Reaching Customers as Individuals and Communities

Increasingly, we’re seeing that the days of the massive, one-size-fits all marketing strategy are over. Brands that cannot offer personalized experiences are hurting, particularly in the loyalty space. We all see this sea-change taking place, but why is it happening?
 
To help answer this question, Alex Barseghian, Group Vice President of Retail for Blackhawk Network, authored Localmotion: How Technology Is Personalizing the Global Marketplace. He started a company called Samba Connects, which was the fastest growing company in the United Kingdom and one of the top 50 in Canada. Blackhawk Network acquired this business in 2016.  Prior to that, he was Head of Consumer Marketing at Aeroplan. Barseghian recently spoke with Loyalty360 about his book to help us understand the broad trends that are occurring.
 
Barseghian first explained the genesis of the book. “The whole idea of the book started about three or four years ago. My business is being focused on ‘local,’ and when I looked at other books and topics and articles, I found that ‘local’ had only been covered by the food industry, locally-sourced food, the hundred-mile diet, and things like that.”
 
He continued, “The existing resources hadn’t really tackled the notion of how business is changing, in terms of addressing your audiences, which isn’t a new idea, but the way to address them is changing, focusing on the individual and communities through various technologies. That was the whole concept of the book, that there’s pieces on each of those, covering topics like personalization, but nothing really wrapped it all together.”
 
Barseghian discussed the brands Apple and Spotify as an example of how companies need to put more focus on the individual. Apple dominated the digital download business for a number of years, but now Spotify has come to control this market. Spotify began to provide a monthly subscription model, but it also created algorithms to serve up relevant music recommendations based on the individual listener. “Even companies like Apple have blind spots that they need to be aware of,” said Barseghian.  His book offers a plethora of other examples on how brands can keep growing with their customers.   
 
Another way brands need to shift their business models is to serve their audience through community-mindedness. Barseghian suggests that companies need to prioritize selling products and services to like-minded people. He said, “Old juggernauts have to move quickly and many of them are not. Take, for example, Regus. They commanded the office sharing space for decades. In comes a disruptor called WeWork in the last ten years to dominate the shared office environment. The simple reason is they focused on community. Each location has an enormous sense of community, whether it is daily events, group organized yoga, runs, or even sharing employment opportunities.” Other examples include Lululemon, SoulCycle, and Peloton.
 
Technology is the driver of these changes in Barseghian’s view. This should come as no surprise (especially to students of McLuhan, who taught that new media would bring about a revival of tribal social behaviors), as many personalization efforts are based in technology. However, given his understanding of this relationship, Barseghian made several fresh prescriptions. He recommends that brands, even when facing budget cuts, “invest in education.” Learning more and staying aware of the latest in tech is not worth short-term savings.
 
Further, he encouraged “business folks and IT folks to cross-pollinate as much as possible. When you have business individuals—I’m not saying they should learn to program—but they should be able to speak the same language as IT, and IT with business, because what I’m noticing is there’s a bifurcation of IT folks running away and doing things not in lock-step with the business, and that’s when you start having a bigger and bigger gap in your organization.”
 
However, Barseghian’s primary prescription for brands is to focus on communicating with individuals. “Companies are still marketing to the masses, and they forget that they need to do mass-customization for the individual versus trying to reach everybody. It just doesn’t work anymore.”
 
He offered a few examples to illustrate. CardFree, which offers integrated commerce solutions, runs thousands of small to medium sized programs to improve customer access to loyalty programs. “They are mobile and customer first, can update an app quickly to constantly improve the customer journey,” said Barseghian. CardFree is therefore reaching out to individual customers where they are.
 
“When we think of loyalty,” Barseghian continued, “we think of points first and foremost, but that is also changing. Companies like Nest provide engagement via the number of leaves a customer accumulates.” In addition, Amazon, through its new Amazon Moments program, is driving benefits to both individuals and to communities of like-minded customers. 
 
The author believes that companies should no longer be focused on store openings. Those that do are quickly being replaced by newer, faster, customer-first organizations that tirelessly concentrate on the individual consumers and the communities to which they belong. Given Barseghian’s expertise in this field, we believe brands and marketers should heed his advice.  
 

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