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 episode is sponsored by Epsilon. Today, I’m delighted to announce a unique opportunity for one lucky listener of Let’s Talk Loyalty to enjoy a complimentary workshop with the Loyalty Experts at Epsilon. One brand every month will have the chance for a unique, independent loyalty lab. A review of your loyalty program where Epsilon will share their expert ideas, how to drive your program’s performance to a whole new level. This workshop is a powerful way for you to measure and then increase the return on your investment in your loyalty program. So to apply head over to letstalkloyalty.com/Epsilon and enter your details.
Hello and welcome to this week’s short episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty. I’m your host, Paula Thomas. And this week, we’re looking back to July, 2021. When I spoke with Madan Padaki, this was a very different episode as I was exploring a project that Madan is working on. A task force, which he calls Young Warriors, which is designed to mobilize young people in India to do whatever they can to guard against the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
His project uses many of the same tools that we use in our industry as loyalty professionals. And I think that’s why it caught my attention. While the Young Warriors project is not a commercial loyalty program. As we normally discuss, clearly loyalty mechanics are designed to change behavior. And in this case, it’s about driving different social behaviors.
Madan is somebody who really thinks big with a background as a successful entrepreneur in business. And it’s this commitment to thinking big that is so important in a country, the size of India, with this mindset, he has been able to scale the Young Warrior project to huge membership numbers in a very short period of time.
One of the ways he did that was to keep the messaging extremely simple, but leverage every possible communication channel that he can, in particular, because he’s targeting young people for Young Warriors, Madan designed and built his whole project on WhatsApp, which as a strategy, as you probably know, is a personal favorite of mine.
Particularly given how many people already have it installed on their phones. Madan then focused on what these young people in India, often from underprivileged backgrounds have said is important to them, such as finding ways to track and reward any socially focused work that they do. As well as giving them an opportunity to simply help others, which as we all know makes us feel good, the recognition and the rewards they’ve included are powerful tools to help these people build their profile and their future career prospects.
Everything is designed to help the members find new opportunities, whether it’s a job or a scholarship as important ways to help enhance their home lives and create the potential of a much more exciting future. In particular, the Young Warriors are focused on finding new ways to educate each other on how best to protect themselves, their families, and their communities against COVID.
And again, it’s particularly focused on rural communities who may not have access to the same information, education, and support services as other parts of this huge country. Madan’s program has therefore created an effective social currency, focused on rewarding those members who are sharing accurate information and services, taking positive action to support their communities against COVID. Madan was truly inspiring to talk to. And I loved how the Young Warriors leveraged the same tools as loyalty marketing professionals do. But in this case for an important social good. If you’d like to hear more, the full interview is on letstalkloyalty.com/129. That’s it for today, tomorrow we have an exciting discussion about implementing digital transformation at huge scale in the fuel and convenience sector in Eastern Europe with the MOL Group.
Then on Thursday, we have a really interesting conversation with our friends in Epsilon, hearing some of their latest insights on what they’re seeing and hearing from their loyalty clients globally. That’s it for now, thanks again for listening.
This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketer. The world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights, and research. The Wise Marketer also offers loyalty marketing training through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 245 executives in 27 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals. For more information, check out thewisemarketer.com and loyaltyacademy.org
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