How many store loyalty cards do you have in your wallet? How many more will you be offered this week? Do you still carry a wallet?

We’ve tried to turn customer loyalty into a data-driven science. A game of, if we do this, customers will do that. In our desire for something to measure, or a needle to move, we’ve lost sight of one crucial point. Our customers’ reactions and responses can’t always be conditioned in predictable ways. Loyalty is not transactional, it’s built on something we can’t measure—on how the customer feels.

Instead of creating our entire marketing strategy around what we want the customer to do, we could consider how we want the customer to feel. Science gives us data-driven loyalty programs and homogeneous points cards that people forget they signed up for. Art allows us to be remembered for our humanity and make meaning part of our marketing.

Image by Garry Knight