Chris Brogan is going to jump all over me.

In a keynote presentation he made recently at Like Minds 2010, he rightfully commented that the chatter about social media in US conferences had become “boring” and, with tongue in cheek, suggested  “I think it should be legal that if someone says “Just join the conversation” that it is legal to punch them in the face“.

OK, Chris, you have a free swing!

I’m suggesting that marketers interested in understanding consumer purchase behaviors and retail “join the conversation” at Retail Wire.

Here’s why….

The information funnel in my offices is getting bigger by the day. I try to narrow my field of vision and manage my time by setting up Google Alerts on my favorite loyalty marketing topics and subscribing to RSS feeds that I can browse in my Google Reader.  Those two sources create an overwhelming volume of information at times and so, I have chosen a very select few reads that are allowed to hit my inbox.

Three current favorites have been on a roll lately.

• Chris Brogan brightened my day with “I Could Totally Do That” and shared an entertaining video that you should see.
• Christopher Penn switched up his interesting stream of information with an inspirational post “Renewing Faith”, also kicking a day off in the right direction.
• Tim Sanders served up “Why I seldom reply to Tweets Publicly” which presented an opposing viewpoint to something Chris had written about earlier.

So what’s this have to do with Retail Wire?

I’ve been reading the site for a while and find they continually pose questions on critical issues, current events, and future trends in retail loyalty, online retail rewards and broader aspects of retailing. And, they share the information in a conversational way, with daily questions posed and members of a Brain Trust Panel chiming in along with anyone else who feels the urge.

I’ve recently joined the Brain Trust and you can find a compilation of my comments on a variety of topics in my Retail Wire Blog here.  I’ve got my favorite industry specific information sources for banking, card marketing, airline, hospitality, as well as a few more for general marketing topics. Beyond the self – promotional aspect of this post, I had to let you know that Retail Wire is my favorite for staying current in this segment.

Join the conversation at Retail Wire.

OK, Chris, you can have your swing now!

Trendy business buzzwords aren’t any fun until you form an opinion and seek feedback to get to the substance of the issue.

Customer Engagement is one of those terms that is being mentioned more frequently than Kim Kardashian was during the Super Bowl. It’s the 2010 version of “what’s hot, what’s new, what’s next?”

The question is, should Customer Engagement be treated as a new marketing sub-set, on par with Loyalty and Word of Mouth Marketing, or is it a concept that’s been around for quite some time and just happens to be a point of pain in the Relationship Value Chain (RVP) for marketers today?

Relationship Value Chain? That’s the term that my good friend and former Colloquy colleague, Kelly Hlavinka, coined almost 10 years ago. The experience of many at the once proud Frequency Marketing was that customer value increased across a spectrum of customer interaction. Link the points of interaction and you had a value chain that loyalty marketers could use to influence communication plans and allocate marketing budget dollars to encourage specific behaviors.

The RVP is similar to the “acquisition – activation – usage – retention” lifecycle marketing that credit card issuers have been using for years, but takes objectives down to a more granular level.

One example of a flow that constitutes a RVP:

• Awareness
• Response to Invitation
• Program Enrollment
• First purchase
• Multiple purchases in response to offers
• Redemption for Reward
• Response to Survey
• Response to Future Bonus
• Multiple Redemptions

No one has a lock on defining the steps in the chain as they should be customized to the business situation under review. Going to back to Customer Engagement, just where does it live in the value chain used as an example here?

Let’s look at a few steps in the RVP and see where, if accused of being “Engaged”, there would be enough evidence to gain a conviction!

Program Enrollment – Doesn’t everyone enroll in programs without much care for future interactions? I enroll in just about every program where I know the odds are that I’ll be back (by choice or force) and the offer looks worthy enough to give it a whirl. The only caveat is that I won’t sign up if the data collection hurdle is too high at the outset.

First Purchase – You’ve got my attention, but what makes you think I’m “Engaged”? I may be a cherry-picking consumer or have just satisfied a one-time need for your product or service. Not enough evidence to convict me as engaged at this point in time.

First Redemption – I’ve stayed around long enough to make multiple purchases over time – how else would I have qualified to redeem? But did you catch me in a cycle of life that won’t soon be repeated, or can you count on me to do it again? Engagement? We’re getting closer, some say “yes”.

Survey Response – I’ve transacted, collected, redeemed, and now I am willing to actually have a conversation. You’ve got my attention, but I am skeptical of what you will do with the information and if I will hear from you again. Does this sound akin to dating? Conversation is certainly an accelerator to engagement, but does not constitute the end goal itself.

Multiple Redemptions – Once I’ve completed the purchase/collection/redemption cycle more than once, I think you can count me as “Engaged”. The focus shifts now to retaining my interest, expanding the conversation, and developing more business as a result.

My take on Customer Engagement is that it describes an end objective that marketers hope to achieve through smart execution of a well designed data-driven Customer Strategy. If you try to define engagement as one of the individual steps, take Enrollment as an example, then what you are truly talking about is more tactical ala “how to create awareness for a program and convert interest to enrollment”.

It’s a step along the way, not engagement itself.

The Loyalty Truth on Customer Engagement is that it has been around for quite a while. The reason the topic has been deserving of the spotlight lately is that customers are increasing difficult to engage, not to mention retain.

What’s your take?

In the past week, business has taken me to Vancouver, BC and San Jose, Costa Rica with a pit stop in South Florida for a day or so at home. None of that was a big deal until my colleague Mike Atkin noted at dinner that we’ve been hitting these spots in conjunction with some pretty big events.

We arrived in Vancouver exactly one week before the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics, landed in South Florida the day before Super Bowl XLIV, and arrived in San Jose on election day as the country was electing the first female President in its history. I’m not sure how I can top that although I have noticed that I arrive back in SoFla just in time to make Valentine’s day special for my wife. Better pull that one off!

I’ve also been using Foursquare for a while and, like a lot of social media waves, I engaged knowing that it would cost me a little time without being sure of a return. I’ve been having some fun with it around my local haunts and have been thinking about how something like Foursquare could intersect with location based offers as part of a loyalty marketing program. My first eye-opener was the blending of Foursquare and Twitter into the Tasti D-Lite rewards program which I talked about in a recent post.

This last jaunt across the continent and back connected a few dots. Checking in to my hotel in Vancouver, I saw a pop-up on my iPhone that said “Special Nearby”. Clicking through, I read “Welcome to the Mill Marine Bistro & Bar. Mayor receives a free beer. Show your server to redeem.”

I wasn’t the Mayor and didn’t get a free beer, but Mike and I did visit the nearby pub to have a quick dinner. The point made was that promotions relevant to someone’s stay could be delivered via this little iPhone application. Better yet, these offers are made to people who have opted-in to receive the offer. in this case, the Mayor might game the offer to get lots of free beer and over time I hope the restaurant will become more creative in the offers made, possibly targeting guests at the hotel next door.

Landing in FLL a day or so later, I switched on the phone and “checked in” to Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport and received a tip from a local attorney, Leland Garvin. On the verge of the Super Bowl weekend in SoFla, what better message could an attorney send than (paraphrased) “Have fun while in town, but if anything happens from arrest to a speeding ticket, call Leland Garvin, attorney at law.” A phone number was included and if I was a “Who Dat” ready to tear it up for the Super weekend, I would have written it down and tucked it somewhere safe.

With lots of minds grinding on how to incorporate mobile marketing, location based promotions, and social media into loyalty program communication streams, these two “pops” from Foursquare got my attention and sparked some good ideas.

Consider the possibilities. What’s it make you think about?

Editors Note: Jim Kuschill is a patient man. Patient enough to have architected one of the world’s leading loyalty marketing software platforms while Chief Technology Officer of Frequency Marketing. DIRECTV got his goat and the following is worth a read, especially if you’re the person responsible for customer experience or customer service at your company.

I don’t know when the customer experience scales tipped, but indeed they have – DIRECTV can now claim to be just as lacking as your typical cable company.

My enlightenment started a few months ago…

As is the case with so many of us, my wife and I are pretty busy and we almost never remember pay per view (PPV). On this particular evening, I remembered PPV and even identified a movie that would be fun to watch. I queued it up and was looking forward to some comedy over the coming weekend, or maybe the weekend after.

In case you haven’t heard, the PPV model has changed and the (then) subtle notations on the ordering menu about the “new and improved” model were too subtle for me to comprehend. My movie recorded, my bill was debited, and my movie was erased.

I did some research and discovered this was certainly my fault. Flaming blog entries from a variety of people indicated that the change had taken place some time before. Never mind that there wasn’t anything with my billing statement explaining the change, nor an e-mail, nor a separate communication. It was as if DirecTV and the Studios didn’t want anybody to know about the change. How could it be that they wouldn’t want you to know that “pay per view” had become “pay per download?” Clearly the emphasis was now on “pay per” and viewing be damned.

I spent time wondering about “fair use” and what the Studios were thinking. How does a movie taking up space on somebody’s DVR lose them money? Do they expect thousands of recurring neighborhood parties for Battle of the Smithsonian? Maybe the movie gets tweeted around the world in 4 million little pieces? I just couldn’t figure it out.

I sent an e-mail of complaint to DirecTV and requested a credit to my bill. No response. I sent another. Still nothing. The $4.99 wasn’t worth a call, which sadly I suspect was the plan in not responding to the e-mail, so I simply bit my tongue.

But, I really did want to watch that movie, so I tried to order it again. The DirecTV system, being smarter than I am, decided that because I had already viewed that movie that I couldn’t really want to view it again. Well, that’s not quite correct, it said something was “wrong” and I needed to call them. Sorry, it just wasn’t worth it.

I vowed to never again use PPV – we simply couldn’t watch a movie within 24 hours of recording.

I have to imagine many people did just the same and sales tanked quite a bit. I have to imagine that DirecTV noticed, and trying to get viewers back they held a promotion in December offering 4 movies for the price of 2. Frankly, this was enough to get my attention and break my vow – which is usually a bad idea. But I had an ace up my sleeve and since the prior problem I had developed a Rube Goldberg way of recording the movies, so maybe I could beat the system, maybe just a little.

With the hustle of the holidays we forgot about the offer until the morning of December 30th, so we had to move fast so as not to impinge too much on all the football we wanted to watch. I scheduled 2 of the movies for the night of the 30th and the other 2 for the night of the 31st (making certain the last finished recording before the clock ticked over to the 1st). I got up early on the 31st, scheduled a few football games to record, and started my “transcription” process. Did the same thing on the 1st (with the parade this time). Mission accomplished – didn’t miss much of any football game and had 4 movies to watch sometime later for under $10. Such a deal. Well, almost. Turns out I had a media problem with one movie so we got 3 for $10, still not so bad.

Well, I just got my bill. The 2 movies I downloaded on the 30th show up as being downloaded on the 31st. And sadly, the 2 movies I downloaded on the 31st show up as being downloaded on the 1st. So no credit.

I immediately call DirecTV and quickly get through to Customer Service. Mickey confirms that his screens show the movies correctly being ordered/delivered on the 30th and 31st. I ask what seems to be a logical question, “Why does my bill show the 31st and the 1st?” Mickey has no answer. My next question is about the missing credit. Mickey has an answer for this – “DirecTV will mail you a certificate that you need to return.” Huh? “I’m sorry, can you say that again?” Mickey repeats his explanation – they are going to mail a certificate and I need to return it “with my payment.” I mention that I’m on an automatic payment plan, “How will that work?” I ask. Mickey doesn’t know. “Does the certificate come with the bill or will it be in a separate envelope?” Mickey doesn’t know. “When am I getting the certificate?” Mickey is happy he has an answer to this one – “Usually 4 to 6 weeks.” “Usually?” I inquire. “Well, yes, usually 4 to 6 weeks” say’s Mickey.

I ask Mickey if he doesn’t think this is pretty “customer unfriendly.” No response. I ask if I can make a complaint about the process. Mickey offers to forward an e-mail to the complaint department, but his heart isn’t in it. “Mickey, I understand this is not of your doing, but somebody there should really be thinking about this more from the customer perspective.” No comment from Mickey. I wish him a nice weekend and hang up.

DirecTV will pay for people to answer the phones because the bills are wrong. DirecTV will pay for people to answer the phones to explain that a certificate will come in the mail, sometime in the future. DirecTV will pay for the certificate stock. DirecTV will pay people to print and mail the certificates. DirecTV will make their customers spend time and money to return the certificates. DirecTV will pay people to answer calls about where the certificates are. DirecTV will pay people to open the envelopes that the certificates are in and post them to accounts. And, inevitably, when certificates are lost or damaged in distribution, lost or damaged in return, or credited to the wrong account, DirecTV will again pay for people to resolve these problems.

DirecTV could have given their customers a warm fuzzy by giving a direct credit. They could have described the process up front (in readable type) and then people could have made an informed decision. Nope. Somebody at DirecTV created an equation that said the promotion wouldn’t cost them as much by doing it this way. Clearly the equation didn’t take into account the loss of customer lifetime value.

As I said, DirecTV is now officially a cable company.

And so much for being a DirecTV advocate.

I’ve been in way too many meetings lately where I have been asked the question “Is Social Media just a fad that will soon blow away?”

Fortunately, I’m well schooled in responding to skeptics since, for the past dozen years, I’ve been answering the classic question in my core business, “Does this Loyalty stuff really work?”

I have a well-practiced response to the second question, but at times when asked about the staying power of social media, I feel like the kid who was just caught by his parents looking at a magazine not on his school reading list – as if I should feel guilty because I’m making a case for understanding how to incorporate social media into the traditional world of data-driven communication strategies.

Convictions aside, it is fortifying when we see offline businesses wading deeper into the social media pond. We’ve seen plenty of our favorite brands open a Twitter account and establish a public Facebook page. But really linking these venues with their mainline customer acquisition and retention efforts? Well, we are just beginning to see examples in the market.

A great one that I came across, courtesy of @ragythomas is the TastiRewards loyalty program, where customers can not only earn points for enjoying tasty ice cream treats, but can also earn extra rewards by connecting their accounts to  Twitter and Foursquare.

The program is really simple and has adopted what I consider a QSR chain best practice by offering a dual-function gift and loyalty card. In this case, the card can be used across participating locations first to facilitate purchase, but with the added value of registering at MyTasti.com to qualify for extra points through social media updates.

TastiRewards members earn 1 point for each pre-tax dollar spent on qualified Tasti D-Lite products. Members become eligible for rewards once 50 points are accumulated and are eligible to receive a free medium Tasti cup or cone.   Extra points can be earned for registering the card online and checking points balances.  Providing a date of birth qualifies you to receive a free medium Tasti cup or cone on the big day.

The success of the TastiRewards program won’t hinge on its linkage to Twitter and Foursquare but, like most programs, will be judged by consumers on its overall value proposition. Points don’t expire, but earning is only possible when the physical card is presented at time of purchase. And there are questions of just how Tasti D-Lite will protect itself against members who try to use the social media option to game the system. As far as value is concerned, the social media point-accelerator seems to boost the perceived value of the program to 8-10% back, above average among today’s loyalty programs.

Tasti D-Lite has taken the important step of doing something with social media instead of just talking about social media. If their treats are as tasty as their innovative TastiRewards, good things should be in store for the chain. I found a store nearby and plan to visit soon.

Over the recent holidays, my friend Bill Hanifin pointed out a post written by the person arguably at the forefront of the whole social media movement, Chris Brogan. In the post, Brogan said, “People are slowing down to turn their thoughts to family and to their own development, and to what worked and what didn’t in 2009. Not me.”

While he did leave an escape hatch for those choosing to bail out during the holidays “You don’t have to do it this way”, Brogan was working as hard as ever, holidays or no holidays.

It got me thinking about Napolean Hill, author of the classic Think and Grow Rich. Although it was first published in 1937, the book’s message about gaining monetary success through hard work, determination and positive thinking, still rings true today. The popularity of the book endures as well, as it ranks in the top 1,000 books on Amazon.

What a lot of people may not know is that in 1967, three decades after the publication of his magnum opus, an 80-year old Hill put out a book with a more expansive view of the role of work in our lives. Its title: Grow Rich—with Peace of Mind.

While offering many of the same valuable lessons on self improvement as Think and Grow Rich, Hill adapted his message to basically say, grow rich—but have a life, too. We’re not talking 4-hour workweek here, but Hill did suggest we “make a time budget”.

Spread out over a 24-hour day, his time budget looks like this:

• 8 hours a day for sleep and rest
• 8 hours a day for work at your business or profession (but as your success grows, less work)
• 8 “particularly precious” hours “devoted to things you wish to do, not have to do”

Hill’s suggested list for the final 8 hours includes: “play, social life, reading, writing, playing a musical instrument, tending a garden, or just sitting and watching the clouds or the stars.” (I would add “spending time with family.”)

Hill further amplifies the point with this passage: “Do not let a day go by without taking some time for yourself — some time you spend in pure pleasure, as you see it.” He adds, “With increasing success, increase your hours of pure enjoyment, do not allow these hours to be eaten away by business or anything else.”

God bless Chris Brogan, he’s an inspiration to all of us. But there’s something to be said about the whole work-life balance thing. And while I have personally set business goals for 2010, following Hill’s lead, I’ve set leisure ones as well.

The bottom line: Sure, let’s get rich. But let’s not forget that success is measured by more than the balance in our bank accounts.

Tom Rapsas is a 20 year direct and loyalty marketing veteran and heads up Creative Services at Hanifin Loyalty. He can be reached on Twitter @tomrapsas

Editor’s Note: Tom’s post made me think that the most desirable rewards in loyalty programs are often the experiences and exclusive content or access to an event which can be earned as a freebie, but aren’t always available for public consumption.  It seems that learning more about what drives human emotion, happiness, and satisfaction will lead to more effective marketing strategies as well.

Black Cats, Black Magic, and Black Friday … sounds like a threesome to avoid.

But untold millions will be lining up the day after Thanksgiving in the wee hours of the morning with steely-eyed focus and adrenaline pumping – all with the almighty bargain in mind.

Maybe it’s a gender thing, but while you might find me up at 5am to go fishing, you’ll never find me caffeined-up and ready to shop at that time of day. Maybe Black Friday is defined less by gender and more by the American way. We’re competitive and like to win. And, after a year of economic suffering like we’ve had in this country, you can’t blame consumers for wanting to taste even a small victory.

But as any coach worth his salt will tell you, winning comes at a price. Unfortunately, the price of playing the Black Friday game reached an all time high in 2008 when a Walmart worker was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers at a store in Long Island. The repercussions have been strong and retailers are taking steps to calm the crowds and bring order to stores as the holiday season kicks off this coming Friday.

Walmart settled the lawsuits that followed with a nearly $2 Million payout to victims of the incident. Concern is so high that even the National Retail Federation (NRF) has released crowd management guidelines for its members hoping to prevent future disasters.

Consumers seeking ways to get ahead of the game have options. They can check out Top 10 Black Friday websites to find bargains in advance, or they can just sit at home after turkey dinner on Thursday and watch “what not to do” videos on YouTube ranging from Stampedes at Walmart to Scuffles at Target.

Outside of the fun that some people associate with the crazed energy of Black Friday, I have to wonder if retailers knew what they doing when they originally promoted the concept. Competing on price only leads to a “death spiral” of diminishing profit margins. And since there is usually only one acknowledged price leader in a discounting category (ahem, Walmart) the rest of the retailing pack might be much better off taking a higher road to open consumer wallets in their favor.

There have been some really good articles written about the violence of last year’s Black Friday, and academics such as  University of Delaware professor Sharron Lennon are now studying the human behaviors that lead to such incidents. There is also a groundswell of voices encouraging consumers to “Spend time together, not money”.

All of this makes me smile when people ask if Loyalty Marketing programs work. Yep, there are some lame versions of the concept out there, and even the good ones could make use of their data to be more relevant to their customers. But as a business owner, it should be attractive to preserve margins, improve the shopping experience, and justify repeat business at your store without having to fake a “going out of business sale” once a month.  Data-driven Customer Strategies do just that.

I’ll bet there are some forward thinking people at the NRF and among larger retailers that could change the paradigm. Maybe the time has come to return a bit of elegance and class into daily shopping experiences, not to mention air travel. And, retailers had better consider the impact of promoting mass shopping frenzy on Millennial (Generation Y) consumers shopping online at home from their PC’s.

Could it be time for Black Friday to “Go Dark”?

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote an opinion piece for COLLOQUY questioning whether Frequent Flyer miles were still the most valuable currency in the Loyalty Marketing landscape.  The premise was that the weakening value of the FF mile might open the door for a better offer to capture the loyalty imagination of consumers. The next best high-value loyalty currency was thought to be coming from a US based coalition ala Nectar or Airmiles.

It’s 2009 and time to ask the question once again.

Consumers and the press are piling on with criticism of airline mile programs. Combine the higher thresholds for cashing in for a free ticket, the seemingly steady decline in the quality of in-flight experience, and the airline’s fascination with un-bundling and charging for services that used to be included in a ticket price and it’s easy to make a case for the demise of FF miles.

The COLLOQUY article was cautious in criticism of the almighty MILE, noting that “Americans are so attuned to earning airlines miles that it’s hard to create a value proposition, either in a standalone program or in a coalition, that can equal them.”

Time and change go hand-in-hand however and the challenge of creating that value proposition to match or exceed the perceived value of an airline mile might be easier to tackle as each month goes by. A recent Wall Street Journal article “Air Rescue: Saving Miles From the Ax” highlighted the many ways which airlines are adding restrictions and tweaking program rules to burn more miles before they can be used.

Many of the rule changes highlighted in the WSJ article are activity related and American Airline’s change from no expiration to an 18 month activity related rule has garnered lots of attention. There are two sides to every story and, if you were running AAdvantage or any other big loyalty program, you too would be under pressure to manage program liability more closely. It’s easy to see why stewards of loyalty programs conclude that customers who have not transacted for 18 months are maybe not your customers any more.

The flaw in the activity rule highlights the dirty secret of airline mile programs: that customers are less loyal to a particular airline than the industry would like to believe and carrier choice is often dictated by lifestyle and business changes more than brand affinity.  I’ll share a personal example. At one time, most of my my travel was in Latin America and I was a privileged flyer with American. Later, the work load swung to the US and I rose in the ranks of Delta Skymiles members while I watched my American status diminish. When I ventured back into LAC, I had lost my status with the airline and had to be patient until I became “visible” again.

The airlines should be able to recognize me as an inherently valuable customer and provide some relief for my straying. Through the data collected, the airlines could identify my return, send me a welcome back email and inquire if I was here to stay. I bet most people would respond to such an email with indication of preferences and plans if they were offered incentive to provide the information. That incentive, of course, would be to have the opportunity to earn accelerated status with the airline. In the current situation, I am more tempted than ever to just shop by schedule, price and airport location.

The other main criticism of airline miles is that they are difficult to redeem.  If you’re like me and redeem miles to take the family to exotic destinations like Buffalo or Cleveland, you’ll never have a challenge redeeming your miles. Try to go to New York for Christmas and you’ll have a different story to tell.

It’s possible that the airlines are their own worst enemy. They have given miles to everyone and are still inviting people to join their programs with in-flight announcements. Even the Economist agreed that this non-selective behaviour would spawn MILE inflation:

“Miles outstanding have risen by an average of 20% a year since 1995 – two-and-a-half times as fast as the supply of dollars.”  Equating this inflationary expansion of airline currency to a key global currency, the article continued, “central bankers would suffer sleepless nights at such reckless  monetary expansion were it not for the fact that they are usually up in first class collecting double or triple miles.”

The state of the FF mile is really quite a mess. There are diverging forces at work: Consumers are less interested to wait and accumulate miles as they know that rules will continue to shift against their interests and their ability to redeem will be challenged. At the same time, the cost of using miles to promote a cobrand or reseller relationship is probably the highest among options in the marketplace.

Invest the same cost per mile into a value proposition that promotes YOUR brand and is truly tailored to YOUR customers and quite likely you will have constructed a value proposition that beats the heck out of FF miles.

Turbulent times for the airlines, opportunistic times for smart marketers……

At times, Marketers can be real Bozos…….or is it BOGOS?

Striving for creativity can unleash the best and worst in marketers and while I’m not afraid to make mistakes, I try to avoid outsmarting myself as much as possible.

Folks working in the marketing space will agree that we have to be sharp as tacks to stay ahead of our customers. The possibility of successfully slinging out points or miles as a temporary bribe is declining by the day. Loyalty Marketing has to evolve beyond the idea that every customer has a price on her head and re-focus on a broader value proposition.

A critical element of delivering the value proposition is communications. We have to grab consumer attention and hold it just long enough to make our point. That forces marketers to reach further for something new and often the results don’t translate well.

The question: is it a good or bad idea to use our own lingo in the ads we create?

Driving down a crowded South Florida highway this week, I saw a huge billboard with an ad that shouted “Publix BOGO” and included the URL needed to find the deals of the week. The same day, I caught an ad on TV from Payless Shoes that touted their BOGO offers. A quick search online revealed that Kohl’s and a few others are running on the same track for the moment.

As a consumer, I don’t mind finding deals and saving money. And the billboard did grab  my attention. It just struck me that a little success in using “insider’s” verbiage could unleash a wave of awkward ad copy.

So, while it’s kind of cute-sy to adopt our trade lingo in customer facing ads, I don’t know how far we should go and, in particular, if the idea translates to Loyalty Marketing.

Imagine if we tried any of these in our promotional emails for our rewards program:

• Earn quick and enjoy the burn!
• We offer the  highest earn velocity around!
• Help us lower our CPA and we’ll give you more CVP!

It just doesn’t translate well, does it?

Ouch, was that my foot that I just shot?

In the beginning, there was Air Miles. Actually, according to history, it was three men in a room that started Air Miles.

According to Air Miles corporate history, Keith Mills wasn’t one of those three guys, but somehow later it was Sir Keith Mills that sowed the seeds of the Air Miles brand and business model across continental Europe. Eventually, Sir Keith helped to found Nectar, the successful coalition loyalty program based in the UK.

There is a passage in Exodus when God tells Abraham that “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.”  I am tempted to make a tongue-in-cheek analogy between Abraham and Sir Keith, though the family tree is becoming quite muddled at this point in time and the coming battle between Air Miles and Groupe Aeroplan will ensure that no-one’s inheritances comes easily.

Aeroplan, the spin-off of Air Canada’s frequent flyer program, has not been satisfied to improve its core business, but has set about acquiring loyalty schemes around the world, the most notable of which, until yesterday, being Nectar. Air Miles, to its credit, has apparently been eyeing expansion opportunities and recently announced that it has made a 29% investment in Dotz, the evolving coalition program in Brazil.

Yesterday, Aeroplan announced its planned acquisition of Carlson Marketing. It is not completely clear what the US$188 Million price tag purchased, but presumably Aeroplan has just strengthened it capabilities in offering a complete processing and operational solution for the large companies it is seeking as potential clients. It has also significantly added to its strategic planning abilities assuming that Peppers & Rogers is included in the deal.

The announcement will get the attention of the Air Miles folks in Toronto and its subsidiaries LoyaltyOne & Colloquy will increasingly feel competition in a sandbox that was nearly their own to play in until now. Half the residents of St. Louis will stay awake at night as well as Maritz, MasterCard and others seeking the crown of “leading loyalty solutions providers”  find themselves up against stiff competition and deep pockets.

What is means for the rest of the industry will be sorted out over the coming months. One message that is clear is that there is money to be made in Loyalty Marketing, especially if you are the owner of a currency that becomes valued by consumers and is traded widely.

There is also that the likelihood that consolidation will breed greater need for independent viewpoint, analysis and recommendation. Corporate executives making decisions with long term financial implications would be well served to evaluate the source of their advice.

Aeroplan and Air Miles trace their roots back to the same family tree in many ways. Let’s see what kind of family feud will brew now that Aeroplan has upped the ante of the game.