Message. Not Messenger
Mark Sage - 8 min read - 17/02/2025
[The] advertising industry’s current focus on splitting activity between ‘brand’ and ‘performance’ is unhelpful. TV is a good example. You could have an emotive brand-building message focused on priming consumers and changing their preferences for brands, or you could have a hard-hitting activation campaign driving a price promotion.
In both cases it is the message that determines whether the campaign behaves like ‘brand’ or ‘activation’, not the medium."
This was the observation from a study entitled “Profit Ability 2 — The New Business Case for Advertising” which was the first post-COVID analysis of the financial impact of advertising in the UK.
Put succinctly, this is saying that marketing is about the message, not the messenger.
Your message can be about brand building and sent via performance media, or it can be trade driving and sent via linear TV. The message matters, not the messenger.
Whilst this breaks some stereotypes as to what channels should be used for what kind of marketing, it’s interesting to note that the report itself didn’t feature direct marketing as a channel, even though this can also clearly carry different messages, and hence, drive different campaign objectives.
Direct marketing traditionally is thought of as being separate to advertising. Something aimed at known customers, with specific, action driven outcomes. Advertising on the other hand, tends to influence awareness or behavior, with a focus on reach and acquisition.
This distinction is unhelpful however, and as an industry, we’re leaving money on the table.
As the ‘Profit Ability’ report said, “it’s the message that determines whether the campaign behaves like ‘brand’ or ‘activation’, not the medium [or channel].”
Performance media can be targeted. It can include or exclude known customers. It can target buyers of the brand. It can target people considered to be in the market for the brand or product. Equally, direct marketing can build ‘brand’ — whether emails, WeChat posts or rich push, we have an opportunity — and I’d argue a responsibility — within loyalty marketing to build the brand.
This then is the missed opportunity we had on yuu Rewards and I’d argue is pretty much the missed opportunity on almost every loyalty program operating today.
Loyalty provides marketers with a direct to customer, first-party driven owned medium that can truly carry any message — whether brand or activation.
When looked at through that lens, it suddenly brings into focus the underlying value contained in those light buyers. Those members — some of whom have never shopped, some who have shopped before, and many who just shop infrequently — are where your market growth sits. They represent 50% of sales already and more importantly, represent an owned, competitor free marketing channel for brand building.
We know that not all customers are in the market right now.
If you’re a DIY retailer, maybe you need to wait for the next home improvement cycle. If you’re an airline, maybe you need to wait for the next job change. If you’re a grocer, maybe you need to wait for the next overtime shift that forces a ‘grab and go’ mission.
That wait though doesn’t stop you building mental awareness with the customer, deepening links to key category entry points and generally fostering closer ties to your brand overall.
The yuu Rewards program now has more than 65% of the Hong Kong population in the program. More app installations than Facebook and strong opted in marketing communications. When viewed as ‘message, not medium’, it’s easy to see how the loyalty program can enable a valuable performance marketing channel for the participating brands and a competitive advantage for brand building.
Another interesting insight highlighted recently is the impact of advertising creative consistency. In a research study by System1 and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) entitled “The Magic of Compound Creativity”, they highlight that “the most consistent brands (top 20%) achieve +28% more Very Large Business Effects, including sales value gain, profit gain, market share gain and more.”
This isn’t the first time though, that consistency has been called out. Back in 2017, an article entitled “Why research shows you’re better off with your existing ad campaign” looked at over 100 new campaigns that had replaced previous ones that were working well. The result?
They identified that “by the end of their first year, only 20% of new campaigns were performing as well or better than the existing campaign.”
The author, Jeri Smith, Chief Executive of advertising research consultancy Communicus, went on to say “smart advertisers and agencies don’t change too much. They might add a new and surprising twist, but maintain the assets that have resonated so well”
The concept of consistency covers many different areas including consistency of brand positioning, channel, and the reuse of creative assets. Consistency of execution across brand assets, tone of voice, brand slogan, fluency device, etc.
The basic takeaway here is that marketers seem to get bored of using the same marketing assets more than the consumer does — but changing the marketing significantly can have a detrimental effect.
Brand advertising and loyalty marketing have never been seen as likely bed fellows, with one being seen as the flashier ‘Above the Line’ world — rubbing shoulders with the stars and giving you something you can point at on the telly and say ‘I made that!’. The other being part of that slightly less shiny ‘Below the Line’ world, consisting of emails people don’t want, promoters at trade shows trying to give you a free bag, and social media marketing that gets in the way of your friends humble brag.
But, as indicated earlier, it’s the message not the medium that matters. So loyalty marketing, despite being direct marketing, can also rub shoulders with the stars and can also participate in brand building activity.
In fact, leveraging consistency of message and consistency of channel, the member focused, wholly owned, direct marketing channel can be a key contributor to long term brand consistency.
Leveraging a regular communication device is a key way to do this.
Sending loyalty marketing communications on a regular schedule so that they are expected. Communications that are as much about brand building as they are trade driving — maybe even more so given the desire to reach lighter buyers. Communications that land with the same timing and frequency so they are expected and missed.
It’s this regularity and consistency that is critical both to the design and effectiveness of these communications.
In a sense, it creates a drum beat for the programme, and the members intuitively learn to watch out for them. Assuming the content is relevant and engaging, then the regularity around timing — such as the 1st Thursday of the month — allows for a level of expectation.
There is also a potentially deeper impact here around consistency when it comes to direct marketing.
In a research study in Nature, it discussed the challenge of polarisation of opinion within social media and how people’s social feeds can lead them to a common consensus — whether Brexit, MAGA or some other hot topic — these social feeds and community chats can increase, intensify and ultimately polarise opinion.
In looking at how to reduce this polarisation, the study noted that increasing the ‘burstiness’ of the communications increased the diversity of opinions and prevented large scale consensus. By burstiness, it means periods of high activity, followed by periods of little or no activity — so in an email context, this would be short periods of lots of email comms, broken up with longer periods of pretty much nothing.
If you think about what a consumers inbox looks like across a category, they’ll be seeing bursts of activity from yourself and from different competitors, each dialling it up and down, and each targeted to specific types of consumers. The study seems to suggest that this ‘bursty’ targeting and timing across communications is likely to shape opinion dynamics and foster a more open, less polarised consensus.
However, in a marketing context an “open, less polarised consensus” is not really something we want to achieve. We kind of want polarisation of opinion as we want people to favour our products or brand more, and to feel a deeper connection with and engagement for our brand, versus a competitor.
If our aim is to develop strong brand preference at the expense of competitors, then the level of ‘burstiness’ in our communications should be reduced.
Ideally, we should look to have a decrease in the variability of timing and aim for regular, consistent, evenly spaced interactions. Consistent communications, building brand consistency through re-used assets and messaging, so that we strengthen mental awareness. When the consumer (the lighter buyer) then moves into our market, we’re much more likely to be the brand of choice.
Brand growth comes from two foundational pillars: increased reach and strengthened mental availability.
Traditionally, these have been pursued through mass-market advertising, where above-the-line channels ensure broad visibility and influence. However, as we’ve discussed, loyalty programs hold an untapped potential to achieve these same goals — but through a direct, owned, and highly targeted medium.
With loyalty, brands already have the capability to reach millions of members — particularly the light buyers who represent the majority of customers and significant untapped sales potential. The challenge is to see loyalty programs not as transactional tools but as a bridge to build emotional connections, sustain mental availability, and drive brand affinity.
This requires a shift in perspective: separating the message from the medium.
Loyalty communications can do more than inform or incentivise; they can carry brand-building messages that were once the sole domain of above-the-line advertising. By combining the targeting precision of direct marketing with the emotional resonance of brand campaigns, loyalty can become a channel for both immediate sales uplift and long-term brand equity.
When this approach is underpinned by consistent messaging, a clear cadence, and insights-driven targeting, loyalty programs can evolve into strategic growth engines. By rethinking how we use these channels, we unlock the opportunity to foster stronger connections with lighter buyers, stay relevant with non-buyers, and reinforce habits with heavy buyers.
The result? Incremental sales today and a brand that stays top-of-mind for tomorrow.
The question isn’t whether loyalty programs work — it’s whether we’re using them to their full potential. With the right strategies in place, they can go beyond being tools for retention and become platforms for brand growth, customer connection, and market leadership.
Ultimately, I feel this is what we missed on yuu Rewards.
While yuu Rewards excelled in operational and targeted communications, in retrospect it highlighted an untapped opportunity to leverage loyalty as a brand-building channel.
After I left yuu Rewards, I took this learning with me. When relaunching the global loyalty programme for LVMH owned duty free retailer DFS, we specifically included DFS brand building content, as well as brand content for our partners. We also put in place a regular cadence of communications to create a ‘drum beat’ for the programme and a means to deliver those brand messages alongside our other loyalty content.
The result? A month on month increase in incremental spend lift, which over the first year showed a double-digit change.