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Transform Your Loyalty Program From Bank to Park

Posted by Michael Leis on February 25th, 2011 at 3:47 am

There are a lot of discussions going on about how to create loyalty in a world where the next best offer is a click away. Should we change the cadence or targeting or content of our emails? How can we add badges? Do we need a redesign?
Then, towards the end of the year, it hit me. I fell just a few flights short of getting status on United. So what was the point of taking all those flights on United? Giving one brand my loyalty throughout the year ended like a reverse jackpot. It’s incredibly disappointing and de-motivating to come up empty on recognition for that level of investment.
This all-or-none loyalty framework certainly isn’t unique to United. Many loyalty programs demand you save up points for long periods before they give you any token of preference or thanks. Until then it’s a steady parade of confirmation and survey emails, the latter again asking for me to fill out a form in the hope of winning a ton of points.
So why are loyalty programs turning more people off than on?

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Posted in Opinions, Social Media | 1 Comment »

It's The Thought That Counts: Gifts and Behavioral Economics

Posted by Michael Leis on February 24th, 2011 at 4:12 pm

Ever get a gift from someone that you weren't expecting? What's your next reaction? If you're like me, it's the feeling like you have to do something in return.
In game mechanics, Amy Jo Kim would call that the implied exchange.
In terms of behavioral economics, it's about surprising your customers with gifts like Zappos' expedited shipping at no extra cost. Zappos already knows that they get what's called "skip zone" benefits from UPS because of the volume of stuff they ship. But they hold that information and make it separate from the purchase path so that it becomes a surprise gift.
The gift economy is driving many of today's business successes, like the fiesta movement: driving marketing costs down by changing the way businesses structure relationships into products and gifts.
I am lucky enough to have been invited to talk a little about gifts, surprises, and marketing at DraftFCB as part of John Kenny's excellent series on behavioral economics as part of the Institute of Decision Making. Let's go to the video tape!
What are your thoughts? Feel free to share them here or on twitter @mleis

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Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

Overlap10: Scalable Solutions

Posted by Michael Leis on August 12th, 2010 at 9:14 pm

In the last post, I tried my best to describe the challenge of Overlap10: solving for Wicked Problems. Now, I can tell you the story of scalable solutions (or, How To Solve For Wicked Problems): the basis for the work we did over the weekend.
Everyone who attended was asked to post a short video describing either what they thought a scalable action was, or what their idea was for a scalable social action.
Looking back, while a lot of really incredible scalable social concepts were generated, what I’d like to share are the innovative exercises and presentations that helped me understand that we need new ways of generating platforms within which people can create solutions. Here are the highlights:

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Posted in Creative Best Practices, Emerging Platforms, Social Media | No Comments »

Overlap10: Wicked Problems

Posted by Michael Leis on August 9th, 2010 at 7:24 pm

About ten days after Overlap10, I have finally started processing what about 50 of us went through over a hot, humid, and intellectually exhilarating weekend around New York city.
The weekend started with the presentation of our greater challenge: solving for Wicked Problems.
Usually, when we have a problem of the ordinary variety, there’s a clear goal or solution that we can direct ourselves and other people towards. Take a light bulb burning out: we know how to frame that problem; we can quickly design and implement a solution. We can make jokes about how many people it takes.
At the other end of the spectrum are Wicked Problems. Think about how to solve for a problem like cleaning Lake Michigan, childhood obesity, poverty, national health care, or moving from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. Or in the case of our clients: how to design a brand experience across a continent, or many continents; how to design a communications system for a brand that employs tens of thousand of people, and has tens of millions of customers. How to tackle social media.

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Globally Local

Posted by Michael Leis on June 18th, 2010 at 3:52 am

Two recurring themes I've seen lately that have me thinking Macluhan:

Big Web brands are accelerating targeting, and now content creation that is hyper-local. From location-based services to ad buys, everyone wants to help you know what's happening right around you.
Brands really want to find ways to make every experience more "personally relevant."

What's resulting is large-scale messages that focus on what's similar, most familiar, and/or closest to you. I love creating consensus as much as the next guy. And concepts like the Big Sort indicate we're wanting that: moving into ideologically homogeneous neighborhoods, safe in our sameness.
But think about the really big trends, especially in very responsive programmatic content channels

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Posted in Emerging Platforms | 1 Comment »

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