Rick Ferguson leaves Colloquy and joins our family

Rick Ferguson, most recently Editorial Director of Colloquy has joined our parent Groupe Aeroplan as Vice President Knowledge Development.

Rick picks up a role as thought leader for our group. If you've been to any of the key loyalty conferences in the Asia region or further afield including the USA, Europe and Canada - you'll likely have heard Rick speak. You've probably also read his analysis of our loyalty industry in the weightier publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company and others where he is quoted as a loyalty marketing expert.

There's two major trends we've seen developing in our market that Rick has recognised and analysed on the global stage.

The first is the struggle that travel loyalty programs had in retaining both members and their engagement during the recession (while the opposite has been proving true in other industries, especially retail) . We saw Airline Frequent Flyer and Hotel Frequent Stayer Programs, along with the capital intensive industries they represent, struggle in 2008 and 2009 (and even into 2010). Quoted in AdWeek , Rick commented that “The disparity between travel and the other two industries featured in our latest research mirrors the shift in consumer spending away from the travel sector, in which both business and leisure travel have seen cutbacks, and toward retail categories, particularly in the everyday spend categories of grocery and fuel.”

Rick has also contributed some excellent analysis on another key trend that's evolving and beginning to mature in our market : the targeting and engagement of brand advocates through Word of Mouth. We define Word of Mouth as the output from a brand advocate. It's the opposite of Amway. Customers will recommend a product or service to friends and family not because they get a reward (or more sales as they would in Amway) but because they believe it's the best product or service. (The Net Promoter Score is a good way of determining who is a likely WOM candidate). Rick commented in Adweek that marketers “should find brand champions buried within their program memberships, and build relationships that reward them for positive word-of-mouth activity.”

Rick's thought leadership and deep experience is going to be let loose on a (now) very wide range of our metrics, data, experience and learnings.