How to Build Brand Loyalty in the Age of Over-Optimization | The Current Thing #4

Marketing has a playbook-ism problem. The overreliance on playbooks and best practices leads to "checklist marketing" - a wasteful modus operandi in which teams spend time and resources on fruitless activities just because "it's what they have to do.”

Like always, this addition to our "Current Thing" series is an attempt to help you break away from checklist marketing. And today, we'll take the challenge head-on.

A closer look at the problem of checklist marketing

As we hinted in the intro, checklist marketing is two mistakes bundled into one. These mistakes are:

• Playbook-ism
• An uncritical and stubborn belief in "best practices"

Playbook-ism prevents marketers from truly “seeing” their audience and producing the experiences they actually want. Additionally, an unshakeable belief in best practices can hinder creativity and sink teams into an endless iteration loop, where they obsess over making marginal improvements on a fundamentally broken strategy.

“Playbook-driven” performance marketing has created an online landscape where users do everything in their power to evade brands. Branded content is bland, ads are invasive, and engagement opportunities feel forced.

While the current climate of disruption and uncertainty may be dizzying, it also presents us with an opportunity to free ourselves from traditional playbooks and reinvent the way we interact with our audiences.

Here are some predictions on how leading brands will connect with their customers tomorrow:

Brand worlding vs. manufactured authenticity

In the last decade, quirky conversational copy became the norm. And although some brands do it wonderfully, in most cases, it ends up being a bland and forced tone that alienates users. Remember that "Silence brand" meme from our Reddit + Google AI post?

Yeah, you get the idea.

Generative AI systems have been trained on the open internet, and the open internet is full of that type of copy. So, when you ask AI to produce content, it comes out in that tone, turning "conversational, quirky, and approachable copy" into "obviously AI-written copy".

It's a great time to develop a distinctive brand tone and hold your ground. But speaking about a "brand tone" without further context is useless - a brand tone has to be a cohesive element within a larger brand world.

A brand world is not just a set of guidelines or a mood board. It’s the mental and emotional environment you enter when you think about or interact with the brand. It's the values, feelings, and narratives that the brand inspires. Your products are an important component of your brand world, and the brand world has to be coherent with the products. But shaping, maintaining, and expanding the brand world is an orchestrated, organization-wide effort.

To set yourself apart from the internet's endless sea of blandness, develop a distinctive brand world.

Learn about the potential ROI of worlding: Apply for a free discovery session.

Rewards, Freebies & Perks

A recent collaborative article by Adweek and Fetch explores an interesting new way to build customer loyalty.

Rewards programs are most often used to provide (almost symbolic) perks to already-loyal customers. But reward mechanisms can help brands connect with audiences throughout their entire lifecycle.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how:

• In the earliest phase, awareness and attraction, the primary objective is to build brand recognition and draw in new leads.
  
  • Businesses often use rewards such as sign-up discounts, free trials, or entry into prize draws to encourage initial engagement.
  • Highlighting the benefits of joining a loyalty program right from the start (such as offering bonus points or instant rewards for registration) can also be highly effective in capturing attention and motivating prospects to take their first step.
• As customers move into the engagement and consideration stage, the focus shifts to nurturing their interest and collecting valuable data.
  
  • Here, rewards can incentivize “soft” actions like completing surveys, watching demos, or interacting with branded content.
  • Gamification strategies, such as awarding points, badges, or exclusive access for engaging with challenges and milestones, help keep potential customers involved and invested in the brand, moving them closer to making a purchase.
• The conversion and purchase phase is all about driving that crucial first transaction and increasing the average order value. To achieve this, companies often provide first-purchase discounts, free shipping, or bonus points for new customers.
  
  • Limited-time offers and flash discounts can create a sense of urgency, nudging hesitant buyers to act quickly.
  • Displaying potential rewards or savings at the point of purchase also serves as a powerful motivator, tipping the balance in favor of completing the transaction.
• Once a customer has made a purchase, the strategic goal becomes retention and growth The aim here is to encourage repeat purchases, boost customer lifetime value, and reduce churn.
  
  • Tiered loyalty programs that offer escalating benefits for continued engagement are particularly effective. Celebrating customer milestones (such as anniversaries or purchase counts) with personalized gifts or bonus points helps reinforce loyalty.
  • Providing exclusive access to new products, events, or special offers can make loyal customers feel valued and keep them coming back.
• Finally, in the advocacy and referral stage, the goal is to turn satisfied customers into passionate brand advocates. Referral programs that reward both the referrer and the new customer are a proven way to drive word-of-mouth growth.
  
  • Recognizing and rewarding customers for writing reviews, sharing testimonials, or promoting the brand on social media (through bonus points, public recognition, or exclusive experiences) strengthens the emotional connection to the brand.
  • High-value or unique rewards for significant advocacy milestones, such as VIP events or premium gifts, can further incentivize loyal customers to spread the word.

Throughout all these stages, we recommend:

• Personalizing rewards to individual preferences
• Celebrating customer achievements
• Regularly refreshing the rewards program to maintain excitement
• Communicating clearly about how rewards can be earned and redeemed

Zero-party data

The term “zero-party data” refers to information that customers willingly and proactively share about their preferences, interests, and personal details, often in exchange for meaningful rewards or personalized experiences.

At this point, you’ve probably already figured out that a good rewards program can help you gather zero-party data, and that the gathered data can be leveraged to optimize the rewards program - as well as other initiatives within your organization.

Zero-party data has been a hot marketing buzzword for years. But in the year of our Lord 2025, betting on zero-party data makes more sense than ever. This is mostly due to two reasons:

• AI agents are blurring the line between genuine engagement and bots like never before.
• The shift from Search Engine Optimization to Answer Engine Optimization (and in-chat ads) comes with a shift from precise metrics and keyword-based optimization to more vague “intent-based” optimization and a far looser analytics stack.
  
  • For instance, while Google has been rolling out ads in AI mode, advertisers complain that their new traffic isn’t clearly labeled. 

In the new conversational, AI-driven internet, populated by agents and with an increasingly elusive UX, getting first-hand data from our human users can make a world of difference. Keyword research and social listening tools are no longer enough.

Although fallible, keyword research tools used to provide a frame of objectivity to the content ideation process. But now, with intent-based search, keywords lose their value, and companies have to rely on qualitative insights gathered from their own interactions with customers.

In this new era of the internet, small, up-and-coming companies are at a significant disadvantage. Most of them lack the brand recognition to stand out among the sources in AI-generated questions. And with a low volume of engagements and poor customer insights, how will they conduct their marketing efforts? It’s either guessing - and guessing right, or relying on the old SEO/social listening stack.

A quick tip for new companies: Invest in customer research! It doesn’t have to be flashy, it can be simple, organic, and guerrilla. Let’s wrap this up with that concept: “Guerrilla customer research”.

If you’d like to take a more conservative route and leave your research to us, apply for a free workshop.

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