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Changing the Game - AI, Gamification & the Future of Loyalty
In this episode of Marketing Un:Learned, Ian Jindal talks with Richard Potter, Director of Digital Strategy at Microsoft, and Mrinalini Chowdhary, Director of Strategy and Insights at Epsilon, about unlearning the outdated transactional view of loyalty programmes and rebuilding them around emotional engagement, permissioned data, and AI-driven personalization.
From psychological drivers to agentic commerce, Richard and Mrinalini explore how gamification creates engagement loops and habits beyond the checkout, why loyalty is the permission system that unlocks responsible AI, and what empathy, measurement, and focus mean for leaders redesigning loyalty in 2026.
Key Topics & Timestamps
Introductions: From Banking to Loyalty, Engineering to Boardrooms
Mrinalini introduces her journey from banking through startups into loyalty strategy at Epsilon, bringing 15 years of experience in strategy consulting, marketing, and product management. Richard outlines his hybrid role as engineer and business strategist, translating technology shifts into boardroom value for retail and consumer goods clients at Microsoft.
02:50 - What Is "Digital" When Everything Is Digital?
Richard explains that his "digital" title reflects the customer challenge: helping organisations understand what digital means in their operations. The real interest lies at the intersection of ones and zeros with human dynamics - whether in employees or consumers - and how digital experiences mobilise emotional responses while being rationally interpreted by systems.
07:30 - 10:50 - Redefining Loyalty: Beyond Transactional Spam
Mrinalini reframes loyalty as shifting from purely transactional mechanics (sign up, purchase, get points) to emotional engagement. Modern loyalty must be dynamic and adaptive, creating engagement loops through sequential actions that build habits and keep consumers thinking about the brand between purchases, not just at checkout.
10:50 - 13:40 - Psychological Drivers: Purpose, Delight, Empowerment & Loss Aversion
Mrinalini unpacks the core psychological drivers that differentiate effective gamified loyalty:
- Purpose - Clear ultimate aims communicated through missions, tiers, and progress bars (both mechanics and visuals)
- Delight - Surprise, instant feedback, and gratification through pop-ups and visual rewards
- Empowerment - Giving consumers choice (e.g., select your birthday gift)
- Loss aversion - Streaks, expiring points, time-limited challenges
- Scarcity - Exclusive VIP-tier benefits
- Social connection - Group challenges, quests, leaderboards, and competitive elements
These drivers are individualised - what motivates one consumer differs from another.
13:40 - 16:50 - From Passive Pages to Active Engagement Loops
Ian references Tesco Media’s co-branded mechanic with Florian Clemens: instead of blanket discounts, customers choose 10 products they haven’t bought recently for a “game card,” then earn rewards by organically purchasing them over several weeks. The customer isn’t bribed - they’re playing, and brands fund the prize pool. This exemplifies the shift from passive loyalty pages to dynamic, habit-forming engagement.
16:50 - 19:50 - The Rational Engine: AI Accelerates Experimentation
Richard frames loyalty as an inherently irrational, emotional human contract, but one that technology must solve rationally. Algorithms optimise contract dynamics on both sides of the exchange, but trust is fragile. The step-change with foundational models and machine learning is exponential horsepower: marketers can introduce new mechanics, test, fail, and iterate faster and cheaper than ever before. Experimentation is both accelerating and becoming more economical.
19:50 - 24:50 - Agentic AI: When the Customer’s AI Talks to Your AI
Ian raises the strategic challenge: consumers now wield agentic AI that can cut through emotional loyalty and gamification to demand “best deal now.” The retailer’s advantage - massive data, sophisticated algorithms - is now matched by AI in the customer’s hands. Richard acknowledges the compression and hiding of the traditional contact period (website navigation, search indexing, abandoned baskets). Boardrooms are asking how to redeploy capital previously locked in telemetry, armies of analysts, and A/B testing.
But AI is both challenge and solution: rational engines can anticipate agentic commerce and help enlightened boards reorient resources. The key is robust, permissioned data.
24:50 - 28:10 - Gamified Loyalty as the Permission System for AI
Mrinalini describes gamified loyalty as linking campaigns in a cumulative string, tapping into “micro moments” that feel achievable and generate permission-based data. This data becomes a powerhouse fuelling all marketing channels - ROI extends far beyond incremental loyalty revenue into areas impossible to quantify.
Richard underscores this point: loyalty is the permission system for deploying AI responsibly. The virtuous contract transacting explicit value between brand, retailer, and consumer is the foundation for everything organisations want to do with data. Without robust, trust-based permission, AI ambitions collapse.
28:10 - 31:40 - Hiring the New Loyalty Leader: Growth Mindset, Consumer Intimacy & Data Mastery
Ian asks for the top three attributes of tomorrow’s loyalty marketing director.
Richard’s picks:
1. Growth mindset - You are at the frontier, redefining this work for humanity (privilege, not terror)
2. Consumer intimacy - Never forget it’s all about your consumer; deep knowledge remains relevant
3. Data mastery - Don’t obsess over which foundational model; your competitive advantage is connecting your data to all that horsepower
Mrinalini’s picks:
1. Empathy - Understand what the customer wants, not just what the client wants (“What am I going to get?” vs “What is the customer going to get?”)
2. Financial & cross-functional knowledge - The loyalty director manages a mini-division: marketing, finance, UX, growth strategy
3. Growth mindset (echoing Richard) - Essential to tap into everything
31:40 - 35:30 - One Phrase of Advice for 2026 Loyalty Restarters
Ian asks for a single piece of counsel.
Richard: Measure everything. Infuse telemetry into everything because you are inventing all the time. Measure, learn, iterate.
Mrinalini: Pinpoint your outcome. Identify the one KPI you want to hit - not “increase this, that, and all KPIs.” Every action, change, and iteration must be laser-focused on that single objective.
Key Unlearnings
- Loyalty is not transactional spam - It’s emotional engagement built through micro moments, habit loops, and individualised psychological drivers.
- Gamification is both mechanic and visual - Progress bars, streaks, and pop-ups tap into purpose, delight, empowerment, loss aversion, scarcity, and social connection.
- AI compresses the customer journey - Agentic commerce hides the telemetry-rich contact period retailers have relied on, forcing boardrooms to redeploy capital and rethink competitive advantage.
- Loyalty is the permission system for AI - Without a robust, trust-based contract transacting explicit value, data-driven personalisation and AI ambitions collapse.
- Measure, empathise, focus - Infuse telemetry everywhere, lead with empathy for the customer (not just the client), and pinpoint one KPI to drive every iteration.
Guest Bios
Richard Potter is Director of Digital Strategy at Microsoft, where he has spent eight and a half years translating technology shifts into boardroom value for retail and consumer goods clients. With a background in engineering, management consulting, and systems integration, Richard bridges business strategy and technology, focusing on consumer intimacy, AI deployment, and the intersection of digital experiences with human emotion.
Mrinalini Chowdhary is Director of Strategy and Insights at Epsilon, bringing nearly 15 years of experience in strategy consulting, marketing, and product management. After starting in banking and pivoting through a series of startups, Mrinalini found her passion in loyalty and CRM programmes, applying her psychology degree to design engagement loops, gamification mechanics, and customer experience enhancements that balance rational systems with emotional drivers.
Resources & Links
Microsoft - https://www.microsoft.com
Epsilon - https://www.epsilon.com
Microsoft PlayFab (gamification platform) - https://playfab.com
Creators and Guests
What is Marketing UnLearned?
Marketing UnLearned explores the challenges the leading-edge digital marketing poses to established and received wisdom.
All new initiatives, until proven, are subject to scrutiny and challenge: the ‘waddabouts’, the statements of inertia, the “why bother?”, the deprioritising questions. Within these challenges there is often a grain of truth, but in this series we’ll take the challenges head on and learn how the exemplars deliver persuasively - perhaps changing our thinking along the way.
In partnership with Epsilon our first series will focus on innovation in the areas of retail media, digital advertising, CRM, and personalisation. We’ll speak with 10 expert practitioners who have moved beyond the optimised and well-know digital marketing processes. More than a simple ‘always sunny at 30,000ft’ case study, we’ll put the challenges to our guests and hear how they were overcome, how their thinking developed and learn about the ‘new state of the art’. While we may UnLearn some pieces of accepted wisdom, we’ll replace them with new, effective learning. Everyone wins with Marketing UnLearned.
Ian Jindal (00:01.486)
Well, hello and welcome back to the studio for a rather special and forward looking episode where we're talking about changing the game, how loyalty programs are being changed by gamification and artificial intelligence. Two super hot words that we're going to be diving into. But a little bit first off about why we're here. So Marketing Unlearned is the podcast series that looks at the challenges that leading edge
digital marketing poses to established and received wisdom.
What are the maxims that we need to revisit and what certainties are open to challenge? And once we unlearn something, well, we're duty bound to put it back together again and relearn something. So looking towards the improved, better, more relevant approach today on loyalty, it's a great pleasure to have in the studio today Richard Potter, is Director of Digital Strategy at Microsoft and Marilalini Choudhury from Epsilon.
So rather than me butcher their wonderful CVs, why don't I invite them to introduce themselves? Marilalini, why don't you tell us a little bit about you first off and your role and Epsilon and then we'll go to Richard just in case people have never heard of Microsoft. Marilalini, welcome.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (01:28.155)
Thank you so much. As you said, name absolutely correctly, I am Ranalini and Director of Strategy and Insights in Epsilon. I've been with Epsilon for seven, close to eight years now. And at Epsilon, I work with clients when it comes to their loyalty and CRM programs, even CX enhancements.
And I bring with me about 15 years of experience in strategy consulting, marketing, and product management. Actually, it's hard to believe that my career actually began in banking. But I quickly realized that it was something that I wasn't too interested in. And so I went into this string of startups.
Ian Jindal (02:10.018)
Wow.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (02:23.441)
looking at all kinds of problems and trying to, from the stage of conceptualizing something to taking them to launch. And in this period of time, I worked in multiple different roles, which I think has given me a 360 degree view when I look at loyalty from multiple different angles and it has stolen my heart. I have to be honest about that.
Ian Jindal (02:48.802)
Good, well loyalty and love all in one go. Thank you very much for that intro. Richard, tell us about the love you feel for Microsoft as Director of Digital Strategy. What does that mean at this global giant?
Mrinalini Chowdhary (02:52.69)
yes.
Richard Potter (03:04.085)
So I'm not quite sure I can hit the romantic peaks that Marlene has as well, but that's beautiful. I've been in Microsoft for a similar period of time, fact. Eight and a half years working in one of the world's largest big tech companies. But my background is I'm an engineer by background. And then I...
My career has gone through shades of management consulting and into technical, technology, systems integration activity. So I'm a hybrid. I'm a business person, but also very resolutely a technology person as well. And my job, my passion really is to try and relate.
these incredible shifts in technology to value in the boardroom, to shareholder value, making sense of all of the hyperbole and the realism and trying to give boardrooms confidence about what that really is going to mean in terms of the value that they're trying to create in business. am a retail and consumer goods expert, so I'm not a deep expert in
personalisation or gamification but I live in the world of very much marketing and the representation of brands into engagement with consumer experiences.
Ian Jindal (04:35.502)
Brilliant. Now, before we pick up on that, just help us a little with the digital in your role. Because to me, Microsoft is a wholly digital company. Because everything you do is sort of bits and bytes. within this enormous thing that touches all of our lives, what are the edges or the borders around what's the digital patch versus the everything we do patch?
Richard Potter (05:04.959)
Well, so...
My title is probably more relevant to the customers that I'm working with. I mean, everybody inside Microsoft is a digital person, as you can imagine. But the challenge that I face on a day-by-day basis is enabling organizations to understand what digital means in their organizations. And I expect we're probably going to start throwing around words like agents and
in this conversation. And that's a really good illustration of how digital intersects with human resource. And it's sort of understanding those relationships between the ones and the zeros that are moving around our...
and the sort of, you know, the human dynamics and the moving around our organisations, they're inevitably the most interesting thing. And we're obviously then going to extrapolate that in terms of what that means for the human side of our consumers and how we're creating digital experiences that can mobilise some of those emotional aspects and then very rationally try and interpret them. It's a beautiful intersection and a great topic for us to unpack today.
Ian Jindal (05:58.095)
Moon.
Ian Jindal (06:19.502)
Hmm.
Ian Jindal (06:24.312)
Well it is good. You've also managed to get a Gentic in within the first five minutes so I think there must be a prize. I wish there was a sound effect for that. But before we come back to a Gentic, which of course we will do, I want to just have a little focus on...
the loyalty word because it's got a bad rep in some respects, which is when people say, you bought this product today, I will therefore spam you with offers until your eyes bleed and call it a loyalty program. So, you know, by no means is everyone like that. But I think the word has sort of become, if you like, tarnished by...
repeat promotional marketing. let's maybe set the high ground to begin with. Rinalini, do want to tell us how you would define and describe loyalty in a modern, you know, valuable context and then we'll inch our way towards how we transform our activities.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (07:28.592)
Sure. Well, loyalty has been shifting and it's shifting a lot. I would say that 20 years ago, maybe, it was all very, very transactional. And sometimes brands continue to do that because you sign up and you start getting those promotional offers. Now, it's way more than that.
So we've moved from a very transactional, now we are getting into a more emotional part of it. We've started looking at ways of changing behavior and these small little actions, you know, whether it's, I'm going to sign up, I get something, I purchase something, I get something, I write something as a review and I get another thing. So these are the little actions. Now, what is happening is that I
feel that loyalty has been very passive in the sense that you go into a loyalty page and you see, these are the different actions to be done. This is what my tier looks like, et cetera, et cetera. What we are seeing today is that you need to be more dynamic and adaptive. And when I say this, mean engagement that is linked one action to the next action. It's very sequential. And when you do this,
you have engagement loops. When you have engagement loops, you create habits. And it is that that can tap into those moments in between the purchases because loyalty doesn't happen only at the checkout. And it's not meant for only purchasing. It's meant for keeping somebody thinking about that brand.
Ian Jindal (09:20.91)
So let's maybe pause and think about that. My daughter sent me a link the other day to something she was hoping that Father Christmas might bring her down the chimney. And she shared it with me and said, Dad, just add it to your basket and then leave it. And you'll get an email saying, you want to buy it? Ignore that. The next day they'll offer you 20 % off. And so...
You know, I had a savvy child who obviously knew I had a direct line to Father Christmas, was helping me sort of game the system because the algorithmic process steps are so clear. So there we've got an example of a learnt Pavlovian behaviour that is, you know, it's logical, but it's kind of a bit impersonal. So you've also mentioned, just as you gave your outline, the idea of tea.
as you move up from dust to coal to fluff to whatever the layers are. So these are well known but also
I would say not massively valued by the customer. So within these ideas of a new form of loyalty, how would you describe these programs? What are the habits that are being formed, if not these Pavlovian rewards?
Mrinalini Chowdhary (10:52.132)
Well, it goes beyond that, I feel. It's to do with things like tapping into certain psychological drivers. Now, you as a person would have a different motivator versus me. And psychological drivers are the ones that we need to look out for. It's not just adding something to the cart. Because that is a part of it.
guaranteed because it's tracking your behavior and it's created these sequential systems in place, which is also learning and based on that you are getting certain benefits or incentives to do that particular action. But the psychological drivers that are brought into the picture are what really matter because you are kind of looking for things like what makes you feel like you have
Ian Jindal (11:42.733)
Mm-hmm.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (11:49.933)
achieved something. What makes you feel like you're empowered? What makes you feel like there's a certain amount of loss aversion? So it can be added to all of these different actions, but for you, me, Richard, all of it would be different.
Ian Jindal (12:06.838)
So let's maybe have a look at some of those sort of behavioural psychological drivers and how they fit in. And I'm also minded of a conversation we had recently with Florian Clements of Tesco Media and he was talking about how they've introduced some
co-brand joint activity with brands to get to offer customers a chance to buy things they haven't bought for a year or more. So in the old days, you just said here's a budget, go and promote with money off to get them to buy something again. Whereas this time they're saying, no, here are 50 products you haven't bought for a while. Pick any 10 of these to be on your game card.
and you now have a number of weeks to have just organically bought them and if so you'll get a prize which of course is then funded by the brands so their point is that the customer isn't being if you like bribed or tempted
They things they actually want to buy, but it's all part of a game. within that, that's one little bit. But what are the psychological drivers that you would highlight? Remember our listener now has her pen out, is ready to make notes. What are the drivers that she should be telling her agentic AI to go and plan?
Mrinalini Chowdhary (13:37.775)
right. Love this topic. I never thought I'd use my undergraduate degree in psychology, but here it is. So the key drivers are one, purpose. What is the purpose of this person to be a part of the program? I.e. what is the ultimate aim? So it can be brought in through both.
loyalty and gamification. It can be brought in through your missions, tiers, progress bars. Remember gamification is not only a mechanic, it's also visual. So the progress bar really helps. Then you have things like delight. Now delight is something which is like a surprise, instant feedback, instant gratification, things like that. And it can be again visual where you have, let's say, something popping up in your screen.
It just suddenly makes you feel a little better. Then you have empowerment. Empowerment is where you give the person a choice. There are brands that do this in the sense they'll say, okay, you're up for a birthday gift. We'll give you a choice on what birthday gift you want out of these. You also have, what do you call it? Loss aversion. And this would be,
things around, let's say you have a streak and this streak needs to be finished. You have to do three actions and the streak needs to be finished in a week's time. Or you have expiring points, expiring challenges, things like that. You also have scarcity, which is around certain exclusive benefits, which only some people will get. So the VIP tiers will get it. That makes a person feel like, my God, I want that.
you have the whole social aspect where you feel more connected to people. And that's where you bring in group challenges, group quests, or you bring in a leaderboard to feel that competition part of it. these, yeah, these are the...
Ian Jindal (15:47.367)
So, I mean that's a great list of your behavioral triggers but...
These all take quite a lot of work and planning. So I'm going to come back to you in a second and just see how you know it's worth the effort to care enough to do all of those things well. But Richard, in the meantime, I'm interested in your view from a systems data capability perspective. a lot of the...
retailers, brands are sitting on enormous quantities of first party data. They have even bigger quantities of product data and they have great marketing software. But this is a new level of planning, activity, reporting and analysis. How
in conversation with your clients, how are people approaching this so that the good idea isn't the straw that breaks the marketing camel's back?
Richard Potter (16:51.627)
Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. And I was struck with Merlini's previous points that at the end of the day, loyalty is a very irrational thing. It's a beautiful human thing, isn't it? But when it intersects with technology, it inevitably has to become a rational problem because technology works very rationally in trying to solve it. And so technologists would probably view loyalty as the basis of a contract.
and a contract that transacts demonstrable transparent value in return for goods value, etc. it would probably be looking and algorithms will be doing this, be trying to optimize the sort of those contract dynamics that are going on either side of the exchange. But those contracts are because they are founded in emotional
mechanics, they're very fragile and trust can be won and lost quite readily in this. So much of the kind of the technology environment that we're trying to create, whether it is the representation and the use of data underneath it, or it is the use of sophisticated models in AI, is
is being used incredibly carefully and judiciously to make sure that those trust elements are not fragmented. I suppose the big step change that has happened as we've become more used to using big heavyweight bits of machine learning in foundational models and such like is that the horsepower to be able to both...
data to work and make sense of data and then actually draw reasoning and inferences on that data that you're presenting into that has exponentially increased over the last few years. you know, marketeers are now absolutely able to introduce new mechanics, introduce new
Richard Potter (19:13.867)
new solutions and really importantly test, fail and develop a lot more quickly than they otherwise could have done before. Experimentation is accelerating because of a lot of this technology.
Ian Jindal (19:16.654)
Mm.
Richard Potter (19:34.933)
experimentation is both faster but also cheaper than before so people can can test these things more more conveniently.
Ian Jindal (19:40.91)
Mmm.
Ian Jindal (19:48.111)
So let's maybe, let's take the other side of the transaction here because I think what you said is absolutely right. But it's a path we were already on with enterprise software using algorithms, behind the scenes machine learning, everything's getting faster, more iterative, more flexible. But.
As you said in minute five, we have a Gentic AI and importantly, we now have this in the hands of the customer. they are firstly able to...
Mrinalini Chowdhary (20:19.888)
you
Ian Jindal (20:26.222)
if you like, compete with the retailers. The days when the retailers had all the horsepower and the customer just had a browser, it's now, well, actually, I'll raise the game and my AI will talk to your AI. So in an agentic world where my agent is tasked with cutting through the emotional loyalty, the lovely new gamification, say, just come on, best deal now.
How does the power in the hands of the customer change the calculus for how the retailer or brand invests? Richard, you mentioned the board conversation. It's as if the arms race has all of a sudden tipped to the retailer. How does that change the calculus?
Richard Potter (21:21.515)
These are the big debates that are going on at the moment. If you think about the reality of that shift, the contact period, if you like, that we had as consumers during a purchasing decision was quite extended. It sort of took place over lots of very visible and measurable assets along the way as consumers navigated websites, as they
Navigated, you know search engines with indexing and things like that and and then they were ultimately putting stuff in their basket and leaving it in there and you know hoping and all of these kind of things We're used to infusing those environments with lots of telemetry Having lots of armies of people that would make sense of what what this telemetry was telling us
optimizing, evaluating tests and A-B testing and things like that. And essentially what's happening as we're shifting into more agentic commerce, that is being compressed and hidden from all of these...
resources and bits of capital that are locked up in these organizations. The boardrooms are now wondering how am I going to redeploy and shift into that world. But in the same way that...
As with most of these issues with technology, the AI is creating challenges. AI is also hugely part of the solution with this because AI is ultimately a rational engine. is data science that is calculating and statistically monitoring and things like that. So there can be rational responses to
Richard Potter (23:23.207)
that environment that enlightened boards can develop and can anticipate and reorient their valuable resources to optimize in future.
Ian Jindal (23:28.078)
Hmm.
Ian Jindal (23:37.921)
Okay, now I don't want to do a false, if you like, dichotomy between Richard being Mr. Rational and Brinnellini being, you know, somehow on the softer side. So that's a false narrative. I'm not doing that, but I'm just about things we discussed.
Richard Potter (23:45.973)
You
Ian Jindal (23:57.875)
earlier and this idea then of how the organization moves if you like beyond the rational to create these loyalty programs that still capture the heart and the imagination whether it's the consumer or her AI. I just wonder, Maralini, if you can look maybe into the mind of the CMO or the performance marketer and talk a little bit about the organizational unlearning and
relearning needed as we go from campaign and promotional calendars to thinking about dare I say game life cycles or a better phrase for that. What's needed as we go from this campaign driven treadmill to a game and gamified approach.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (24:49.393)
Okay.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (24:53.979)
Well, what I think is the gamified loyalty approach is where you are linking multiple campaigns and I'm being very simplistic here. You're linking multiple different campaigns together in a string. It's not isolated campaigns. So what we are trying to do is to create this cumulative gain over a period of time.
Ian Jindal (25:06.712)
Mm-hmm.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (25:23.579)
for even more benefits and this cumulative gain is almost like a way of doubling your results all the time. Now, the reason why this is the scenario is because we can think of this as gamified loyalty as tapping into little micro moments. And everything becomes achievable when you think of it as a little micro moment. And when you have these little micro moments,
Ian Jindal (25:44.877)
Hmm.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (25:53.039)
then you can collect all the data. Now, this is something that every CMO is looking for because data is powerful. And you have all that permission-based data, which will then help you personalize even more over a period of time. And what it does is it creates this powerhouse of data. And with that powerhouse of data, you're able to fuel
all your other marketing channels. So the foundation is the permission based data through gamified loyalty that leads to benefits way beyond. it's not, the ROI is not just the incremental revenue from the loyalty program. It is revenue that we can't even put a finger on because there are so many different areas that it can help in. So yeah.
Ian Jindal (26:23.187)
Mmm
Ian Jindal (26:37.71)
Mm.
Ian Jindal (26:47.35)
Okay, so, Richard, carry on.
Richard Potter (26:49.107)
And Ian, sorry, if I could just build on that a little bit. I think this is fundamentally the importance behind the work that we're doing with Epsilon and PlayFab as well. is that, you know, from a Microsoft perspective, we absolutely recognize that point that loyalty is the permission system for us to be able to use AI to put data to work.
And this is why I think it's so important now for organizations to invest in thinking about these richer, more enhanced forms of loyalty, because the data that they are very quickly going to be wanting to harness with these new powerful AI systems needs to be founded on a robust permission system.
Ian Jindal (27:42.135)
Hmm.
Richard Potter (27:42.322)
and loyalty gives us that. It is through this contract, through this virtuous contract that transacts value explicitly between the brand, the retailer and the consumer. That is the key foundation for us being able to do everything that we want to do from a consumer point of view with that data.
Ian Jindal (28:05.196)
Yeah, I love that point because I think...
What I want to in particular is the fact that it's this ongoing relationship, not a purchase somewhere in your past. And just because I bought a washing machine from you in 1997 doesn't mean I want to get a weekly email from you for the rest of my life saying, buy another washing machine. So it's as if that permission decays unless I keep renewing it by these loyal, valuable interactions.
Such a good point. But let's look then again at the human side because
You know, we've we've had a rational, AI accelerated view of this world of dealing with ever more data ever more quickly and flexibly. We've had Muralini mention, you know, the experiences in banking, but also, you know, a degree in psychology. So if we put this together, the analytical, the heart, the brain, the data, let's imagine someone gave us a budget to go and
a loyalty marketing director tomorrow. Just give me a thumbnail sketch of the skills and shape that this new person would be. Obviously handsome current podcasters are excluded from this. It's not us but just tell me Richard, do you want to start off because you started off on the rational side. Don't feel limited. Top three attributes of the most
Ian Jindal (29:44.214)
and loyalty marketer please.
Richard Potter (29:46.238)
Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing that I would build everything on is a growth mindset at the moment. Don't come at this with a fixed mindset. This is a fast moving world. if you are thinking at this at the moment, you are at the frontier. are redefining this bit of work for humanity. It sounds a bit overblank, but that's...
Ian Jindal (30:13.078)
I like that. That sounds very noble.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (30:15.864)
You
Richard Potter (30:16.011)
But effectively that, you know, and you can take that as utterly terrifying or a privilege that you are at work at this point in time redefining this and would naturally run to the latter. The other things I think that are really important here are...
Ian Jindal (30:26.958)
Mmm.
Richard Potter (30:34.795)
Remember that it is all about your consumer. Don't forget that. So if there's the open-mindedness about opening up your mind to everything else, there are still fixed bits in that, that it is just about consumer intimacy and you know your consumer really, really well and none of that is irrelevant in this new world. And then the third bit that I would say naturally of course is it's all about the data.
Don't be as exercised about which foundational model you're deploying at any point in time or anything because they're all rapidly developing and being commoditized. The data and your ability to be able to connect your data to all of this horsepower is in the long run going to be the secret to your competitive advantage.
Ian Jindal (31:21.902)
Well, that's an industry defining, world saving hero. Miralini, no pressure. What are you going to add to this thumbnail sketch that none of us are going to live up to?
Mrinalini Chowdhary (31:27.76)
How do you?
Mrinalini Chowdhary (31:36.197)
Well, I agree with everything Richard has said, everything. I think the first thing I have learned being in loyalty for this long is empathy. Empathy while working with a client, empathy and understanding what the client wants plus what the customer wants. So many times the question comes, what am I going to get? The client will ask. But the question is,
what is the customer going to get? So that is, somebody with empathy is very key to this. Somebody who has a very good knowledge on the financial aspects. mean, I've just realized that the loyalty director or a manager is somebody who's literally managing a little division within a company of its own. Because you've got to know...
Ian Jindal (32:07.074)
Yes.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (32:31.854)
You've got to know marketing, you've got to know finance, you've got to know a bit of UX, and you've got to have that growth mindset. Without that, you can't tap into everything.
Ian Jindal (32:41.57)
Great. Well, look, can see our listener.
quickly redoing her LinkedIn profile to make sure that those keywords are in there. But just to finish off then, if I could give you just one thing, one word or phrase of advice you could give someone who is kicking off or jump starting their loyalty program in 2026 from all the things we've covered here, data, empathy, growth mindset,
at Gentic AI, they've heard all that one phrase you'd say to them to make sure they do right at the top of their to-do list. What would that be? Richard, your thoughts first please.
Richard Potter (33:28.043)
Gosh, I'm going to be predictably rational and I'll just go measure, you know, measure everything and learn and iterate on that. But it starts with the measuring, know, infused telemetry in everything because you are inventing all of the time.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (33:29.264)
You
Ian Jindal (33:47.266)
Yeah.
Ian Jindal (33:52.015)
I think infused telemetry could be the subject of our next podcast. It's such a good phrase. Miralini, what would your point of advice or counsel be for the 2026 Loyalty Restarter?
Richard Potter (33:57.812)
Okay.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (34:10.18)
What is your outcome? What is the final outcome that you want? Everything boils down to that. You have to pinpoint that objective, that KPI that you want to hit. You can't be like, I want to increase this KPI, that KPI, all of the KPI. No, you've got to point it down to one. And every single action, every single change, every iteration has to be pinpointed for that.
Ian Jindal (34:29.358)
Okay.
Ian Jindal (34:37.922)
Good. a remarkably clear and practical set of tips there after we've covered an awful lot of ground, some of it familiar, but also some of it changing in the face of different customer viewpoint, the acceleration of AI, but also, as Miralini said, is looking at it from the customer perspective to deliver business objectives. So on that note,
It's a massive thank you to Richard and Miralini for joining us in the studio, sharing their ideas and of course giving us so many zinging phrases to launch many more podcasts. Thank you both for taking the time in the studio today.
Mrinalini Chowdhary (35:26.001)
Thank