagreed.

Carly: I think we disagreed on a couple of key points around the similar loyalty programs and we were literally disagreeing, which is okay, this could be something that we do and bring other people into this.

Carly: Because we say, think of your closest family member or sibling or someone that you absolutely adore, like you’re allowed to pick on them and give them a bit of grief, but nobody else is allowed to.

Carly: So we think about it in the same way.

Carly: We love this industry, we’re passionate about it, we care.

Carly: So we’re going to critique it and we’re going to challenge it and push to be better.

Carly: But we do adore it.

Carly: So it’s done with love.

Charlie: Lovely.

Charlie: That’s fantastic.

Carly: How does the event format work?

Charlie: I understand there’s something in the event that involves a rubber chicken, but I’m guessing there’s more to the event than that.

Charlie: What’s the structure of the events that you run?

Charlie: How does it operate?

Adam: Well, we’ve got the chicken.

Adam: Yeah.

Adam: I mean, it all started with the chicken.

Adam: Carly, have you got the chicken there?

Adam: I did.

Adam: I’ve got the chicken.

Adam: Yeah.

Adam: There we go.

Adam: Give it a squeeze there.

Adam: Here it is.

Adam: There’s the roast chicken.

Carly: It’s so annoying.

Adam: Yeah.

Adam: It was like Charlie, we both got this rubber chicken and I threw it to my dog one day.

Adam: My dog went crazy and I said, Carly, what about your little dog and didn’t like it at all?

Adam: There was a perfect love and not love.

Adam: We just thought, let’s roast it.

Adam: Let’s use the chicken as the essence there and move from the bland, boring and scripted, why do programs work?

Adam: Why don’t they work presentations?

Adam: But I think Carly and I have got a nice dynamic.

Adam: We respect, but also we’ll have a friendly banter.

Charlie: Nice, and I understand audience participation is quite key as well at your events.

Charlie: Carly, do you want to talk to us a little bit about that?

Charlie: How do you get your audience involved, dare I ask?

Carly: Well, I think we noticed this the first time we did it.

Carly: The simple fact that we are critiquing, but we’re also disagreeing on certain elements, made the people that were attending feel comfortable to also voice their honest opinions.

Carly: So we are putting out real topics, real pros and cons.

Carly: Adam and I don’t agree on all of it, but with rationale, and so the audience and the members and the attendees that came along, they were quite comfortable to also lean in and tell us their honest views because they could see we were also being honest.

Charlie: I think that’s fantastic.

Charlie: I think in our case, we always like to talk about exemplars.

Charlie: I think that’s really important, Amanda.

Charlie: What’s working really well and what inspires us.

Charlie: But I also think we learn a lot from the Caution Retail actually.

Charlie: What don’t we want to do?

Charlie: What’s actually not working?

Charlie: What turned us off as an audience?

Charlie: What didn’t work financially?

Charlie: What didn’t work for the brand?

Charlie: And I think you really need to look at both of those things.

Charlie: And I do think there was a bit of a tendency in the industry.

Charlie: And certainly, I agree at the conferences where actually is all the positives that are shared.

Charlie: Lots of people stand up and talk about their presentations and their case studies.

Charlie: So that’s what really inspired me about the roast.

Charlie: I love the idea of learning from the Caution Retail as well.

Charlie: I think it’s really cool.

Charlie: We obviously can’t do a full roast on a recorded podcast with Chatham House Rules that we are now going to publish globally to thousands and thousands of our listeners.

Charlie: But we thought we’d do a little mini roast so that our audience today can have a bit of a laugh and a bit of a sense of actually how a roast goes.

Charlie: We picked three topics and I know normally there’d be lots of audience participation about what those topics might be.

Charlie: But for today, I was going to ask you three.

Charlie: So a bit of a drum roll.

Charlie: I probably need some sound effects or a squeaky chicken of my own, but all I’ve got actually is I’m being eyeballed by my pug who’s suffering in the heat.

Charlie: She sort of decided to climb up on the kind of the sofa thing that’s next to my office and is staring at me.

Charlie: So I feel like I’m being judged actually.

Charlie: She’s almost eye level.

Carly: It’s quite concerning.

Adam: We’ve got to reveal all the dogs here because we’ve, I’ve got Lenny, Lenny’s a girl, you know, Cuvoodle, our Spoodle.

Adam: Carly, you’ve got what?

Carly: I’ve got Coober, he’s my darling Beagleer.

Adam: And Charlie, you’ve got Edna, the?

Charlie: The white pug.

Adam: Oh, wow.

Charlie: The notorious, yeah.

Charlie: She does a really good speech in British loyalty.

Charlie: She comes when I lecture and I teach on kind of loyalty at the, at the Loyalty Academy and the events that we do.

Charlie: She does a great speech.

Charlie: But yeah, today she’s just in judging mode.

Charlie: So you’re both being judged as we go into this loyalty roast.

Charlie: Look, for our very first topic, we’ve picked, we’ve picked a hot topic, I think for your first roast, friction.

Charlie: What is it and what is there to be roasted or toasted about people deliberately adding friction into their programs?

Charlie: And for some of our global audiences as well, it’s probably worth explaining a little bit what you mean by friction as well, because it probably needs a bit of explanation.

Adam: Do you want to hit it off?

Adam: You’re the good cop, I’m the bad one now.

Carly: Well, friction, we talk about the friction points added intentionally into loyalty.

Carly: There’s a range of them and anyone in the loyalty industry will already know that there’s key things we do to put in place into a program, and we want to create friction for a reason.

Carly: Now, what we do is we’re talking around the good or the bad.

Carly: Like, are these helping engagement?

Carly: Is this, you know, supporting the program and a member’s liking it, or is it putting them off?

Carly: So what we do is we talk through a range of different topics that are friction-specific and are they really benefiting the program or just really, really annoying people?

Adam: Yeah, well, I mean, if we really want to have a go at each other now, Carly, so, I mean, I know you’re the good friction, I’m the bad friction.

Adam: Why don’t we just choose one for the sake of the audience to get a flavor?

Adam: And so, you know, you share with the audience what your good friction is.

Carly: Well, for me, the easier and seamless the program, I really find it tricky and difficult when programs are purposely slowing me down, putting hurdles in place.

Carly: I want this to be easy and seamless.

Carly: Most of us have a million things going on in our lives.

Carly: We’re busy, we’re juggling so much.

Carly: Don’t make it hard for me to engage in your program.

Carly: So I’m talking around things like that.

Carly: I just want it to be easy and seamless.

Carly: I don’t see the point in adding hurdles for me to be involved.

Adam: You see, so I disagree here.

Adam: I think we need some friction in our programs because we need something, what I would call the IKEA effect.

Adam: We want people to actually engage a little bit, otherwise they just become zombies.

Adam: And I call it like desirable difficulty.

Adam: So if you make it too easy and it’s tap and go, and it’s tap and move on and forget, then you’ve actually lost that moment to create a memory.

Adam: And so I think friction is important.

Adam: Obviously, not in every spot, but friction absolutely from my side of the world must be there in certain places within programs.

Charlie: What are some good examples you think?

Paula: I’m sorry, Carly.

Carly: No, I will love you for not giving me friction.

Carly: This is the point.

Carly: You’re saying you want to create this effect and create this so that I remember you and I’ve had to action and do something.

Carly: No, I’ll love you more if you just let me do my thing and go.

Charlie: What are some examples, Adam, of good friction?

Charlie: What do you think is good?

Adam: Yeah, I think it’s actually to get them to do something a little bit more than just tap and go.

Adam: So it depends on the program and the moment in the experience.

Adam: But for example, if you can get someone to click or tap or touch or spin or scratch, spin a wheel, do something to stop for a nanosecond and get engaged with whatever the proposition is, so that the Joyalty moment of magic bounces out at them at that moment, rather than just tap and move on and like, what did I do?

Adam: Why did I do it?

Adam: So you can gamify processes just to create that more, as I say, it’s friendly friction, it’s desirable difficulty.

Adam: These are my ways to find a place in a program’s experience, such that people actually remember.

Charlie: What about you, Carly?

Charlie: What are some examples of good, like friction-free?

Charlie: What does that look like?

Carly: It’s the most seamless where I can be in and out, whether it’s shopping, retail is a perfect example.

Carly: Let me move in and out.

Carly: You can remind me later, but let me transact, get in and out doing buying or doing whatever I need to be doing and go.

Carly: Then I will be loyal to you because you did not make my life harder.

Carly: You did not add a moment of, you can call it desirable if you want.

Carly: My desire is to not be held up while doing the core thing I want to do.

Charlie: So not a fan of gamification and loyalty programs?

Carly: I don’t need to play games.

Carly: I just want to move on.

Carly: I just want to engage.

Adam: That’s perfect.

Carly: Love me for not playing your game.

Adam: I just love that.

Adam: Great question, Charlie.

Adam: Great question.

Adam: Wow, that was just no rehearsal there.

Adam: Therein lies the difference between Carly and I.

Adam: The vibe that we created this roast is because, obviously at times we may agree or disagree.

Adam: It’s more than we go back to the audience, Carly, and we say, what do you think about friction in your programs?

Adam: Where can you create desirable difficulty or where and when do you stop playing games?

Adam: So that was such a great question, Charlie.

Charlie: Awesome.

Adam: I think it’s fascinating.

Carly: We’re switching between our views as consumers and members and practitioners as well, and you can see value in some of these, whether it’s friction points in this case, but then looking at it from a member lens is really important as well.

Carly: I’m talking about myself here as a person in my demographic, maybe I like that or don’t like that.

Carly: Doesn’t mean everybody does.

Charlie: I really like that.

Charlie: My hypothesis based on that would be that maybe Carly, your moment of joyalty in the program is where you see what the reward is that you’ve earned afterwards, and it’s more the transactional financial component where you’re going, oh, that’s great.

Charlie: Thanks very much and on you go.

Charlie: Whereas Adam, you’re more actually in the magic moment.

Charlie: I’ve opened the app and one of my, I’m sorry Carly, I’m firmly in Adam’s camp.

Charlie: One of my favorite programs is the Pets Club for Pets at Home, which is a fantastic retailer that we have in the UK.

Charlie: When you open up the app, the tail wags and I just think it’s a magical piece of UX.

Adam: Love it.

Charlie: It makes you feel warm and delightful, but it does, Carly, add about a quarter of a second into the app opening experience, because you have to wait for the tail to wag before you get your vouchers.

Charlie: So yeah, it’s really nice actually, and I think it’s different strokes for different folks, isn’t it?

Carly: That’s really cool to see.

Adam: And therein lies the tension that all of us loyalty program practitioners have to live with every day, with our clients, with our programs.

Adam: When do you make it simple and seamless, and when do you make it for them to stop and care a little bit and actually get…

Adam: This is not black and white, this is also the tension that you need to think about.

Adam: And that’s what we do in this roast, is create that tension and that discussion, and then we get the audience to engage, just like you did, Charlie, there.

Adam: We get them to vote, we get them to give us their examples in a safe environment.

Adam: So that was just a great example of the roast.

Charlie: It is, and it makes you think, and I hope our audience is sitting here thinking, gosh, what a really good examples at both ends of those spectrums.

Charlie: I think one of the programs I’ve probably most admire is the British Airways Executive Club program.

Charlie: I’ve been a member since I was about nine, kid of expat flying all over the world.

Charlie: And one of the things I love as an adult is the companion voucher.

Charlie: They make it extraordinarily difficult to earn, to figure out how close you are, and then it magically appears one day when you’re least expecting it, and then you have to spend it in really complicated and difficult ways with really complicated user journeys, and then expiry dates that just suddenly creep up on you.

Charlie: So it’s genuinely, it’s really hard to figure out how to earn this thing.

Charlie: It’s really hard to figure out how to burn this thing.

Charlie: But if you get it right, and you game the system perfectly, you can get fantastic flights anywhere in the world, and doesn’t that kind of work marvelously.

Charlie: And I think that’s a really good example of an IKEA effect reward, Adam, because it’s iconic and people talk about how hard it is to earn, right?

Adam: That’s a great example.

Carly: You’re literally using it here as an example.

Adam: So that’s a great example of what I would almost say makes the complex joyful.

Charlie: Yeah.

Charlie: Well, I don’t know if it’s joyful.

Charlie: To be honest, I think at the end, if you’ve got what you want, you can play the game.

Charlie: I could do quite a lot in the UX, both ends of that journey.

Charlie: They’ve just redone the app actually, and it’s no better.

Charlie: I was so disappointed when I saw it.

Charlie: It’s one definitely to be roasted in terms of the UX.

Charlie: But the actual principle of it is fantastic.

Charlie: We’re going to move on to a second roast now, which we’ve already touched on a little bit, which is about the role of emotion in a loyalty program.

Charlie: I’m going to start with Carly, and I think I now know the answer to Carly, what position she’s going to take on this.

Charlie: Emotion in a loyalty program, Carly, is it hype or reality?

Charlie: Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Charlie: Why?

Carly: I look, I’m going to be really, I guess, not everyone’s going to agree with this at all.

Carly: But there is such a trend, and we’re talking so much talk around this emotional loyalty, emotional loyalty.

Carly: Yeah, sure.

Carly: But why?

Carly: I don’t need you to be my best friend.

Carly: I want to engage with this program.

Carly: Adam and I do not see eye to eye on this one at all, and it’s just not my thing.

Carly: I’m sorry.

Charlie: No.

Charlie: What about you, Adam?

Adam: Therein lies the difference between the two of us, and I’m all heart and she’s all money.

Adam: Is it for love or is it for money?

Adam: I’m about the joy because joy is remembered, joy is spoken about.

Adam: We need more love back in our work, back in our business.

Adam: In fact, just a shout out to a fresh book I’m reading called Design Love In.

Adam: It’s a brand new one, brand new one.

Adam: Design Love In, how to make your business more powerful with putting love back into your customers and your experience.

Adam: That’s just a shout out about that, but I’m very much about, we need more emotional connections and in order for our program and the people who engage to tell others.

Adam: Carly, I know you’re about the money, I’m about the love, I’m not sure if we’re going to ever meet in the middle.

Carly: Well, I think it’s more authentic emotional connection as well.

Carly: So think about how many birthday messages you might get or notifications and messages to hear, we thought of you about this, so here’s a reminder because are you really?

Carly: No, you’re not.

Carly: What you’re trying to do, we all know is get me and come back in, buy more, do the thing.

Carly: It worked on me earlier, so maybe I’m not so sure anymore.

Carly: But be authentic.

Carly: If it is driving emotional connection, how you really do it for the member that’s relevant to them, understand them properly versus just the generic.

Carly: One of the areas we’ve talked about, we’ve debated is birthday, birthday rewards.

Carly: Don’t send me another plethora of birthday rewards.

Carly: I’ve got to go and spend a certain threshold to be able to redeem it.

Carly: It has to be within this time frame or it’s going to expire.

Carly: That’s not happy birthday.

Carly: You’re not saying happy birthday to me.

Carly: So I think maybe it’s how we think and how we actually approach it versus just a blanket.

Carly: Oh, we thought of you.

Carly: I got a message the other day.

Carly: We thought of you.

Carly: Yeah.

Adam: May be for that minute when they wrote the email, they did, Carly.

Carly: My expectation is not that the program should entirely do it, but just create some authenticity is probably more my point.

Carly: Yeah.

Charlie: Nice.

Adam: What’s your view, Charlie?

Adam: Your turn to vote.

Adam: Are you in it for the level of money?

Charlie: Do you know what?

Charlie: Here, actually, you have to remember I’m a strategist, right?

Charlie: So I’m a CSO, so I love a triangle.

Charlie: It’s wired into our WPP DNA.

Charlie: I don’t know what they do to you when you’re a planner, but somehow triangles are really important.

Charlie: Actually, I think the age of either or is gone, actually.

Charlie: Sorry, Carly, and sorry, Adam.

Charlie: I think you really need both.

Charlie: So we’re quite often when we’re designing programs, we talk about the strong transactional structural foundation where we are doing exactly what Carly is talking about, genuine authentic value delivered meaningfully in ways that matter.

Charlie: But actually, we also talk about the top of the triangle, which is what’s our brand-appropriate twist, which is usually emotion-driven, aware that we need to do both of those things.

Charlie: There’s a fantastic Ogilvy model, actually, where they talk about the bonds of loyalty.

Charlie: If anyone’s as geeky about this stuff as I am, and they talk about structural, social, relational, and emotional bonds, and actually the best programs need all four of those together.

Charlie: I think actually somebody very smart at Ogilvy has just developed a new model where there’s an extra bond driven by AI, but I haven’t read that paper yet.

Charlie: But yeah, I love the idea that actually you need both of those things together.

Charlie: I think you’d probably struggle now to find a program that was either or.

Charlie: That might be a challenge to our listenership as well, actually.

Charlie: If you’ve got a pure emotional program, please tell us about it.

Charlie: If you’ve got a pure transactional program, you can think about, please tell us about it.

Charlie: It’s an on the fence answer, but with a rationale.

Carly: To your point, it’s the brand that starts to be ingrained when we’re talking about emotional as well.

Carly: It isn’t just straight loyalty anymore.

Carly: We’re also using the brand elements to create an emotional connection.

Charlie: Yeah.

Charlie: I think this is going to be a particularly interesting debate.

Charlie: We are right at the beginning of this actually about agentic and the effect that that’s going to have because we’ve now got to design programs that work for people, but also that work for agents.

Charlie: I think that’s going to be really interesting.

Charlie: Probably push us more into your camp, Carly, would be my initial hypotheses as to where that will go.

Charlie: But then very quickly, I’m sure we’ll go back into the both.

Adam: I think the opposite.

Adam: I think there’ll be more effort and time put into the joy and the relation and making sure that the transactional, because it’ll just be chased by a bot.

Adam: Yeah.

Adam: And how to create that emotional connection.

Adam: So I think also the way you said it’s not an, it’s not an or it’s an and, and it’s all contextual to the brand.

Adam: It’s all contextual to the category and everything.

Adam: But the debate we’ve just had is exactly what happens at the roast.

Adam: And the power of the roast is that those points of view, that discussion, the audience engagement, and I just think we all learn so much in that very safe environment.

Charlie: Yeah, I love talking to, well, actually, I like talking to experienced practitioners, but also kind of new practitioners and fresh points of view as well.

Charlie: It is, it’s fascinating, isn’t it?

Charlie: What you learn from these debates.

Charlie: And I do think, you know, it’s obviously my first time in the roast environment.

Charlie: And I love seeing both.

Charlie: It almost feels like a debating society at school.

Charlie: My 15-year-old is actually going in for like a debating thing that they’re doing in English language today.

Charlie: And he had to argue that social media was a bad thing.

Charlie: And obviously, it’s the exact opposite of what he actually thinks.

Charlie: And it’s been quite interesting kind of debating that.

Charlie: And so, yeah, it’s a really fantastic format, which brings us nicely on to our last roast format, which is one of my…

Charlie: I’m going to come all out here.

Charlie: I hate it when programs do this.

Charlie: But when a program makes a big change and masquerades it as an added benefit, when it actually isn’t an added benefit, is that a good idea or a bad one?

Charlie: Over to you.

Charlie: I’ll go to Adam first.

Adam: Wow.

Adam: Well, this is a really tricky one.

Adam: This is perhaps the trickiest one.

Adam: But one of the examples without, remember, it is a safe environment that we’re in.

Adam: We don’t necessarily mention brands at all.

Adam: But what we do is we find examples of what we don’t think actually is just bullsh**.

Adam: For example, we just got a comes from a very big brand loyalty program and said that their anniversary rewards will be retired across all the tiers.

Adam: Just picture what the word retired.

Adam: I mean, really, it’s just like, where does the retirement home down the road, where all the rewards are all sitting quietly reading the newspaper?

Charlie: They’re in the same place that my favorite coffee, I used to have a lovely dog walk with Edna and pick up my free coffee for one of my favorite loyalty programs.

Charlie: It’s in the same retirement home now because I believe it got too expensive to be delivered, but I really miss it.

Adam: Yeah.

Adam: So this is a very interesting topic.

Adam: I don’t know what Carly’s point of view on this, but this one, when we roast this one, we have a few good examples and we get a lot of discussion, ask clients and or people in the audience about have they changed their program?

Adam: How do they communicate them?

Adam: Communicate the change.

Adam: Do they masquerade, hide it, not transparent, use words like retired?

Adam: How do you communicate change?

Adam: Yeah, I’d love Carly to jump in and or you Charlie.

Carly: This is really hard and that’s why we include this topic, because we know that not only have we had to be involved with programs that may have done re-change here, but also some of the audience members.

Carly: It’s pretty common that someone has had to undergo this.

Carly: It’s really the how.

Carly: I think it’s extremely difficult, but honestly, generally speaking, honesty comes out as in don’t assume your members and your audience are just stupid and won’t know.

Carly: We’ve seen this in the last couple of years, some really big programs, especially in the APAC region, that have had to change their currency conversion, let’s say, and don’t try and hide it and assume that no one’s going to do the basic math and figure it out.

Carly: So how do you do it?

Carly: I wouldn’t say it’s easy.

Carly: I don’t think there’s a silver bullet, this is the one way to do it.

Carly: But at the same time, assuming no one’s going to notice and dressing it up, is what we’ve seen and the vote across the room, that is definitely not the way to go.

Charlie: Yeah, I completely agree.

Charlie: I think it’s almost the opposite of loyalty marketing.

Charlie: We’re supposed to be driving love, retention and engagement and meaningful relationships for the long term.

Charlie: Then to almost try and fraudulently or sneak something under the bonnet, I think is a real challenge.

Charlie: I think we’ve had some terrible examples recently in the British market of programs reducing their benefits significantly for what are very understandable reasons, cost of living crisis, cost of goods are going up.

Charlie: I think everyone is aware of the challenges that businesses are facing.

Charlie: My personal view is that a message like that would have been a much smarter way of doing it rather than, hey, here’s a new reward structure that’s much better for you.

Charlie: Particularly in an age where everybody’s got Claude and chat GBT on their phone and they just literally pop it in and go, is this better or worse?

Charlie: Two seconds later, they’ve got a full report of actually exactly how it’s transactionally less value.

Charlie: Whereas before you would have at least had two or three days before somebody worked it out and it went viral on social media.

Charlie: Now it’s instantly, 30 seconds after the announcement, it goes round.

Charlie: So yeah, I do think it’s a really bad idea and I think it should be treated very sensitively from a communications point of view.

Charlie: And back to your point early, Carly, with a level of authenticity and genuine communication as well.

Charlie: I don’t think you can dress up a reduction.

Charlie: I still miss my coffee.

Charlie: It still makes me sad.

Charlie: I now buy the coffee, so it works really well for the partner, but I feel a lot less loyal to the brand that used to offer me the coffee for free.

Charlie: I really miss it.

Charlie: So we’re going to round up today’s conversation.

Charlie: It’s been fantastic to have the pair of you on the show.

Charlie: It’s such a great format and I really want to do the roast.

Charlie: I hope you take it global actually.

Charlie: You need to get out of APAC and take it around the world.

Charlie: It would be a really fun format for conferences, I think.

Adam: There’s a new name, the International Roast.

Adam: Sounds like a coffee.

Carly: Our instant coffee friend.

Charlie: I’m chuckling because anyway, I’m not going to say that on a podcast.

Charlie: It could also, yeah, anyway, we’ll skip over.

Charlie: Yes, it sounds fabulous.

Charlie: Why do you think people are enjoying that roast so much and enjoying the concept and the format so much?

Charlie: Because I know you’ve had some really, really positive feedback about it.

Adam: It’s just, you can share the joy and the feedback you’ve got.

Carly: Yeah, it’s honest.

Carly: And as I said earlier, we are doing it with love.

Carly: And while sometimes we might intentionally take a harder view than we are always practicing, it’s to encourage the conversation in the group and in the room.

Carly: You know, we both can see value in emotion and the financial of loyalty, for example, but by us really pointing out those factors, it gets the room talking and debating and new ideas flowing.

Carly: So I think that’s why it’s working.

Carly: We’re doing it in a lighthearted fashion with some serious depth.

Carly: But again, we love, you know, it’s an industry we love.

Adam: Yeah, and it’s a contained environment, Charlie.

Adam: It’s, you know, I think that’s the secret source.

Adam: It’s a safe environment with no videoing.

Adam: You’re allowed to take photos and you’re only allowed to post afterwards.

Adam: You can’t record anything.

Adam: In fact, we’ve had one guest not long ago who stood up and he said, he was about to say something, quickly looked around the room and he said, am I absolutely in a safe environment?

Adam: And we all nodded and he had a go.

Adam: He literally let loose.

Adam: And so you can just see what happens.

Adam: And we all learn from that because the raw, the, you know, the trust and we want to learn from each other.

Adam: And I think that’s another good reason.

Charlie: Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point as well, that ability to be honest.

Charlie: One of the things, an event I went to about two years ago, where it was Chatham House rules and it was the same.

Charlie: It was actually phones left at the door.

Charlie: It was really, really strict.

Charlie: And one of the things I observed as sort of agency representative was how much, because there were four grocery loyalty programs in the room.

Charlie: And it was the first time they’d ever actually been able to talk to each other because they’re so competitive that obviously in the normal world, they’re looking at each other, they’re desk researching what the others are up to, what’s worked and what hasn’t.

Charlie: But actually they were still obviously cautious and they didn’t give away any trade secrets.

Charlie: But that was one of the things I thought was so fantastic that actually they could in a safe environment talk to each other.

Charlie: And it was a really interesting format to see actually.

Charlie: And then obviously they left the room and went straight back to competing with each other.

Charlie: And I’m absolutely certain went straight back to their boss and went, you’re not gonna believe what I’ve learned about this sector.

Charlie: But it was a really, really great format.

Charlie: So I can imagine that the roast works brilliantly.

Charlie: And I hope to see you on the international conference circuit soon, that would be marvelous.

Charlie: I’m sure everyone’s, oh, I hope actually, that was a bit cocky.

Charlie: I hope everybody’s really enjoyed this episode.

Charlie: I’ve really loved interviewing.

Charlie: It’s been fantastic to talk to you both about what a brilliant new idea you’re working with.

Charlie: People might want to get in touch, either to get more insight about the roast or to talk to you about the day job or for any other kind of loyalty question.

Charlie: What’s the best way for them to do that?

Charlie: Carly first, then Adam, please.

Carly: Leading is probably the easiest for me.

Charlie: Great.

Charlie: Is that the same for you, Adam?

Adam: Yeah, I’m a bit addicted, so you’ll find me 24-7, 365.

Charlie: Fantastic.

Charlie: You should join my son’s debate club on his social media, a good thing.

Charlie: Brilliant.

Charlie: Well, what we’ll do is we’ll pop both your profiles into the show notes, although I’m sure everyone already has you, because I know you’ve both got very big LinkedIn communities.

Charlie: And all that’s left for me to say from Let’s Talk Loyalty is thank you so much.

Charlie: It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Adam: Thank you, Charlie.

Adam: Thanks so much, Carly.

Adam: I’ve loved it.

Adam: Thanks.

Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketeer Group, operating the Wise Marketeer and Loyalty Academy.

Paula: For nearly 25 years, the Wise Marketer is the industry’s longest serving publication and source for news, information and insights, which now includes its own branded industry research, insights and advice.

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Paula: The Loyalty Academy sets a global industry standard for loyalty education, with its Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional or CLMP designation, which has created a community of more than 1200 marketing executives and professionals across more than 50 countries.

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