My dear friend & fellow strategist, Jane Woodley will share her wealth of knowledge.
The wonderful Nick from Digicon will explain what an agency needs to know and understand; you need to know how to brief your agency.
Then we are pleased that Natalie, Nadine and Rae will share their tips having recently undertaken this process.

Tickets are on sale now and selling fast. Don’t miss out.

Youi have been in market for just over 12 months and have made serious in roads into the highly competitive car insurance and home & contents insurance markets.

The company has been awarded at the MFA Awards for best strategic launch campaign, won the customer voted AMBER Awards for best online insurer and last week took out the coveted Anthill Cool Company Awards – Big Kahuna Award.

Listen to the podcast interview with Hugo Schreuder, CEO of Youi.

John Neese loves soda pop, or as we call it soft drink.
So much so that he has a shop in California dedicated to the micro-producers of soda pop. No Coke or Pepsi here.
In fact he said no to Pepsi.
Madness? No, passion & a vision.

And at 12.05mins you’ll see a row of Bundaberg Sasparilla 4-packs on the shelf. Nice.

Firstly on Wednesday was November Interactive Minds which had a great turn out. Many thanks again to our speakers Matt from Wotif, Rob from George Patterson Y&R and Yvette from TheCreativeCollective. December is our last event for the year and we’ve got some great people for the end of year panel discussion. Come join us for our final internet seminar of the year & for drinks, nibbles & thought provoking discussion about all things online.

Thursday was different. Firstly I took the train to Brisbane. Anyone else travelling trying to do it this week, every day has my utmost sympathy. It was badly organised chaos and downright frustrating.

Waiting at the platform I overheard many conversations, mostly around how tired people were and how they were waiting for the weekend. Laments of catching 6am trains were common plus the ever hopeful wish that on this 1hour journey they may actually get a seat. These sentiments were followed by ‘well if only I could win lotto….’

The reason for my journey to Brisbane was that I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend a TEC seminar with Gary Bertwistle. TEC (The Executive Connection) works with Executives of businesses with between $2mil & $10mil turnover to provide guidance, support and mentoring. Gary Bertwistle presented on ‘Marketing Warfare’; a fabulous presentation about the fundamentals of marketing and how to use it for your business.

At my table were various CEOs from amazing companies including GOA Billboards, Riddel Architecture, Alchemy Cordials and others. Some are family companies, some will become family companies.

There a two stark contrasts here in behaviour.
1. People doing the same thing every day and viewing a Lotto win as their way ‘out’
2. People who saw an opportunity, found a passion and built a business that worked

So I changed my view of the world.
Rather than seeing another day away from the office and hours of lost time sitting on stranded trains as unproductive, I now see it as a wonderful day meeting with great business people (TEC), a great reminder of the fundamentals of marketing (Gary Bertwistle) and 3 hours of reading time that I normally do not get. I am now getting into the meaty bit of “The Breakthrough Company“. Most at my TEC table would love this book too.

Speakers include:
- Matthew Varley, Executive General Manager of Wotif
- Yvette Adams, Founder of The Creative Collective
- Rob Hudson, Head of Digital, George Patterson Y&R

Full details and tickets on sale at Interactive Minds now.

Our December end of year wrap-up event is also being finalised.

Some great insights to be had from Resonate Solutions who operate online communities and social media strategies for the likes of The Buzz Insurance, Woolworths and Hungry Jacks.

Hitwise is also joining us to share their insights into customers – who they are, what they’re doing and how to understand them.

dp dialogue will also present their tools and insights into social media – how to monitor what’s happening online and how to sell social media to your management team.

Great event, don’t miss out. September sold out!

We’ve brought Google Australia town to showcase SEM tactics. MediaContacts will share the role social mediaplays in SEO.

From the client viewpoint, Eagle Boys Pizza will share their SEO experience and AOT Holidays will share their SEM experiences.

So it is into this market that Woolworths launched its rewards program, Everyday Rewards. It began simply as a convenient option to having the Woolworths fuel vouchers added to a card rather than the end of the shopping docket. Prime competitor Coles Myer has been operating its FlyBuys rewards program for decades, yet Woolworths had not ventured down the same path.

Determined to stand out from the crowd of rewards programs, Woolworths began to engage with the online community that was developed from the introduction of the Everyday Rewards cards. Working with Sydney based, Resonate Solutions, Woolworths has tapped into the mind set of more than 50,000 customers to steer the rewards program in directions that few other programs offer.

Emily Amos, Head of Everyday Rewards told Online Banking Review, “We wanted to understand our customers better than traditional market research allowed. If we were do go down the loyalty path we knew that we had to use any information we gathered to making shopping better.”

The Everyday Rewards community started as a system to login and view the valid fuel vouchers attributed to the card. Online polls, blogs and forums followed to provide an increasing degree of engagement with community members.

The online community has allowed Woolworths to not only engage directly with their customer base but to gain deep insights into what they want and need. “From the feedback and ideas we have gathered in the first 6 months of the community we discovered seven needs,” explains Amos.

The seven customer driven ideas were:

1. The card should be available to use everywhere
2. The card should use a points system; not just voucher based
3. Customer should be rewarded for their spend; the more spent, the bigger the reward
4. Staff at Woolworths stores should prompt customers to use their Everyday Rewards cards
5. Discounts and special offers should be available to card holders
6. Offers  and rewards should surprise and delight customers
7. Vouchers should not expire

Six of these ideas have or will be implemented as a part of the Woolworths Everyday Rewards system. The seventh point is not financially viable for the organisation and this has been communicated directly to the community.

The recent integration with the Qantas Frequent Flyer program is one example. The recent move to increase the fuel discount based on the amount spent is a direct result of the community ideas. Plus the card will now soon be used across all Woolworths owned businesses such as Big W.

“The immediacy of feedback has been fantastic,” says Amos. “One example was the idea to provide shopping dockets via email rather than at the checkout. We ran a survey and learnt very quickly that customers love their dockets and this was not something customers wanted. The real time feedback gathered allows decision making to occur rapidly yet with meaningful data to support the decisions.”

Running such a large community has come with need to keep it moving. To quote Woody Allen, “relationships are like a sharks, they must keep moving forward else it dies.” The same must be said for the relationships that organisations have with the online communities.

For a community of such a large size, it has proven largely self regulating. Members are keen to help each other out and correct inconsistencies or find solutions. The organisation accepts that some customers will say bad things, but accepts that this happens anyway and that online provides the opportunity to understand first hand and respond.

The investment, insight and energy required to engage the community has paid off. Since the integration with Qantas the community has opened beyond Woolworth customers. As a result, in four weeks the community grew from 50,000 members to over 90,000 members. Plus customers can also follow and engage with the program on Twitter @everydayrewards.

A customer rewards program developed with customers; who would have thought!

If you’ve got a topic you’d like IM to cover, send me an email!