Maritz Canada and Maritz Loyalty Marketing Unite to Form Bond Brand Loyalty, an All-New Brand Loyalty Agency Positioned to Lead Marketing Evolution

New Agency Model a Response to Shift in Consumer Behaviour; Annual 2014 Loyalty Report Findings Support Strategy

TORONTO, June 3, 2014 /CNW/ - Maritz Canada and Maritz Loyalty Marketing today announced they have joined forces, creating a new agency under the name Bond Brand Loyalty. Bond's business model builds on the expertise and assets of the two founding agencies to combine traditional loyalty marketing services with a best-in-class customer experience, comprehensive brand engagement and a proprietary digital backbone. The focus of the new agency is to help clients achieve more sustainable and profitable brand performances by creating richer and more meaningful customer-brand relationships.

The combined 400-person brand loyalty agency works with beloved, top-tier brands that include Ford, SCENE, Johnson & Johnson, and leading financial institutions. The move signifies a shift in the industry to put consumer loyalty at the centre of all marketing decisions — leading the evolution of a 'do-this, get-that' model toward a fully strategic and comprehensive approach to loyalty marketing.

"Bond Brand Loyalty truly reflects our philosophy and purpose to make the world a more loyal place," said Bond Brand Loyalty President Bob Macdonald. "We pull together many forms of marketing, helping brands increase and maintain the brand loyalty of their best customers and the people most valuable to them."

With the introduction of Bond Brand Loyalty, Macdonald says the company is a new category of agency with a single focus. "We see that a dollar spent on brand loyalty goes further than a dollar spent on acquisition‎," said Macdonald. "Every marketing service we offer keeps that notion paramount — guiding marketers to better ROI. That's why, to us, all marketing is loyalty."

The agency's position is further validated by a range of authoritative industry sources that include Bain & Company, which states it is six to seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. New findings from Bond's 2014 Loyalty Report further support this position, with 65% of respondents saying loyalty programs are an integral part of their brand relationships and two-thirds of consumers modifying when and where they shop in order to optimize their participation in a loyalty program.

Bond Brand Loyalty takes a holistic approach to building brand loyalty; optimally designed and delivered via programs that consider every aspect of a consumer's interaction with a brand, including both digital and person-to-person experiences.

"Every interaction — every message and experience — must address the consumer's need for both a rational and an emotional connection to the brand," said Sean Claessen, Bond Brand Loyalty's Vice President of Creative and Strategy. "All marketing ultimately rolls up to loyalty. Every exchange between a brand and a consumer either serves to build that loyalty or to erode it."

2014 Loyalty Report Includes Surprising Findings in Consumer Interaction, Mobile and Millennials

In conjunction with its name change announcement, Bond Brand Loyalty today also announced the findings of its highly anticipated annual Loyalty Report. The 2014 Report engaged more than 12,000 people to uncover insights on brands and loyalty initiatives. The study included industry verticals such as retail, CPG, banking, travel and hospitality. The primary findings of the 2014 Report underscore Bond Brand Loyalty's assertion of the shift in the marketplace with regards to brand-aligned programs, and the increasing importance and relevance of non-monetary rewards.

"For customers who deem the loyalty program is part of their relationship with the brand, non-monetary benefits become almost twice as important to them the longer they're with the program," said Scott Robinson, Senior Director, Loyalty Design and Solutions. "With less dependency on monetary means of reward, it becomes even less expensive to hold on to a customer — and can be done in a differentiated way that's harder for competitors to mimic," said Robinson.

Robinson says this year's Loyalty Report highlights how consumer motivations are changing and that Bond Brand Loyalty is leading the way toward addressing their needs and defining the next generation of brand loyalty programming.

"Consumers are now making a shift to view loyalty as a relationship with a brand and not just a way to get a return," said Robinson

Additional key standouts from this year's Loyalty Report are below. The full results can be found at www.bondbrandloyalty.com.

• Top-Rated Consumer Programs in terms of Satisfaction: Metro & Moi, Costco Executive Card and Sephora Beauty Insider are the three highest-rated retail programs, at 82%, 80% and 77% respectively
• Aligned with the Brand: Just over 50% of programs are aligned with the brand. Even more interesting is that brand alignment is most absent in retail, telecom and entertainment categories
• Loyalty Activity: Survey respondents are enrolled in 9.8 loyalty programs, yet are active in only 7.9; 74% of respondents said, "programs are worth the effort of participating"; 65% claim that programs are a part of their relationship with the company, and nearly half of customers say they wouldn't be loyal to a brand if it weren't for its loyalty program
• Consumer Interaction: 88% of respondents want to receive communications from the program in which they are enrolled, yet only 40% of them deem these communications relevant
• Mobile Marketing: Want to engage with brands through a smartphone or tablet, yet still today many brands are behind with mobile versions of their programs
• Millennials: The percent of respondents who indicate they would not be loyal to the brand if it didn't have a good loyalty program is highest among millennials (50%)
• More Love: The percent of consumers who state they require a loyalty program to remain loyal to the brand is nearly twice as high among co-brand credit card holders than retail programs

ABOUT BOND BRAND LOYALTY
Bond Brand Loyalty, formerly Maritz Loyalty Marketing, has been practicing brand loyalty for over 100 years for the world's most beloved brands. We believe that the world can be a more loyal place – a world more rewarding for customers, richer and more resilient for brands, and extremely profitable for the underlying businesses those brands represent. Named by Forrester as a leader in loyalty and number one in strategy, we build measurable, authentic and long-lasting relationships between our clients' brands and their customers through a complete combination of services, including loyalty design, customer experience solutions, market research, insights and analytics, live events, experiential marketing, and powerful loyalty technology platforms centred around a signature human science approach to brand loyalty. Bond Brand Loyalty is a Maritz Company. For more information, please visit www.bondbrandloyalty.com.

SOURCE: Bond Brand Loyalty

Justin Häne, FleishmanHillard, 416.645.8184, [email protected]; Richard Lane, Bond Brand Loyalty, 905.696.5319, [email protected]