Isidore is now 12 year old boy who once had a summer project making and selling 50 jars of his own jam. I got some of that lovely jam in 2009 and then… I kept the jar. Isidore had an awesome label on the jar – telling us the jam ‘makes me think of happiness’. I kept the jar because that made ME think of happiness. And now three year years later I keep my cilantro chutney in it and I still think of happiness. That’s the power of objects, to transform little moments in our lives.

Customers, visitors, audiences, participants are weary of a pitch. When does participation turn from a worthwhile exchange and start to feel more like a ploy? I recently felt that itchy sense of suspicion while eating breakfast and considered how participation can tip the balance towards serving one party, rather than feeling like an exchange.

This is my container of orange juice. It’s offering ‘juicy rewards’ in the form of points which people can ‘collect online for healthy savings and fun’ and ‘One carton saves you $15′. This is advertised exhaustively over the carton. It sounds like it may be a good deal. It seems as it’s as easy as lifting off the top to reach the reward. It’s not. The steps required in order to receive points are:

- purchase the juice
- look under the cap to get a code
- go online
- register at www.juicyrewards.tropicana.com
- mandatory fields include full name, age, address, email
- pick out a password
- agree to company terms and conditions
- enter the code from under the cap
- chose from a selection of discounts with specific partner product offers (in other words, you don’t get a $15 rebate, you get a discount through spending more money)
This is getting complex… with so many steps, it’s easy for users to ask, ‘what am I getting out of this?’. Without having signed up for my own Tropicana Juicy Rewards account, I can’t completely verify the rewards system, but did find a pretty detailed account here.

The gist of the consumer benefit:

Eligibility for a $15 discount, though with limitations – only with selected company partners, and only if you can find a product or service you want from the selection available.
And the company benefit:

Direct consumer profile data, and if consumers run through the setup to redeem points the consumer profile data begins to grow through connections with purchases from company affiliates who also benefit from the exchange.
In the end it’s the company who benefits the most, and this feels obvious from the structure of the transaction. When designing an experience which requires a lot of steps, users need reassurance along the way, to feel like the exchange is a fair one. In this case the experience feels like a lot of giving for what ends up as a strings-attached reward.

Blog posts are usually a good resource to dig to the bottom of a rewards scheme. In this case, that too is a bit awkward – there are plenty of positive customer reviews online, but almost every one ends with the following text: Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in the Tropicana Juicy Insiders Ambassador program by Mom Central on behalf of Tropicana. I received 12 free Juicy Rewards points and a $50 Visa gift card to use in redemption of the points and to facilitate my review. The overall story driving the Juicy Rewards experience just isn’t convincing.

Good customer – brand relationships do exist. Want to hear about a good one? Take a look at the experience Powell’s Book Store based in Portland, Oregon uses to drive consumers online, here. And have a look at Nike + Livestrong’s Chalkbot project here.
We’ll be posting about these shortly.

I recently bought a book online from Assembly New York. I didn’t come into contact with anyone personally through my transaction – it was completely automatic. However when I received my shipment, the first kind of physical contact I had with the company, I found a hand written thank you. It was my receipt – folded into the shape of a shirt and inside a little envelope, looking like a note rather than a billing notice. I don’t know who wrote it, maybe the folded shirt shape represents the unknown person who packaged up my goods, folded the receipt and sent it to me.

What’s interesting is that Assembly New York has found a way to make an impersonal transactions personal, without much more effort than standard procedures call for. The result is that I, the customer, have left the transaction feeling great about my experience.

It’s a great example of a company who has provided positive feedback – adding a reward to the customer’s participation in the transaction. And it’s an exercise any company or institution can do – by reviewing their standard processes, building on resources and procedures which already exist.

An excellent way of turning loyal customers into a visible community – This cafe does not have loyalty cards, they’ve got a loyalty wall. Located in Dalston, London Tina We Salute you is an extremely cozy cafe / gallery. They’re great for food, art, atmosphere and their loyalty wall is a reflection of their warm vibe.

How it works -

If you’re a coffee drinker you get your name on the wall and a star next to it every time you order a coffee. After 10 stars, you get a free coffee and graduate to a new round of red outlines, then blue, and it goes on… till there is the exclusive gold and the über exclusive platinum on the tiny section right near the coffee machine.

Why don’t they run out of space? Well they’re not precious. If you don’t show up for a while and just aren’t active, they’ve got a handy bucket of wall-colored paint and aren’t squeamish about painting over any slow movers for the newbies.

It’s a highly visible and endearing reward system with a hint of competition which gets people curious and wanting to join. With all of it’s patrons showcased, it’s something of a family picture.

Yes, I want to be loyal!

Lovely incentive – 10 stamps gets you a free coffee, but at 5 stamps you get a hug! Good encouragement at the half-way point. A great way to create loyalty and plenty of customer satisfaction. Everything they say, and the way it’s written make me feel personally invited to this cafe.

When people have the power to change how their environment works. Where petty theft is rampant, these hand made signs warn passers-by in El Born neighbourhood, Barcelona.

This blackberry jam is made by Isidore and Isidore is eight years old.

Isidore decided to make 50 jars of blackberry Juicy Jam and sell them at Kennard’s on Lamb’s Conduit, right by his house. On the jar’s lid is displayed the Juicy jam story, written by Isidore – how he hand picked the blackberries, cooked them… a favourite excerpt: ‘There were lots of bees on them so they are organic. They do taste organic and they are from England. It makes me think of happiness’.

We don’t know if Isidore will be as enthused next year to make a 2010 batch of his Juicy Jam, but we do wish these kinds of initiatives could be tasted more often.