Design Mind frogcast Ep.49 – Building the Future of Loyalty

On this episode of the Design Mind frogcast, we’re talking about what it takes to build loyalty by creating long-lasting relationships between brand and consumer. To do this, we’re joined by Christopher Baird, frog’s Head of Loyalty based in the UK, in conversation with Aaron Mitchell, Global VP of Membership and Personalization at The LEGO Group.

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Episode Transcript: Design Mind frogcast 

Episode 49: Building the Future of Loyalty 

Guests: Aaron Mitchell, Global VP of Membership and Personalization, The LEGO Group; Christopher Baird, Global Head of Loyalty, frog 

[00:09] Elizabeth Wood: Welcome to the Design Mind frogcast. Each episode, we go behind the scenes to meet the people designing what’s next in the world of products, services and experiences, both here at Frog and far, far outside the pond. I’m Elizabeth Wood.  

[00:24] Elizabeth Wood: Today on our show, we’re talking about what it takes to build loyalty by creating long-lasting relationships between brand and consumer. To do this, we’re joined by Christopher Baird, frog’s Global Head of Loyalty, based in the UK, and he’ll be in conversation with Aaron Mitchell, Global Vice President of Membership and Personalization at the LEGO Group. Throughout their chat, the two talk about the intersection of play, people and purpose, and what that means for long term business strategies that simultaneously create a new level of customer value. So, let’s jump in.  

[00:57] Christopher Baird: Hi there. My name is Christopher Baird, and I’m the Global Lead for Loyalty at frog part of Capgemini Invent. I’m delighted to be joined today by Aaron Mitchell, Global Vice President of Membership and Personalization at the LEGO Group. Welcome Aaron and thank you very much for being here today to talk with me. 

[01:13] Aaron Mitchell: Thank you, Chris. It’s my pleasure to spend some time with you today. 

[01:17] Christopher Baird: So, I’ve got a couple of initial questions just to get us warmed up and to ease into the conversation and the discussion. The first is, what unlikely source of inspiration would you say influences your work, day to day? 

[01:31] Aaron Mitchell: That’s a great question. My unlikely source of inspiration. It’s more than just one, actually, and it’s people. I find inspiration comes from people in all shapes and forms. Coming to the LEGO Group, I was very taken with children being our role models within our mission, and I have learned to be more playful and more creative than I probably ever have been before, and how I can use that actually into the work that I do, to be more creative, to be more playful and to be a little bit less rigid, which, you know, that’s what children are doing when they’re playing. And then also, I just love to sit and listen and watch what people do, and that could be either somebody in the supermarket, ordering coffee in a coffee shop, going for a walk in the park. I’m just curious about people in the world around me. So, my inspiration comes from many different aspects of life. 

[02:26] Christopher Baird: That’s really lovely. I think we could probably all do with a little bit more play and fun work. So that’s good to hear. My second warm up question then, is, what is something that your colleagues might be surprised to know about you. 

[02:41] Aaron Mitchell: I do love these questions. So, what would my colleagues be surprised to know about me? Is actually, in the past, I was not always comfortable or confident doing public speaking, and here I am doing a podcast, and I’ve done many talks in front of hundreds of people over my career. But I always get a little nervous, and I also have kind of been on a journey to build my confidence and being comfortable to talk publicly about the things that I love, the things that I do and the things that are passionate for me. 

[03:15] Christopher Baird: Super, well, hopefully we will have a lot of that in the discussion today, and maybe with that, we can dive right in. So, we’re here today to talk about membership, about loyalty and the new rules of engagement between consumers and brands. But maybe before we go into that in too much detail, perhaps it would be good just for you to introduce yourself even further, your story working in loyalty over the years, and then ultimately, you know what drew you to the LEGO Group outside of the fun and the play aspects that you mentioned?  

[03:47] Aaron Mitchell: Sure. My background is 25 years plus of really thinking and caring about customers and creating great experiences, creating great engagement and offering incredible value. And it started with an iconic brand. So, I started with Gap Inc, the American clothing retailer and learn everything around retail, customer service, customer experience. And again, it was a very purposeful brand to give people the way to express their personal style. Building loyalty and experiences around that was incredible. We never were just selling jeans or T-shirts. It could be an outfit for date night. It could be a gift for a newborn baby. So, it was always something more than just an individual product. Then I moved on to IKEA, another iconic brand, and this was an amazing journey for me to bring our purpose, which was to create a better everyday life for the many people, and to look at how I could design compelling loyalty programs to help bring people’s ideas for their homes to life, or in a work context, how we could help small business owners. US do business their way. So again, using loyalty as a way to be more present in people’s everyday lives at work or at home.  

[05:09] Aaron Mitchell: Then I moved on to another iconic brand, which was Ford Motor Company, and I had the privilege of working for Elena Ford, who is the great, great granddaughter of Henry Ford. So again, very purposeful, very family orientated brand. And the purpose there was to give people the freedom to move and an amazing opportunity to design loyalty and experiences, particularly within the transformation of electric vehicles, so helping people have confidence and reassurance and peace of mind when it comes to charging, range anxiety and many other needs to make that leap, you could say, from a combustible engine to electric vehicles.  

[05:50] Aaron Mitchell: And then finally, I landed in the LEGO Group, and again, in another amazing, purposeful brand to inspire and enable the builders of tomorrow and to be a global force for learning through play. There’s not many opportunities in your lifetime to get to work on iconic brands and help to shape their loyalty proposition and really how to create ongoing and meaningful relationships with members and consumers. So that, Chris, is a little bit of my background, and it’s always driven me to be curious about people, understand the problems they face, how could the business add and create value, and make sure that value exchange is really clear and creates mutual value, both for the member and, of course, equally for the business as well. 

[06:40] Christopher Baird: Thank you for that. Very interesting. It’s always great to hear the story of where people have come from. I think that the number of iconic brands there is really unique. And I think what is really interesting is the variety of different industries that you’ve worked in, moving from fashion to home furnishing, then into automotive and now to consumer products. And frog has had the pleasure of collaborating with you at many points through that journey. How have you found that the different industries that you’ve worked with have helped you when you move on to your next chapter in your career?  

[07:14] Aaron Mitchell: Yeah, I would say the industries have helped me to get a broader understanding of people, in a sense, because through the different brands, I’ve seen a slice or a lens of their everyday life. So through the lens of fashion, or through the lens of clothing and gift giving and things like that, through the lens of life at home, through the lens of mobility and then through the lens of play. So, it’s actually helped me to build an even more holistic view of people, and to really think about how loyalty programs, membership offerings, whatever you want to call it, how they actually can tap into those moments of people’s lives and actually create value and remove friction and create joy. So, I’ve been very privileged to see people, you could say, in a much more holistic way, and understand there’s a lot of similarities, whether you’re buying a kitchen or buying a car or, you know, considering an investment in one of our LEGO Technic sets as an example. And it all comes back down to people. What are their needs? What are their wants and how we can create value?  

[08:30] Christopher Baird: That’s super to hear. We will touch on consumer needs, the different types of customers that you have later on. But before we get into that, just to dive a little deeper into your role within LEGO, I’d love to hear more about, you know, the scope of your role and for you, what is the number one impact that you’d like to accomplish within the role? 

[08:49] Aaron Mitchell: Sure. So, my role is actually quite new for the LEGO Group. We had elements of membership and elements of CRM and different parts of the organization, primarily within our area of the business called LEGO Retail, which is the stores and e-commerce site that we own and operate. And before I joined the LEGO Group decided to move it out of LEGO Retail and actually have it across what we call Markets and Channels. And the idea is to have a more holistic membership program so that we could meet members, either if they choose to come to us in branded channels that we own and operate, or branded channels that our third-party partners run for us or in the future, also through non-branded channels. So, the many different retailers that sell our products as well. And my team’s mission is that we are on this journey to transform membership and personalization for the LEGO Group, and that is a big transformation, and we have a good base, but we have big ambitions.  

[09:57] Aaron Mitchell: And the scope of my role is really, covering many different aspects of membership. So firstly, around the proposition. So, what is our value proposition for membership? So, we want to invite our members to discover a world of rewarding experiences for people who want to create, build and play, and that gives us great rich territory to design out great benefits, rewards and experiences. We also want to expand our offering of membership so you can access membership in different ways or different channels when you interact with the LEGO Group or in non-branded channels. And we also want to create many more personalized experiences, so building up our capabilities to do more contextual and real time communication, engagement and even rewards also in the future.  

[10:55] Aaron Mitchell: And all of this is linked to our overall corporate strategy, which is, we want to build direct and long-lasting relationships. And of course, that is a shift for the Lega Group. Our origins were very much as a manufacturer and a distributor of toys and sets, and now through many of our own channels, but also through our wider network and ecosystem, we want to build that direct and long-lasting relationship, because we know if we learn more about our members, we learn about their needs, we can create even more joyful building, creativity and play experiences for our members.  

[11:35] Christopher Baird: Amazing to hear the scale of ambition that you have, hopefully also the opportunity that you have to transform both the business and the consumer experiences that you provide. Looking broader outside of your own role, then, can you tell me about some of the recent initiatives that LEGO have been looking into which are particularly exciting for you, and which you see as having a part to play in deepening customer loyalty with LEGO.  

[12:02] Aaron Mitchell: Yeah, I would say what the LEGO Group have been focused on is in a number of different dimensions. We have continued to work on our product portfolio. So again, we have our icons, and our franchise sets such as Star Wars, Technics, Disney. We also have done a lot of work in Botanics as well. So, I’m seeing a lot of new themes and sets coming into our product range, which is tapping into people’s passion points, people’s interests as well. And as I said earlier, the other part is building this ongoing and long-lasting relationship that is more direct and more personal as well. And that’s really where I see membership and personalization as a key enabler into this corporate strategy, and also a key enabler to bring our wonderful portfolio of products into many more people’s minds and hearts, because we can also use data to understand their passion points, their interests, and really match it with things that we think they would be curious about, passionate about, and always coming back to this world of building, creativity and play.  

13:20 Christopher Baird: That’s really good to hear. From frog’s perspective, as the experience and reinvention partner to our clients. It’s always wonderful to hear from leaders who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo, who do have big ambitions to not just take the first step, but to properly leap, and to achieve something quite drastic. So that’s really awesome to hear. Thank you, Aaron. If we take the conversation then more to loyalty and the loyalty landscape, considering the different new consumer and competitive landscapes that we see and are constantly evolving, how would you define loyalty and how do you see the concept of loyalty changing over the coming years? 

[14:00] Aaron Mitchell: Yeah, I love this question. I think loyalty can be defined in so many different ways. And what I’ve learned over my years of experience is you can sometimes get quite stuck trying to define loyalty as opposed to actually making steps first about creating engagement and interaction with your users or consumers that you would hope lead to loyalty. And I would also say loyalty as a concept is not a silver bullet. There’s not one thing you can do to then suddenly get universal and forever loyalty. So, I’ve done a bit of thinking over the years and digging into this concept, and I think what I’ve learned over the years is that people aren’t always loyal to the same set of brands, but they have a small set of brands that are always in their consideration mindset, and a lot of the loyalty is driven both by emotion, so how do I emotionally feel about this brand? Is it a brand I would want to be associated with? Is it a brand that shares my similar values as well. But also there’s kind of the functional, rational side of it, that we are creatures of habit, we love and crave routines and consistency.  

[15:24] Aaron Mitchell: So again, a lot of people stay loyal to a brand out of habit sometimes, or out of consistency, or simplicity. And one thing that I challenge a lot, particularly my team and the organizations that I’ve worked with, is I would always start the question in a different way. Instead of saying, how do I define brand loyalty and how do I define loyalty for customers to be loyal to a brand, the starting point actually should be the other way around. How should a brand be loyal to its customers and members? And really why I challenge that mindset is that by having that question in mind, you actually become user focused or member-centric or customer-centric, and to earn loyalty from our members and customers, we have to be consistent. We have to know them, we have to help them and we have to reward them and some of that may lead to loyalty. But for me, the first step is, are we increasing the frequency of interactions with our members? Are we driving higher levels of engagement? And then we could hope to then drive that into loyalty. But if you start going straight into, “How do I just drive loyalty from people?” I always say challenge it the other way around. And how can we be loyal to the member?  

[16:51] Christopher Baird: It’s really great to hear you say that within frog and as part of our most recent chief challenges campaign, we’ve been exploring the role that brands have to play in meeting consumer responsibility unconditionally and putting aside, perhaps at times, business requirements and business priorities in order to be truly customer centric. So, I’m keen to hear more about what you think brands need to do to help customers make choices which are much more based on genuine needs and values, as opposed to driving purchases that are, you know, purely led by trends or short-term gratification. 

[17:28] Aaron Mitchell: So great, great question. My starting point has always been, what are the real problems that I’m trying to solve for this particular group of people. And if I put the lens of whether you call it a membership program or a loyalty program, it should always be starting with, where is that particular person on their journey. And one thing I’ve learned also over the years is about context. So, a lot of times when we’ve looked at, how do I make my loyalty program more successful? Or how do I tap into consumer trends, etc., we always go straight into, how do I get more people to sign up for my program? Or how do I get them to see my program more often? Sometimes, what we forget, actually, and this is, again, research we did at the LEGO Group earlier this year, is that actually most people join a membership or a loyalty program as part of a broader journey. And the risk sometimes is that we ignore that broader journey and we focus just on, how do I get you to sign up? And then we wonder why, once someone signed up, they don’t always go on to be an active member.  

[18:43] Aaron Mitchell: So, what I’ve learned is like, how do you zoom out and understand where does the membership program or the loyalty program sit within that broader journey? Is someone coming to your brand because, like, if I take the lens of the LEGO Group, is someone coming to us because they’re looking for a gift for their nephew or their niece? Are they coming here because it’s on a wish list for their son or daughter? Are they coming here because, actually, they have, they’re huge fan of Star Wars and they want to build the Millennium Falcon at home because it’s something they’re super passionate about, or are they exploring and curious to say, “Well, I’ve heard that the LEGO Group now has Botanics, and I’m curious to what that range might be.” If we didn’t think of those entry points, then we’re going straight into “Sign up for our membership program, get rewards, get access,” but to what and how does that link to the main reason why I’ve actually come to your brand today? So that’s really what we’re working on. And I encourage others to do the same, to think of where does the sign up of my membership program sit within that broader consumer need? And broader consumer journey. 

[20:02] Christopher Baird: I totally agree. I think even today, a lot of people still consider loyalty to be the thing, rather than loyalty being the outcome. And then something else is the thing. Whether that’s a membership program, it’s a set of really great customer experiences, but they have it the wrong way around, in my opinion. And I think it’s great to hear the things that you’re doing in the way that you’re looking at it differently, to try and challenge those perceptions and to do something differently that is ultimately in the benefit of the end consumer as well as the business. 

[20:37] Aaron Mitchell: I agree. And it’s also like making sure what we’re designing is contextual to that journey, but it also is the best representation of our brand and the values we have within a brand. So, as I said earlier, you know, the LEGO Group’s mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. So does our membership program help unlock access to inspiration and development around building as an example, and if our vision is to be a global force for learning through play. So how does also our membership program give access to families around playtime, or around play and discovery as well, and then we have some really great brand values that we also want to bring into the benefits, the rewards and experiences we design. And that’s very much about imagination, fun, creativity and learning. And that is one of the reasons we changed our program last year from VIP to LEGO Insiders. VIP was very much transactional based and very much a retail mechanic, so we elevated it into LEGO Insiders so that you’re on the inside of the LEGO world. And how does this membership give you access and belonging to this world of creativity, building and play. Now it’s not always easy when it comes to, “How do we translate that into tangible benefits or tangible rewards or experiences,” but it’s something that really steers and influences the things that we design and the activities that we offer our many members.

[22:53] Christopher Baird: It’s really interesting hearing you talk about the builder of tomorrow. I’m sure there are a lot of activities and initiatives that you have underway to understand today’s customers, to be able to provide relevant and personalized experiences to them. But if you think about the builder of tomorrow, how would you articulate what that customer looks like and do you think that they’re very different to the builders of today?  

[23:18] Aaron Mitchell: That’s a great question. What I start with in terms of the builders of tomorrow, what I really love about our purpose is, it’s ageless, because we don’t say the young builders of tomorrow. Anyone can be a builder. And it’s also tomorrow, in a sense, is not that far away it is the next day. So, it also keeps us kind of focused a bit on the here and now, but also looking ahead to you know, how are, how are trends influencing how children play, how adults, maybe at home, are building and being creative and want to express their creativity. So really, what’s important for us, is when we look into the concept of tomorrow, it’s about how does our mission and our purpose show up? So, if we want to be a global force for learning through play, we want to create fun, creativity, learning and imagination. Of course, one of the big things is digital. And we know that a lot of people are spending more time on digital devices than ever before. One thing that really guides us is around, particularly with children, how we are ethical and purposeful with that digital engagement.  

[24:41] Aaron Mitchell: And of course, you’ve got AI and augmented reality. You’ve got many different capabilities that you could get excited about and be seduced, you could, say, by the new technology. So, as I said earlier, what steers and guides us is our purpose. And to think about, does this new technology, or does this new consumer trend help us, actually, on our way to deliver our mission and vision? And if I think about some of the needs that are coming, you know, you see a lot of people now just expect convenience, seamlessness, flexibility, choice. There’s a lot more around social, so making shopping a more social activity and event, live streaming. There’s a lot of talk about ecosystems, coalitions, value being redefined, emotional loyalty, self-expression. There’s a lot out there, is what we see. And again, our filter is, is this helping us live out to our purpose? Is it helping us bring our value proposition for our membership program alive? If not, let’s understand whether we should pursue this any further, or let’s stay true to who we really are as a brand. 

[26:05] Christopher Baird: Really good to hear. I agree that technology, whilst it can do many wonderful things and is as important in pushing forward customer experiences, it can’t be something that gets in the way of those customer experiences. And so, it’s lovely to hear your ability to sort of cut through the hype and to be able to focus on the things that matter, that will be meaningful to customers and which will deliver the lasting change that you’re looking to deliver. And thinking of those many customers you’ve started talking about, you know, the fact that you don’t focus on one particular segment. You know you do have children builders. You have adult builders and everyone in between. You also, I suppose, have such a wide spectrum of casual consumers who may be purchasing a gift, all the way up to the evangelists of the brand, the people for whom LEGO is so special and so important to their lives. How, how do you deal with that, such a broad range of consumers and what role and how do you manage loyalty when you’re trying to do something that works for such a variety of people? 

[27:09] Aaron Mitchell: It’s a great question. And how we try and be relevant to the variety of people is kind of the key here. And one of the things when I first joined the LEGO Group last year, one of the first discoveries we kind of went through was to try and clean up a little bit, you could say around, what is fandom? What is a community? What is a membership program? What is loyalty? What is engagement? Because I think it’s the same in many, many places. We use these words interchangeably, and it was important for us to kind of understand what is the difference, actually, and fans and fandom is an interesting concept, but it’s created very much about people’s passions and interests. So, people are a fan of Star Wars or a fan of LEGO or a fan of brands or activities because it’s something they’re absolutely passionate about, and if you try and apply a more structured or formalized membership program onto that group of people, you could potentially alienate them if we’re not really tapping into their fandom and what their passion and interests are.  

[28:28] Aaron Mitchell: And then the same with communities. The research I’ve done over the years, people tell us quite clearly that they create communities, not brands, and if a brand tries to create a community, and this was a quote from a customer we interviewed, “People see this as stealth marketing.” They don’t trust that this truly is a sort of free community for people to interact and engage. It’s kind of staged by the brand as a way to try and sell and market to them. And then somewhere in between, you kind of have a membership program, which is a bit different to community and fandom, that there is a more formal belonging, because I sign up for a membership program, I log in, I provide you with certain details or data, then I have an expectation if I provide you with that details or data, I want value back, as well. So, it was important for us to kind of map out a little bit of like, where do membership programs, fandom and communities kind of exist in their own entity, and then where are the intersection points where you will have fans that will be a part of a membership program, they may say something about us in a community.  

[29:46] Aaron Mitchell: So, it’s trying to, like, understand those different groups or journeys as well. And our first sort of focus is, let’s really create this best-in-class membership program and make it really compelling and exciting for people to want to join. And of course, we also launched last year a kids membership program, because also kids as an audience is incredibly important for the long-term success of our brand. So again, it’s helping us kind of map those different groups out and to be a little bit disciplined about what is the role of our fan engagement activities that we do? How do we want to participate or nurture communities? And then really, what is the role of our membership proposition and program? And it’s really helped us to create clarity internally, but also clarity to the person that we’re trying to invite in to one of those different areas. 

[30:49] Christopher Baird: And I think what you’ve been discussing there is actually really important, and it’s something which a lot of organizations probably underestimate the power of, and that’s the internal alignment, making sure that the people who are responsible for creating and delivering these experiences, which you would aim will deliver loyalty, making sure that you’re all talking the same language, that you have the shared outcomes, and that you’re all heading in the same direction. I think many organizations will feel, well, we’ve got a great brand, we’ve got a great product, a great proposition, perhaps, and therefore it all makes sense. But as soon as you unpick the fact that one word means something slightly different to another person, and therefore the way that they go about it is different, that’s when things start to unravel. So, it sounds as if you’ve started on really good foundations, making sure that you have that stability to then deliver really wonderful experiences for kids, members and superfans, of course. 

[31:48] Aaron Mitchell: Yeah, and one thing we that I kind of learn, is a great technique in this is it’s a technique called interest-based problem solving, and it means that we have a problem to solve, but actually different people have different interests in that problem. From a commercial perspective, we have a problem that we want to grow. We need to, you know, we need to have our products and services seen, heard and accessed by many people. Then from a brand perspective, we want to create love, interest and desire for the brand. And then from a convenience perspective, we want to simplify the experience for people, so you’ve got different aspects. And that’s really where we use this technique to say our problem to solve is that we want to create real, unique value for our members. We have different interests in how we solve that problem, but let’s come around the table and share what our different needs are, and then look at how together we can actually solve it. It was a journey, you know, it wasn’t something we solved overnight, but that technique really helped to unlock a different mindset with people as well.  

[32:56] Christopher Baird: And I can imagine those interest-based activities required you to look at some sort of data sets, and it would probably be odd for us to not touch on data if we’re having a conversation about loyalty. But what do you see changing when it comes to data and the way that brands look at it and use it? 

[33:15] Aaron Mitchell: It’s a great question, and again, on data, what I’ve learned also over the years is data can be both an abstract, complex and simple topic, depending on what your point of view is or your understanding. So what we kind of have done here at the LEGO Group, our starting point instead, has been people and thinking about who are the different people that we would like to create benefits, rewards and experiences in regards to our membership program, and then what data could help us find these people, but also help to enrich or to give us new insights or a different lens onto those members as well.  

[34:05] Aaron Mitchell: And one of the things that I’m a big believer in, particularly with data or insights or behavioral science, whatever you want to call it, is loyalty at its core is about people, and we need to humanize the data and understand that the data is made up of different people, different preferences, different interests, different behaviors. And it’s about taking multiple sources and trying to bring a more holistic view, so you can have your quantitative data that gives you one sort of lens on what people are doing. You know, what are they buying? Where are they buying? How often are they buying? So, there’s some good insights in your quantitative data. Then in your qualitative data, could help you understand how they’re feeling, or what are their motivators for when they’re searching or accessing or discovering your products and services. And then there’s the third one, which we do quite a lot, actually, which is the ethnographic side, and that’s really about studying and observing what people are doing and why.  

[35:14] Aaron Mitchell: And I think really what we need to do, particularly within loyalty, is to go beyond just what people are buying or accessing, but actually understanding why? Because the why is the starting point. Why is somebody coming to the LEGO Group online or in store or to one of our discovery centers, wherever it might be? Why are they doing the things that they’re doing? And is there a need that we could solve, and then the data helps you to prove or disprove if this need is desirable or feasible for us to solve. So, for me, it is a lot around demystifying data as this kind of big, abstract concept and getting quite tangible and saying it’s about understanding people, understanding why they do the things they do, and then how do we solve the problems that they have? And is it valuable enough for us to solve those problems? And the data, whether it’s quantitative, qualitative, or ethnographic, helps you to prove or disprove to yourself and to the organization, this is the right direction we should go.  

[36:22] Christopher Baird: Hearing you talk about people humans, for me, working within frog, where we always put the customer first, it’s really wonderful to hear you talking about that and coming at it from that perspective. So maybe just one final question, then looking at all of this together, you and I both share the opinion that loyalty can be great. You said at the beginning that it isn’t a silver bullet, but given what businesses are trying to do in order to shape their business around changing consumer priorities, what would you say is the greatest opportunity that membership and loyalty could enable for those businesses who are looking to reinvent themselves?  

[37:02] Aaron Mitchell: Yeah, it’s another great question. I would say the opportunity, or where loyalty can help is in a number of dimensions, actually. Firstly, I’m a big believer that your loyalty proposition or program should be the best expression of your brand, because it enables you to personalize and humanize the brand in a much more detailed way than you could just in a broadcast perspective, not to say it’s one or the other; I think it’s about being complementary to how you’re building and positioning your brand and loyalty helps you to go a deeper level with your members. I’d also say what’s also important, or how a loyalty program can help the business is it also helps you to redefine value. You get to learn so much more about what your members are doing, why they’re doing the things that they do, and that helps and gives you a lot of insights, not just for how do I make my marketing campaigns more effective?  

[38:11] Aaron Mitchell: So yep, you can use your first party data to fuel in your customer data platform and fuel your paid media and your search media, and you’ll have great results because you’d be much more targeted and disciplined. That’s great, but also the data and insights from your members could actually inform your product development, your experience development, the future of your business, because, again, you have that ability to listen, learn and act with your member base, because you have that direct sort of relationship with your members. So that also helps both kind of now near and far in terms of horizons of business development and innovation. And then I think the biggest thing that a loyalty program helps, is building that direct and long-lasting relationship. And of course, you still need to continue to develop the brand and to, you know, build up the brand with people, but your loyalty program should enhance and enrich who your and what your brand stands for. 

[39:17] Christopher Baird: That’s excellent. Thank you very much for sharing that. Thank you so much for being here today, Aaron, from my perspective, it’s been absolutely fantastic hearing about your own personal thoughts and feelings towards loyalty, but also to hear about how the LEGO Group is looking to create elevated loyalty experiences for your customers. Good luck with all of the ambitious activities that you have planned. And thank you once again for joining us today.  

[39:41] Aaron Mitchell: It’s been my pleasure, Chris, thank you so much for having me today. 

[39:47] Elizabeth Wood: And that’s our show. The Design Mind frogcast was brought to you by frog, a leading global creative consultancy that is part of Capgemini Invent. Check today’s show notes for transcripts and more from our conversation. We really want to thank our guests, Aaron Mitchell, Global Vice President of Membership and Personalization at the LEGO Group, and Christopher Baird, Global Head of Loyalty for frog.  

[39:47] Elizabeth Wood: We also want to thank you, dear listener. If you like what you heard, tell your friends, rate and review to help others find us and be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Find lots more to think about from our global frog team at frog.co/designmind, that’s frog.co. Follow frog on x, at @frogdesign and @frog_design on Instagram. And if you have any thoughts about the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out at frog.co/contact. Thanks for listening. Now, go make your mark.