As we point out in “COLLOQUY’s 20th Anniversary Retrospective: Didn’t We Settle That Back in ’95?”, loyalty programs should be integrally linked to overall brand in delivery of brand promise, as well as in look and feel. Here’s a good example of maintaining that continuity of linkage, at least in terms of how a brand refers to itself and how customers refer to the brand. Overstock President Jonathan Johnson says in Internet Retailer, “We think the O is a really important part of our brand. We think many people think of us as the O.” Thus, Overstock.com’s recent purchase, for $350,000, of the O.co internet URL.
As Kool-Aid man would say, “O yeah!” Just the single letter helps solidify brand identity that’s also exhibited in the name of Overstock.com’s loyalty program, Club O. And, says Johnson, “We will continue branding ourselves as Overstock.com for the near future but over time we may morph into O.”
In another recent alignment of loyalty program name and overall corporate branding, two letters away, when MGM Mirage officially changed its name to MGM Resorts International, it also renamed its Players Club program to M life, and we believe that this change to a broader, more-encompassing name helps solidify the benefits of loyalty to the entire MGM enterprise instead of just one brand, service or flagship property.
So, between O and M comes the natural conclusion to this post:
The N
