Agenda & Speakers

How to Connect Customers to Your Brand

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Marketers know that building customer loyalty is more complex and difficult than simply offering discounts or rewards. For some industries – like entertainment – customer loyalty is predicated on the ability to offer differentiated and personalized customer experiences that spark emotion with customers. With an explosion of customer data and technologies to make sense of it, personalization at mass scale is a reality for brands, yet many struggle to do it effectively.

When Regal Cinemas set out to update its Crown Club program, the brand knew that the program needed to be the catalyst for creating emotional bonds with customers. The program, started 15 years prior, was a “passive” program that rewarded dollars spent with free soda and popcorn, regardless of if a customer had an affinity for purchasing drinks and snacks at the movies. The brand knew there was an opportunity to integrate new technology that could improve the way customer data and customer insights were being leveraged and yield a better understanding of customers. The result was a program refresh that ultimately connects customers to what they really want.

Join Regal Cinemas as they walk through the journey of updating their Crown Club loyalty program, the largest program in the industry. You’ll hear how the brand made a commitment to creating emotional bonds with customers and has focused on personalization of rewards, communications and promotions to engage with customers both inside and outside of theatres. For example, rather than offering the same rewards to all customers, Regal saw an opportunity to offer personalized rewards based on movie ticket purchases. For Regal, the Crown Club program is one of many important tactics in play to build customer loyalty. The presentation will discuss the approach for integrating the program with customer experience – also a very important component of the customer relationship for theaters – and other marketing initiatives.  

- How loyalty program data should be utilized for effective personalization

- Best practices for revising or updating a program without alienating valuable customers

- Why promotion isn’t dead and how new technology can create unique promotions to spark customer emotions

- How a loyalty program should be integrated with marketing, customer experience and customer engagement to make the biggest impact

Speakers

Ken Thewes, CMO, Regal Entertainment Group

Ken Thewes has made a career out of repositioning brands.  Prior to joining Regal Entertainment Group as its CMO in 2012, his experience spanned a broad range of industries and billion-dollar brands -- including Tide, Red Lobster, and Chili's -- and has enabled him to quickly cut through the clutter and focus on what matters to consumers most.

Ken currently heads up all marketing efforts for Regal Entertainment Group, which includes leveraging the company's loyalty program – the largest in the industry -- to help drive revenue and profitability.  In addition, he leads the teams responsible for advertising, digital and social media, film marketing and promotions, public relations, consumer insights and local marketing.
 
Before Regal, Ken held a variety of marketing positions in multiple industries, with increasing levels of responsibility.  Most recently, Ken was Vice President of Marketing at Spartan Stores and prior to that, VP of Marketing at Chili’s.

Ken has been married to Patty for the past 27 years and they have one son, Taylor, who is a senior at Vassar College.
 
You can follow Ken on Twitter at @KenThewes https://twitter.com/KenThewes.

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