🌱 Digital loyalty
Objective
Examine what loyalty actually means in digital contexts — for platforms (lock-in via data and network effects) and for brands (frequency programs masquerading as relationships). Explore why most loyalty programs fail to create genuine loyalty, and where the line sits between meaningful personalisation and surveillance.
Why this topic
Unable to name a single brand with genuine loyalty to it, but actively follows artists and tracks their creative journeys. That gap raises a structural question: is loyalty to companies a category error, and what does it say about the value companies are actually delivering?
Working thesis
Digital loyalty programs are fixable but broken by design. Genuine personalisation — the kind that would create real loyalty — requires the depth of data collection that tips into surveillance. Companies stay shallow to avoid that line, which is why loyalty programs produce frequency, not loyalty. Meanwhile, genuine loyalty does exist, but it flows toward people and craft, not companies. The artist-fan relationship demonstrates what loyalty actually looks like, and brands cannot replicate it without fundamentally changing what they are.
Key tensions
Personalisation and surveillance exist on a continuum with no clear boundary — what feels like helpful recognition to one user feels like intrusive tracking to another. Also: if genuine loyalty requires knowing someone deeply, is it even possible at the scale companies operate? And does making loyalty commercially transactional destroy the thing that makes it loyalty?
Open questions
- What is the actual value of being loyal in this era?
- Do customers actually see benefits or just perceived benefits?
- How much of retention is genuine loyalty vs default inertia?
- Are there categories where people are more vs less loyal, and why?
- How does the subscription model affect loyalty dynamics?
- What do the most effective loyalty programs actually do differently?