Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

I’ve never seen a single person with a tattoo for Marriott Bonvoy, the hotel brand’s “loyalty” program. Or, for that matter, for Hilton Honors (its loyalty program) or Wyndham Rewards (its loyalty program). Hell, I don’t have a tattoo for United Airlines MileagePlus, and I fly roughly 80,000 miles with the company every year. But I’ve see a ton of folks with tattoos for Harley Davidson. And Fender guitars. And Disney. And Lego. And Nike. Wouldn’t you think that more “loyal” customers would have tattoos for brands that depend on loyalty programs for their businesses? I know I would. The fact is that loyalty often isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And, in the age of AI, that’s a huge problem. Because if your customers aren’t willing to ask for your brand by name, you might be in real trouble. In this episode of the show, I take a look at: What customers really value Why AI makes actual loyalty more important than ever What you need to do to drive more loyalty from your customers in the age of AI And how you can set your business up for greater success long term. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Why Nobody Has a Marriott Bonvoy Tattoo… And Why That Matters in the Age of AI (Episode 482) & — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links What ‘The Brand Is the Prompt’ Really Means for Your Business (Episode 474) In the Age of AI, Brand Isn’t Everything. It’s the Only Thing (Episode 472) What Changed in AI and Marketing This Year, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next (Episode 478) Will Agentic AI Kill Your Content Marketing? (Episode 470) The Rise of Agentic AI Among Your Customers (Episode 466) Belonging to the Brand Book – Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow} What ChatGPT Ads Mean for Your Business (Episode 481) Should Your Business Have a ChatGPT App? (Episode 479) Are ChatGPT’s Apps Good for Your Business? (Episode 471) AI and Zero-Click Search: The Real Story (Episode 467) The Brand is the Prompt (Thinks Out Loud 465) Buy the Book — Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today. Past Appearances Rutgers Business School MSDM Speaker: Series: a Conversation with Tim Peter, Author of "Digital Reset" Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it. The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 16m 08s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes, the Google Play Store, via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Why Nobody Has a Marriott Bonvoy Tattoo… And Why That Matters in the Age of AI Welcome back to the show. I’m Tim Peter. I was honored to take part in a fireside chat at a hotel conference the other day, and at one point something I said got a much bigger reaction than I expected. I said that “I’ve seen a lot of Harley Davidson tattoos on people who love that brand. I’ve never seen a Marriott Bonvoy tattoo.” First, some folks in the audience laughed. So, you know, that’s nice. I’m not gonna lie. I think it’s a funny line too. Then the room got really quiet though. Like pin-drop quiet. Curious, no? Later, as I was signing books, person after person came up to me and said some version of the same thing. They said, “what you said really hit me because we spend so much time on loyalty, but we don’t really know our guests as human beings.” Now, don’t get me wrong, this story isn’t just about hotels. Every company that deals with customers is going to face some version of this same story. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Because in a world where AI assistants and agents are starting to choose hotels on behalf of guests, where AI assistants and agents mediate the conversation between you and your customers, the difference between a brand people care about and a brand that’s just another option on a screen is going to matter more than ever. Let’s dive in and look at this in detail. So there was an amazing audience at this conference, an amazing group of people & hotel marketers and revenue managers and customer experience teams and reservations folks and IT people & just a wide array of people all focused on how they took care of their customers. None of these people were, you know, “stuffy corporate types.” These are the folks who actually deal with customers with their guests when something goes wrong. They live in the trenches. Their job is to keep their customers happy every single day. So I obviously I made the crack about Marriott Bonvoy and then I talked to people afterwards. And literally, to a person, people kept wanting to talk about how they’ve got all of these profiles, they’ve got all of these accounts, but they don’t really know what matters to the guests on a given trip, during a given stay, during a given interaction. Does that sound familiar to you? Is that what it feels like when you’re talking to your customers? Because you’re not alone if that’s the case. Here’s the dirty little secret about loyalty in hospitality and in airlines and in retail and lots and lots more. Most loyalty programs are really about points. They’re really about how many rewards your customer’s gonna get. Real loyalty though, real loyalty to your brand. It’s about identity. It’s about customers who feel like you’re a part of them, who feel like you belong with them or not. That Harley Davidson versus Bonvoy line isn’t a joke. It’s a warning. People don’t get tattoos about discounts or perks or elite status. It’s just not a thing that actually makes them feel seen. What do they tattoo? Who they believe they are. In my book, Digital Reset, I share the story of how I realized that fact about brand tattoos. I used to go to this local brew pub where I lived, near where I lived & I didn’t live at the brew pub. I probably felt that way some days. But, you know, on nice Sunday afternoons we might stop by. And there was a group of Harley Davidson enthusiasts who would pull in after enjoying their weekly ride. This was something they did all the time. The group were, generally speaking, contractors and construction workers and folks like that. And as I wrote in the book, “…one dentist with the heart of a rebel yearning to break free.” But the thing is, that’s not a joke. He lived the concept of “live to ride, ride to live,” despite his otherwise, well, dentist-like demeanor. He didn’t like Harley Davidson. He lived Harley Davidson. This guy was a Harley Davidson rider, just like I’m a Fender guitar player or a Martin guitar player. Those speak to me. And many hotel brands — hell, many brands overall — don’t give their customers a story about themselves. They give a transaction. There are absolutely exceptions to this rule. Margaritaville Hotels and Resorts does this really well. 21C Museum Hotels, I think, does a great job of this. Very high end luxury hotels like the Ritz in London, the George V in Paris, or the Metropole at Monte Carlo, along with independent hotels like the Drover in Fort Worth, the Acoma House in Denver, and my friends and clients at the Wentworth Mansion, John Rutledge House Inn, King’s Courtyard, and Fulton Lane Inn all do this brilliantly. There are loads of examples outside hospitality too of brands that customers adore even though some aren’t very large companies. All of which should signal that it’s possible to do this no matter who you are or how big your company is. And that should give you hope. Because AI makes the fact that most businesses don’t do this, perilous for their long-term prospects. Okay, so why is this perilous? Why is this perilous for long-term prospects? Well, when an AI assistant or agent chooses your business, it chooses your company, it chooses your hotel if you’re a hotel, it’s not going to ask who has the best vibes. It’s going to ask which business meets criteria it can measure. Your brand runs the risk of being reduced to nothing more than a price, a location, an availability of your product or service or a room, or the points that you offer. You get turned into a commodity. Your brand becomes invisible. All that matters then is some very specific, tactical, practical, measurable summary. And that’s what scares me. Not AI, but what happens to brands that never build anything that people care about. I’ll repeat a mantra you’ve heard me say before: “Your brand is the prompt.” There’s actuall