I was rather taken aback, nearly twenty years ago, when Simon Uwins, then Marketing Director at Tesco told me that the purpose of Tesco’s Clubcard programme was not to drive loyalty. The launch of Clubcard had helped propel Tesco from the UK’s number 2 grocery retailer to the far and away outright market leader and to a large extent this growth had come from existing customers becoming more loyal, so it seemed a surprising thing to say. Uwins explained that the key driver of loyalty for any retailer, was the overall brand proposition and customer experience, the loyalty programme served a different purpose. Tesco had encapsulated their brand and customer experience proposition in the phrase “every little helps” which was itself one of four marketing pillars alongside “everyone is welcome”, “build trust” and “say thank you” that helped Tesco deliver its core purpose of "earning and growing the lifetime loyalty of our customers". The brand and experience proposition had, in tur