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  • Are NFTs the future of retail?

    Are NFTs the future of retail?

    The global Retail Innovation Conference & Expo has just unveiled the primary agenda for their 2022 event. Some of the more anticipated topics include social commerce and the Metaverse, of course, but there was one that stuck out for me – NFT powered communities. What’s the connection between retail and NFTs?

    Firstly, let’s get everyone on the same page with regards to what an NFT is. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a piece of data stored on the blockchain that can be sold and traded. NFTs are usually connected to pieces of digital art; but photos, videos and audio are also in the mix. In a nutshell, an NFT is proof of ownership for a piece of digital collateral. The currencies that facilitate the purchase of NFTs are your usual mix of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin. While NFTs might be focused on art right now, in the future when we begin buying digital real estate, NFTs will play a role there.

    If that doesn’t sound complex enough, the biggest furore over NFTs is not whether we really need them, but rather their impact on the environment. NFTs (and crypto in general), use vast amounts of electricity to complete transactions. One transaction on the Ethereum platform has the same energy consumption as running a fridge for an entire month. Some of the numbers are shockingly high, and I have to wonder if Eskom’s grid is going to support an NFT economy.

    What does this have to do with retail? Quite a lot it seems. Gap Inc. has just launched a series of NFTs in collaboration with artist Brandon Sines. It’s Gap merchandise – you own it, you can look at it, but it just isn’t real (the cynic in me). Jumping on the Gap site, you’ll find that almost all of them are sold out (at time of writing). Brands participating in the NFT ecosystem include Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Gucci. It seems that creating demand for branded, limited edition digital merchandise goes a long way when it comes to your brand marketing efforts.

    But why are people buying NFTs?

    To sell them; use them as avatars (profile pics); and to form communities around them. That’s it. It’s just a really fun kind of stock market. There are of course the futurists and early adopters, those that want to get in on the ground floor. NFTs could become a very important part of the Metaverse – a digital mark of ownership of virtual property and possessions. There’s probably a lot you could say about the sociological and psychological impacts a digital society will have, but I am not going to get into that now.

    As much as there is a temptation to jump on the NFT bandwagon and espouse them as the first step to a glorious digital future, I’m going to hang back a bit. Should you be creating an NFT for your brand as part of a marketing exercise? If you’ve got the right audience, then yes, go for it. It’s fairly easy to create one; and right now it’s so new that not only will you have some additional brand collateral/product, but you’ll also have a PRable story.

    I’m still sceptical about the whole crypto thingy, but hey, I didn’t collect Pokémon cards either and look how popular that became.

  • Digital Marketers don’t forget to look up

    Digital Marketers don’t forget to look up

    In 2021 we released our very first Township CX Report. It went well. It wasn’t a spectacular success, but it was good enough to motivate us to do it again in 2022. This time around, we wanted it to be bigger and better.

    An injection of authenticity

    We decided that part of the bigger and better was an injection of authenticity. It’s one thing to see some data on a spreadsheet, but it’s quite another to go to where the people are. To sit with them, to talk about their experiences, to connect. We chose three townships, Alexandra, Soweto, and Katlehong, and we planned our expedition.

    I call it an expedition because, for me, it was. If you can’t tell by my profile picture, I’m white. I’m suburban in every sense of the word. A trip to a township is not an everyday occurrence for me. It’s a thing. It’s an expedition. It’s new and alien and daunting. What is every day for most of South Africa, is not every day for me. In many ways, I’m a tourist in my own country. And that’s not okay.

    2021 was not a great year for South Africa. Covid-19, the riots, and a bunch of other things led me to believe that this country was in dire straits. I didn’t hold much hope. I expected our township visits to be depressing. I expected to see economic hardship, strife, and suffering. Sure, some of that was there. But there was also something else.

    A masterclass in entrepreneurship
    In Soweto we saw spaza shops and restaurants rebranding to their own unique look-and-feel. A shift away from the branded cold-drink signs we’ve seen so often. No, they had their own brand identities. We saw entrepreneurs coming up with new and innovative ideas, from bespoke food delivery services to unheard of financial services.

    If you want to attend a master class in entrepreneurship, downtown Alex is where it’s at. In Katlehong we met a man that has managed to connect spaza shops together through his distribution network, all while inventing a cold drink that’s just as healthy as it is delicious.

    In a way, 2021 was a blazing inferno, burning through the lives of South Africans, leaving ruin in its wake. But entrepreneurship and innovation were birthed in that fire, and they rose like the proverbial phoenix, carrying the township economy upward with it.

  • Political marketing – what retail can learn

    Political marketing – what retail can learn

    In case you’ve been living under a rock, we’ve just had our local elections, and some of us voted. Emphasis on some of us. The voter turnout hit a record low this time around. While there are some very compelling reasons for this, I thought it might interesting to talk a little about what platforms our political parties are using. I’m not talking about political platforms (who doesn’t enjoy a good political debate), instead I’m talking about marketing platforms. Despite the availability of a plethora of options here, when I conducted a quick poll around the office, there were two very clear winners in the way parties are reaching out to us; and according to recent research, they’re the two least favourite ways.

    It is somewhat odd that there is still an over-reliance on SMS and phone calls in this digital age. It feels like a “we’ve always done it this way” type approach to campaigning and perhaps there is a fear that if you don’t make a phone call, you’re not going to reach someone. Perhaps there is also the idea that a ‘personal touch’ is required to make you feel like your favourite (or not favourite) political party cares about you and your everyday struggles. One of those struggles being time.

    Poor platform choice

    A recent report has shown that out of the 11 platforms polled, SMS came in dead last, right behind in store promotions. As little as five years ago, SMS was heralded as a cut-through medium and an absolute necessity for any marketing campaign. The story was that “everyone reads them” and they “can’t be ignored”. Either the proponents of SMS were lying, or times have changed. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it is likely that the real reason is that times have changed. In a notification rich phone, guess where your SMS sits on the list – that’s right, down at the bottom.

    We won’t go into how unwelcome phone calls are. In recent reports it has been stated that South Africa’s smartphone penetration has reached 90% (and it’s probably higher), which means that phone calls and SMSes can easily be relegated to the lowest priority or taken off the list of platforms all together. Some parties are using Facebook marketing and there seems to be some kind of geo-targeting involved, but for the most part, it seems like many were not seeing any messaging at all.

    There are many opportunities in the digital marketing realm. Communities have different issues and bespoke geo-targeted ads will go a long way to addressing these issues, and creating the personalisation that phone calls are meant to bring. The IEC has also released their voter registration stats which clearly illustrate the imbalance of registered voters among the youth and on a provincial level.

    What has this got to do with retail?

    Quite a lot. One of the biggest faux pas of retails comms is the SMS (fortunately they’ve foregone the phone call). There are many large retailers that insist upon using the platform to communicate specials. The general consensus from the public is, please stop. We are also still getting very generic creative highlighting specials which may not be relevant to us, or not relevant to the store in our area sitting with stock that isn’t moving.

    With the lowest voter turnout in history, we can see two things: political parties are dealing with an incredible amount of apathy, and if they want to turn things around, they’re going to have to create a better product and start marketing it properly. The same goes for some retailers.

  • The ‘rules’ of great creative execution

    The ‘rules’ of great creative execution

    I’ve spent the last few months working on several NGO marketing strategies. It’s been absolutely fascinating, mostly because media budgets in that space are incredibly small so compelling creative becomes exceedingly essential. We all know that creative plays a pivotal role in any marketing effort. Still, the insights that I’ve come across in the NGO space illustrate that our creative concepts and structures in other areas are still in their infancy. In this ‘new normal’ world, it is even more important to put resonant creative in front of the consumer.

    There is a fascinating whitepaper that you can read here, but if 52 pages of research is too much, I’ve summarised the findings and adapted them for the retail space, specifically focusing on digital channels.

    Creative matters more than you know

    Correctly framing your marketing messages can lead to a 300% increase in conversion rates. I found this insight to be gobsmacking. Setting up audiences are critical, and human insights should drive big ideas, but what this insight alludes to is the fact that creative structure (how creative actually leads the eye and plays in the space of colour theory), can make or break your conversion rate.

    People need to see themselves

    The research shows that if the consumer sees ads featuring relatable models, conversion rates can increase by 50%. Firstly, this means that you need to understand your target audience in the most fundamental way. You may be selling toothpaste, but if your ad models are dressed in the latest designer fashions, you’re going to lose your audience. It also casts doubt on the effectiveness of ads featuring overly attractive individuals. Secondly, and more technically speaking, we need to make sure that we’re actually targeting the right individuals. In other words, our marketing personas and our digital media audiences need to overlap.

    Don’t overwhelm

    Let’s say you’re running a promotion across a category of items. The temptation is to try and do a mass burst of various products or worse still, cram as many of the products as possible onto a single banner. Despite all its cleverness, the human brain tends towards single subject processing. It means that you’re really only able to focus on (and comprehend properly), one thing at a time. Advertise with your flagship product only, and you’re bound to see improvements in conversion.

    A picture is worth a thousand words

    It’s a throwaway saying that we use to describe the immediate impact of a visual over the comparatively more laborious task of reading a bunch of copy. I think there’s a powerful insight in that saying though. How is the audience’s eye being led through the imagery? Top-to-bottom? Left-to-right? How are you positioning your elements, your copy? Are you unpacking your message in the form of a narrative, or are you simply bombarding the consumer’s eye, giving them the equivalent of a creative smack?

    I was sitting with our creative director the other day looking at how we construct a key visual to deliver maximum impact. We decided that our image would convey a story, albeit with no context, and the final piece of copy on the page would create the context. It would be a eureka moment, a surprise to the viewer, and make a far stronger emotional connection.

    There you have it. Creating good marketing collateral is more than just slapping some pretty copy on to brand CI; it is a strategic endeavour which has far-reaching consequences if not done properly. Good creative teams have a feel for it, but for the rest of us, these are the guidelines we can follow.

  • ‘Techceleration’ – a recurring phenomenon

    ‘Techceleration’ – a recurring phenomenon

    I’m sure we’re all familiar with World War 2, Hitler, Churchill, and all of those other historical tidbits. What you may not be familiar with is the huge technological leaps that we made during that period. Things like radar, atomic energy, advances in penicillin, and leaps forward in computing  came out of a pressing need to innovate, to stay one step ahead of an ever advancing enemy.

    It is not a once-off phenomenon. All throughout human history, techceleration has happened during times of duress. The black death plague kicked off our foray into medicine (and for some reason watches were also invented then); early wars kicked off our horse riding (the dressage you see today was how a soldier would demonstrate his horse-riding skills).

    COVID-19, our techcelerator

    COVID-19 is no different. It has placed us under immense duress, but at the same time it has encouraged a massive amount of innovation. Things like working from home, something which in the past was an activity filled with bureaucracy and pleading, has become the norm. Products like Zoom saw an increase in sales of 326% in 2020, and there are similar trends present in the food delivery service, medicine, and  e-learning.

    But what does that mean for you? Experts have postulated that COVID-19 has techcelerated us at least five years into the future. What you’re seeing in 2021 should only have happened in 2026. The question then becomes, how will you advance your business by five years?

    Trendwatching

    While most innovation seems like it comes out of the blue, the reality is that it’s usually been part of a trend that was taking its time. For example, we’ve been talking about work-from-home for decades now. It’s been a trend that’s been in the works, COVID-19 just sped it up. We’ve noted similar trends in the online space. eCommerce was a trend that was being slowly adopted, but with the arrival of COVID-19, 96% of a sample of 2,000 people said they were planning to spend more online in the coming year.

    Become your own futurist

    Taking out your magnifying glass, what are the trends that you’ve been sitting on in your own business? There are many things that have changed. Thanks to flexible working hours, customers are now shopping at sporadic times of the day. The Saturday morning rush has begun to dissipate. Customers are starting to see shopping as a day out, a break from the house, and so dwell times are increasing. Overseas, retailers are partnering with coffee and fast food brands to leverage these longer dwell times by providing snacks and beverages instore.

    Augmented reality has also resurfaced with a major deal between WPP and Snapchat having just been signed off. WPP clients will now have access to AR technology, opening up new platforms and tools for their customers.

    If you have not been paying attention to the trends within your own business, now is as good a time as any to start. Trends will continue to accelerate and if you don’t meet them head on, the results could be costly.

  • CX moments of truth

    CX moments of truth

    How many businesses actually go through the exercise of determining where their customer’s pain points are? I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work on a very interesting pitch for a popular automotive brand. Part of the task was to map out the entire customer experience. The point of the process was to determine where the brand should focus their efforts (and their budget) in the coming months.

    We conducted some interviews, including those in the market for new cars, and salespeople on the dealer floor, and built personas. We then broke down the journey into five key milestones, mapping out what each persona would be thinking, doing, and feeling. We determined the tools and experiences that would address any pain points, and then looked at whether those tools and experiences already existed. If they didn’t, these became the recommendations. The results it yielded were clear and gave the potential client some deep insights into where they could improve. Like many brands today, some areas of the customer experience were second to none, and some were almost non-existent.

    Content and marketing are not everything

    Many brands are obsessed with content. Visit any brand site or social page, and you’ll find content galore. Videos, infographics, long-form and short-form. Yet, time and time again, the consumer has made it abundantly clear that they’re not particularly interested in hearing from brands. In fact, recent research shows that on a scale of impact, reviews and recommendations from friends and family far outweigh brand messaging.

    Back to our CX audit. As I mentioned, there were gaps and drops in the customer experience, but none of those gaps were content issues. They were all to do with dropped balls and poor experiences at a multitude of real world and digital touchpoints. Boots CMO, Pete Markey, was recently quoted as saying: “Your customer experience is your brand, so focus on getting it right consistently.”

    Marketing moments of truth that matter

    Therein lies the real challenge – being consistent across the board. How much effort are you putting into your marketing vs. your customer’s experience? In a recent CX report published by Rogerwilco, we took a look at the moments that mattered, ranking them by importance to the customer. These moments of ‘truth’, when done well, act as marketing channels all on their own, earning positive reviews that count more than a brand’s self-praise. Surprisingly, moments like unboxing and delivery (in the ecommerce space), were far more important than the search and purchase phases. Many ecommerce brands tend to focus on the search and purchase phase, while neglecting these final phases.

    Ask the right questions

    The questions you need to ask yourself are, which phases in my customer’s  journey am I ignoring? Have I mapped my customer’s moments of truth? Have I taken time to strategise and understand my customer, or am I simply ploughing ahead with creating content and marketing that has no value? I would also implore you to stop using the term ‘audience’. You don’t have one. You have a customer. Start focusing on the things that matter to your customer.

  • Shifting retail habits in SA consumers

    Shifting retail habits in SA consumers

    Marketing influences and retail habits are shifting in the pandemic, and in South Africa’s townships, cash and printed marketing messages still count. These observations are from the 2021 South Africa Township Marketing Report with Rogerwilco and Survey54, which looks at the factors that influence consumer’s decisions in the township environment.

    Cash is still king

    South Africans still carry cash, with a whopping 80% of respondents preferring it over other payment methods. There are two strongly held beliefs here: firstly, bank charges are way too high (not entirely true). Secondly, cash is untraceable, so the taxman won’t take it from you. Abdullahi Ibrahim, treasurer of the Somali Community Board of South Africa, whose organisation represents the interests of many spazas and informal traders, maintains that a majority of his members would prefer if their customers paid with cards or e-wallets.

    With many respondents using their bank accounts only two or three times a month to withdraw their salaries, there are people out there walking around with fairly substantial sums of money in their pockets. Not ideal for them, not ideal for traders. Breaking the cash habit is going to be hard work, but there are benefits for both the retailer and the consumer.

    Retailers: 1, Spaza’s: 0

    Spaza shops have been a mainstay in townships since the 1970s, and while they are still a go-to shopping choice, their popularity is declining. COVID-19 has exacerbated existing issues that consumers face when shopping at a spaza shop. Price has always been a consideration, but many consumers are willing to pay the higher price in exchange for the convenience of having a friendly neighbourhood store. Expired stock is also a long-standing issue, made worse by less foot traffic during COVID-19’s lockdowns.

    These problems have caused the township consumer to re-think their loyalties, and retailers are shifting up the preferred shopping list. The fall of the spaza could be detrimental to SA’s economy, with spaza’s contributing 5.2% to SA’s overall GDP and offering employment to 2.6 million people.

    The opportunities are endless here, but one that springs immediately to mind is a white labelled loyalty programme that could bring the township resident into the loyalty cycle while providing a secure future for the local spaza shop.

    Marketing influences

    The last point I’d like to touch on is our respondent’s most trusted sources of product information. Advocacy from friends and family is number one. A good rule of thumb for marketers is this: you’re not talking to an individual, you’re talking to a family. There is an ecosystem there and getting your brand into those conversations is going to require an understanding of all its participants. In second place (and maybe surprising for some) are newspaper inserts. Many marketers are turning to social media to reach this market, but the sweet spot still lies in print.

    There are many other topics, ranging from attitudes towards fake goods, ecommerce, and side hustles. The takeaway here, is that if this is your audience, you may know less about them than you think.

  • Retail futures from Google Marketing Conference

    Retail futures from Google Marketing Conference

    Google recently aired its Google Marketing conference. The event was a detailed look at the future of online retail, finance, and advertising. Insights, there were aplenty. I’ve taken some notes, focusing on the future of retail. I highly recommend that you go and watch the videos yourselves, there’s a lot of food for thought in them.

    When COVID-19 kicked off, there was a lot of speculation around the ‘new normal’, what trends would remain, and what trends wouldn’t. Here we are, a year later, and there appears to be some stickiness on some of those trends. The retail team at Google has started examining these trends more closely.

    Unpredictability

    Sales will remain unpredictable – 15% of all Google searches are new. People are spending more time at home, and with that comes certain behaviours. I know, as I’ve been spending a lot of time in my study, using it as my office. I’ve had to get a second screen, increase my desk space, and organise a bundle of cables leading out of the various PCs that I own. I wouldn’t have been bothered by any of this if I wasn’t spending so much time in this room. The thing is, this behaviour is completely unnatural for me. If you told me a year ago that I’d be buying leather chairs to turn the spare room into a library, I’d tell you that you’re mad. It turns out that my forays into interior design and neatening up my spaces are not unique to me.

    There’s also been an increase in clothing sales of tops, but not bottoms. How many of us are sitting in pyjama pants right now? The fact that 15% of Google searches are new, means that people are starting to think differently. They’re looking for inspiration, for ways to make their lives better in the new context they find themselves in. We’ve never seen this before. Sales have become unpredictable.

    Convenience

    Consumers have three big priorities. Stock and delivery times are the first two. If your business is struggling to keep stock or your delivery times are not great, you had better fix that. Those two issues are damaging your brand, which in turn will damage your repeat business (and perhaps even new business if word gets out). We’ve always known that people have an affinity towards brands that share their ideals.

    The third consumer priority takes this into account. As part of this drive towards convenience, consumer searches show a 71% increase in usages of terms like “sustainable”, “ethically sourced”, etc. This has always been a background trend, but it is becoming more prominent and I am aware of several businesses that have taken note and are beginning to take sustainability a lot more seriously.

    Data

    Data has always been important, we know it, and many of us spend a lot of time looking at it. But how we use data needs to change. Sajal Kohli, senior partner and head of global retail at McKinsey has said that businesses need to gear themselves for “much shorter planning horizons”. So, if you’re planning your business activities on a one year timescale, you need to stop. Start planning your launches, promos, and campaigns on a quarterly or even monthly time frame. The data is there and you have the insights. Your business needs to become far more agile to account for the unpredictable environment we find ourselves in.

    This should have been the approach to business the moment we had access to the volumes of data that we have access to. But for some reason we stuck to our old ways. Covid is forcing our hand and we need to adapt quickly.

    Loyalty programmes

    I’ve talked about loyalty programmes before in this forum, so I’m not going to go into this in too much detail. The bottom line is, have a good one, and make retention and repeat shops a priority.

    I know that the ‘new normal’ conversation has been done to death. I’m also aware that a lot of the stats I’ve presented above are US-based. I don’t think it matters. This isn’t about Covid, this is about solid retail business practices. The things that the team at Google are telling us, are not new and wonderful insights. We’ve known these things all along.

    Be agile, focus on data and insights, and put your customer first. These conversations have been around for years. Covid or no Covid, the pressure is on, and we need to start putting these principles into play.

  • Gimmick or revolution – what does VR really bring?

    Gimmick or revolution – what does VR really bring?

    In the winter of 1982, my father brought home our first computer, a BBC Model B microcomputer. The BBC Micro was a basic 8 bit machine running a 2 MHz 6502 processor with 4 channel sound and the ability to output 8 colour graphics at a dismal resolution. By today’s standards, it’s awful. But in 1982 it was mind-blowing. As the name suggests, the BBC micro was commissioned by the BBC as a learning tool and it even got its own TV show. More importantly, it was rolled-out across most schools in the UK as part of a digital education programme. The BBC Micro pioneered a lot of things, both technical and cultural.

    Inevitably, its popularity waned. One of the big reasons? It failed to meet the expectations of the working world. While it was great for learning and understanding computers, it had very little to offer in the way of spreadsheets and word processors. When the PC/Mac came along with all of these wonderful things, adoption rates shot up, and soon there was a PC in almost every office and household. New technology is driven by adoption, adoption is driven by big business. Until that journey from rags to riches is undertaken, tech will often sit in a world of obscurity, becoming yet another artifact of failed innovation.

    That brings me to the subject of VR, a technology that’s been around for almost a quarter of a century. Why has it taken so long to gain traction? Where is the rags to riches story? Is it just a gimmick? Things are starting to change from a sales POV. Sony’s answer, the PSVR, has enjoyed some popularity. Facebook’s Oculus range has also seen a significant rise in sales (especially with the release of the Oculus Quest 2). Unfortunately, both these headsets are still sitting firmly in the realm of the ‘experience’ (read: gamer), so how useful are they as an office productivity tool. The answer is, they’re not. Not yet.

    What has stood in the way? Portability for one thing. VR headsets plug into big, powerful computers so that video games can have a very deep sense of realism. Because there’s been such a heavy focus on gaming, there has been very little thought given to standalone units. That has changed and there are several options available for those of us that don’t have the big, expensive consoles and PCs. But it also means that an office environment won’t need a ton of extra gear lying around to unlock the power of VR.

    I think the biggest issue right now is imagination. There are many updates and peripherals that seek to replicate the office experience in the VR space. Physical keyboards that magically appear on virtual desks are one such product. Virtual offices are a great idea. You can have as many screens as you like, you can set up your office in any virtual location, from the beaches of Rio to the Swiss Alps. But what is the point? How is that innovation? On the job training has been pushed as another ‘killer feature’. Once again, not particularly interesting and would unlikely be the big driver adoption.

    True innovation

    An example of true innovation would be creating virtual workspaces where team members can collaborate on products in a single, interactive ‘playroom’. Need to build an activation stand for a product? Workshop it with your team in a collab space. Create the experience virtually, add ideas, sketch out collateral, and experience it as the consumer would before it even goes into production. We could be creating massive, fully interactive ideation spaces that shift from idea to prototype to production in one space, with one team. Everything from building code to planning logistics to creating better experiences would go from being an endless stream of emails and powerpoint documents to a single, virtual space. The days of endless emails would disappear.

    The same principle could work for the consumer. Imagine purchasing furniture by bringing virtual couches into a virtual representation of your lounge. Imagine trying out your next big screen TV in the comfort of your home before ordering. Imagine following along while a virtual chef shows you how to make an amazing dish before you’ve even ordered the ingredients.

    Will this happen? What does it mean for you? If history is anything to go by (and it always is), as soon as VR gets adopted by big business, it’s going to be a big thing. The way the new headsets are going and the updates that are currently being rolled out, we’re going to see that kind of adoption in the next three to five years. Right now, keep an eye out, because mass consumer adoption will mean a fundamental change in how people shop for things. You might want to be prepared for that.

  • What we can learn from Japan’s map to loyalty

    What we can learn from Japan’s map to loyalty

    I’m a big nerd and I’m a big fan of anime. I was watching a show the other day where the main character had a mall loyalty map. As he visited certain stores, he would get his loyalty map stamped. Once he hit five stamps, he could enter a lucky draw for the day. This piqued my interest, so I did some research into Japanese consumer loyalty card systems.

    The first thing to understand is that Japan’s loyalty cards run independently of chains and financial institutions. This gives them the freedom to partner with just about anyone to the benefit of the consumer. Typically, a Japanese consumer can manage their entire cashback scheme with just one card without having to carry around retail specific cards. Here in South Africa, some major chains have more than one card – dependent on which branch you visit (not pointing fingers, but they’re friendly, wherever you are). One loyalty card for everything sounds like a distant dream. Up until a few years ago, the Tstutaya card was the biggest loyalty programme in Japan. With 68 million members, 900,000 locations and 179 retail chains, the card was a savings powerhouse. For every 100 yen spent, you’d get 1 yen back, and since you could use it for almost everything you purchased, the savings could be astronomical. Recently, competitors have arisen and the T-card is not as popular as it used to be. Competition is always a good thing, so the cards available today offer even greater benefits.

    With more complex points systems leading to better rewards, a new sub-culture has arisen, the poikatsu influencer. Poikatsu is the art of hacking loyalty cards, looking for retailer loopholes, and maximising savings. Influencers put together hacks and tips to help consumers get the most out of their cards, although most of the practices are a little on the dodgy side. With COVID-19, poikatsu went from being a hobby to being a viable source of income for many. The reason that loyalty programmes are so ubiquitous in Japan is that despite being the pioneer of cashless payment systems, 80% of Japanese consumers say they prefer using cash. Loyalty cards are an attempt to change consumer behaviour, but they’re fighting a losing battle it seems. Physical currency is part legal tender, part cultural artifact. There is a ceremonial role that cash plays in Japanese society.

    Back to the loyalty map. How it works is simple. A mall will issue a loyalty map upon entering. You’re shown which stores are currently having specials and you can get a stamp at each participating store. Once you’ve hit a prerequisite number of stamps, you can turn your map in for a spin of a wheel, raffle, or daily giveaway. It’s such a simple system, but it means that you plan a consumer’s day by category. You can push them to stores that are under-performing or areas of the mall with less foot traffic all with something as simple as a paper map and a few rubber stamps.

    There are several property groups that are trying to move away from the siloed nature of the retailer’s tenant experience. They’re putting together forums and committees and generally getting retailers more involved in what happens in the shopping space. When these plans come to fruition, the consumer will only benefit. Removing these obstacles could lead to new shopping experiences and loyalty programmes, and who knows, maybe one day you’ll be enthusiastically asking a shopkeeper to stamp your mall map so you can win a vacuum cleaner.