Blind Loyalty Challenge with Fionna Ronnie

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Hi there, I'm Amanda Cromhoe from Truth. Welcome to the Blind Laugherty

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Challenge.

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We interview world experts in loyalty blindly. We're hoping to create insight,

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spontaneity

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and a lot of fun through the challenge. The challenge is about promoting the

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Blind Laugherty

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Trust and my book called Blind Laugherty, a 101 loyalty concept radically

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simplified.

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All profits from the book go towards the trust. We hope you enjoy the Blind L

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augherty Challenge.

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So for today's Blind Laugherty Challenge, I think Fiona and I got a brief that

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we had to wear red,

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so today is the Red Blind Laugherty Challenge. I have the absolute honor of

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asking Fiona Ronnie,

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who I know incredibly well, a real well-known businesswoman in South Africa.

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She is head of

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customer and loyalty for the Fashini Group. Fiona, welcome to the Blind Laug

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herty Challenge.

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Thank you, Amanda. It's a pleasure to be here.

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So you were nominated actually. Ironically, we're wearing red. You were

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nominated by a red brand,

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by the Virgin Active Group, by Kia Abbott from Virgin Active. So maybe we did

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that subconsciously.

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[Laughter]

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Looks like it. Yes.

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So straight into it, question one, in Blind Laugherty, which I know you know

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well, because the Fashini

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Group is an enormous, enormous supporter of the Blind Laugherty Trust, the

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Blind Laugherty,

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and a lot of things we do at Truth. So I'm so grateful, particularly for the

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support you give

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to the trust. So I do know you know the book well. So chapter 71 and chapter 72

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, they talk about

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fashion retail rewards and beauty retail rewards respectively. What in your

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opinion is the world's

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most impressive loyalty CVP in either of those industries?

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You know, Amanda, there's a few that sound in my mind. I think from a beauty

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perspective,

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it's definitely Sephora. Just their seamless omnichannel customer experience

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for me,

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you know, their value proposition just gets you almost immersed in not just Sep

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hora as a brand,

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but Sephora as an experience, it basically actually becomes part of your

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lifestyle.

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And my other, I would almost say, loyalty program that I admire would be

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Emirates, you know,

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but Emirates is not particularly retail. I just love their value proposition, I

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love their,

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you know, just in terms of how they communicated their customers, as well as

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their seamless

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integration into our omnichannel. I really enjoy their presentation at the ILA

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this year as well.

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I think they should be incredible insights. Yeah.

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Maybe that is why we're wearing red, because I also read.

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We actually spoke to Dr. Naji Bankada from Emirates on the Blind Laugherty

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Challenge not long

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ago, it was just great. So yeah, wonderful. And Sephora, I talk about in Blind

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Laugherty, so

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couldn't agree with you more beautiful examples. So chapter 64 is all about gam

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ification. And I know

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in your business, you really do do some cool stuff in the gamification space.

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And, you know,

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I'm always faced with the question when I talk to brands about gamification,

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like,

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is it just a buzzword? Does it actually give you a decent return on investment?

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So I think

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that's my question is, can you get a decent return on investment through some

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gamification

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activities? Yeah, I think you absolutely can. I think an intent needs to be

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clear around what do

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you want to do or achieve with the use of gamification? And that's something we

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've had to spend time

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understanding and fine-tuning within a TFG. So I'm going to start with our

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intent. Our intent was

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purely to drive engagements, to make sure that we keep our customers engaged in

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a way that is relevant

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to them. Not only enough, we always thought that gamification would appeal to

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the younger generation

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and we find our customer base is more the middle to the older general genes

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that actually engage

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with us on the gamification platform. And then it went from pure engagement,

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which is the earn and

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burn to bringing in that data and using the data to aggregate insights. And

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fundamentally, I think

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for TFG, it's all about the data game. And as you know, I'm always planting the

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data story. So bringing

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in the data that we aggregate through gamification as a channel, understanding

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our customer behaviors

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and understanding what they want. We use it not just to drive engagement, but

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to do things like

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surveys, to get insights on new products and capabilities that we want to test.

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And also to make

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customers understand a lot more about TFG rewards and what is actually our

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offer that we're taking

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into the market. That's great. What a great insight around the age demographic.

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I wasn't expecting

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to say that. It's wonderful. Yeah, we find it's a wide variety of customers

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that do engage. I think

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we were expecting the younger, the more the gen Z customers to come in and we

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find it's not just

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them. So it's really, it's a good tool to size up your customer base. I have

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heard that with other

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brands who've used gamification in Europe. And so it's actually great to see it

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as well in a market

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like South Africa, where your brand, particularly TFG over indexes in the youth

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, which we see in our

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annual white paper. So that is super cool to see. Okay, lovely. Thanks for

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sharing Fiona.

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Okay, my last question, you've actually touched on it a little bit. So it's

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just building on the

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conversation around non-transactional activities, because I know again, you as

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a brand have been

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doing this for a while. So chapter 44, Blind Lawty talks about non-transact

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ional activities in the

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loyalty space. What would you say has been either through TFG or your own

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personal experience has

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been your favorite experience of getting involved in non-transactional

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activities as a consumer or

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what you've done through TFG to actually drive change? Just in terms of non-

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transactional

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from a TFG perspective, I mean, we do a lot of COVID, and I'm going to say CO

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VID because I find

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over being the transactional type of value proposition that you would drive,

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right? So we do a lot of

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COVID almost reaching out to our customers through our marketing campaigns and

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making sure that,

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you know, we provide almost relevance to our customers and bringing that

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emotional connection

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to our customers and our value proposition through not just product push, but

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things like what is the right voucher that we allocate to you based on your

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buying behavior?

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How do we drive the spend that we were looking for in a way that makes sense to

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our customers?

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And I think the spending time fine-tuning those aspects has brought together

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not just the

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transaction but the emotional law. It's because if customers tend to see that

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based on what you're offering them and the type of campaigns you're putting out

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to them,

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that you really do understand them. And that tends to bring them back into our

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fold from a TFG

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perspective over and over again. Yeah, at the end of the day, it's helping

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customers feel loved

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and understood. So absolutely wonderful. So full house to the ladies in red

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today. So

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who would you like to tag to take up the challenge next? I'm going to pass the

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button

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back to Virgin Active. So Ross and I tell you, you are.

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Ross is no stranger to truth or blind loyalty. So she also in Lady in Red, so

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we'll get hold of

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Ross. Thanks for your near and absolute superstar. Ladies and gentlemen.