With more signals than ever, and the AI tools to make sense of the data, retail brands can find new ways to engage customers and increase profit. But they need firm strategies and vision to avoid getting lost in the numbers, and many are finding in-store impact with digital efforts.

At Advertising Week New York (AWNY), marketing heads at top brands, including McDonald’s, Gap Inc., bp and Visa, discussed their approaches to driving business value for customers.

Holistic value and culture at McDonald’s

“We talk about [value] through the lens of what we call ‘holistic value,’” said Allegra Krishnan, chief loyalty and engagement officer at McDonald’s, on the AWNY stage. “There are so many components for how value takes shape for each of us. It’s value from restaurant experience, to food experience, to the actual transactional value that shows up, to how we think about our loyalty program.”

For the global brand, building retention through loyalty is a big part of how they deliver value to their customers. Krishnan said McDonald's loyalty program app has 185 million monthly active users, and the plan is to get that up to 250 million users by 2027.

“We think of [the loyalty program] as the collection of how they all come together, to make the power of our consumer platform and the power of our collective ecosystem even stronger,” she said. “The actual audience is one very important piece of it, but it’s also about how we continue to elevate and engage customers through our brand, and our footprint, as well.”

Continuing McDonald’s long tradition of culturally relevant activations, the brand partnered earlier this year with Minecraft, in time for the release of “A Minecraft Movie.” In this campaign, customers could enjoy a Minecraft-themed Happy Meal, while the brand also built out a presence in the Minecraft game itself.

“We think about it through the lens of how we stand in culture, versus standing next to culture,” Krishnan said. “I think what we did with the global Minecraft campaign was is a great example of that, because you take this really hyper-engaged fan base around Minecraft and gaming, and you take the engaged fan base of McDonald’s, and you bring that together, and you have this incredible power of bringing the two communities together.”

Digital experience drives value

App experiences can also help with community-building efforts if they support valuable experiences for users. This month, bp introduced a new loyalty program, “earnify,” with a corresponding app and rewards system for gas and convenience store purchases.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into our digital experience, and really that’s how I measure value today,” said Alyssa Callahan, head of marketing, CMO of bp North America, at AWNY. “It includes an always-on fuel discount in earn-and-burn rewards. But it’s the UX features we put into the app that I think add the most value to an experience like fueling up your car or buying a snack from the convenience store.”

Callahan said the brand made extensive efforts to improve and maintain the app's value for consumers, including folding newly acquired convenience stores into the app, so customers have a seamless rewards experience. Turning on the gas pump through the app, and other special app features, also add value on top of the dollar value customers save through rewards, she said.

“It’s not just cost savings, it’s easy to use,” Callahan said.

Emotional connection

To really soar as a brand, experts agree the engagement can’t just be transactional, it has to be emotional.

“If you think about where you like to shop and where you transact, why do you like to do that? You’re either value-driven and cost-conscious… or the experience is amazing," said Andrew Snyder, vice president of Visa consulting and analytics, at AWNY. “If you think about the brands that you love, it’s different, right? How are you [as a marketer] driving that emotional, personal connection, that drives loyalty and repeat purchases?”

To break through, marketers can’t get lost in the data. They have to break through on an emotional level.

“The data will only take you so far,” said Kevin Meiners, head of loyalty and payments at Gap Inc. “Brands need to matter, they need to break through…There’s something about leading a cultural conversation and striving to do that, using all the data at your disposal to make sure you’re as right, as often as you can be."

Meiners credited Gap’s highly successful fall campaign, featuring the music group KATSEYE, with this out-of-the-box thinking.

“No data in the world would have told Gap that KATSEYE was going to be a massive hit,” he said.

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