At a moment when loyalty is thinning, channels are fragmenting, and personalisation risks becoming another hollow promise, it’s worth asking whether fashion is even asking the right questions.

This conversation deliberately stepped outside the industry’s usual feedback loop. Voices from fashion, beauty, entertainment, sport, and auto parts came together not to trade tools or tactics, but to unpack what actually builds trust, emotional connection, and consistency in a world where customers move faster than brands.

The focus wasn’t optimisation for its own sake, but coherence: how content, care, data, and creativity align into experiences that feel intentional rather than manufactured.

As this new year begins, the overriding takeaway is this: loyalty won’t be rebuilt through points, platforms, or performance marketing alone. It will come from brands that lead with clarity, earn trust through follow-through, and learn more aggressively from beyond their own category.

If fashion wants a different outcome this year, it may need different reference points altogether.

🎥 Watch the full discussion below, and read on for key takeaways...

Key Takeaways

1. True Loyalty isn’t a Points Scheme, it’s a Feeling

Brands often confuse frequency with fidelity. A repeat purchase doesn’t necessarily signal trust; it can just as easily reflect convenience, price, or lack of alternatives. Loyalty only begins when customers feel recognised as individuals rather than treated as data points.

Loyalty shows up when customers feel like you actually care, not when you’ve just optimised the funnel.
Sarah Angelmar, Clarins

Practically, this means shifting investment away from purely incentive-driven mechanics and toward moments that demonstrate care: how issues are resolved, how preferences are remembered, how consistently a brand shows up over time. Loyalty lives in the accumulation of small signals that say “we see you”, and not in one-off campaigns.

This challenges brands to accept that emotional loyalty may not always produce immediate uplift. But it creates resilience: customers who stay, forgive mistakes, and advocate when it matters.

If everything you do is about the next transaction, you’re missing the relationship entirely.
Maria Carlton, Forth & Forward Advisory/ex-Under Armour

2. You’re a Guest in the Customer Journey

The modern customer journey now unfolds across platforms brands don’t own: social feeds, marketplaces, messaging apps, and physical environments shaped by third parties. Trying to “pull customers back” into owned ecosystems often creates friction rather than loyalty.

We don’t control most touchpoints anymore — but we do control how we show up within them.
Casey Rosett, CleverEdge/ex-Vans

Instead, brands must accept that they are guests in many of these spaces and behave accordingly. That means understanding the norms of each environment, respecting why customers are there, and contributing value rather than interrupting attention.

The practical shift here is from orchestration to alignment: ensuring tone, values, and service standards remain consistent even when the environment changes. Customers don’t expect uniformity, but they do expect coherence.

The goal isn’t domination of the journey. It’s coherence across it.
Paola Bianchi, NAPA Auto Parts

3. Insight is Only Valuable if it Expands Possibility

Data and AI are enablers, not directors. When used well, they remove friction: surfacing patterns faster, reducing guesswork, and giving teams confidence to make bolder creative decisions. When misused, they narrow thinking and push brands toward formulaic outputs.

Data should give creatives confidence not constraints.
Eric Cruz, Sphere, ex-Amazon/AKQA/Wieden+Kennedy

Personalisation runs the risk of becoming overly granular or algorithmically rigid. At that point, experiences stop feeling thoughtful and start feeling engineered, which can quietly erode trust.

The most effective organisations treat data as a compass, not a script. It informs direction while leaving space for human judgement, cultural awareness, and creative risk.

The moment personalisation feels manufactured, trust starts to erode.
Sarah Angelmar, Clarins

4. Storytelling Is World-Building

As experiences stretch across physical, digital, and social spaces, storytelling is shifting from linear narratives to living systems. Customers don’t just consume brand messages; they move through brand worlds - sometimes briefly, sometimes deeply.

People don’t want messages anymore. They want worlds they can step into.
Eric Cruz, Sphere, ex-Amazon/AKQA/Wieden+Kennedy

This raises the bar for consistency. Visual language, tone, behaviour, and values must align not just within a campaign, but across touchpoints and over time. Any disconnect is immediately visible and increasingly unforgiving.

World-building doesn’t require spectacle, but intent: knowing what a brand stands for, how it behaves, and what kind of relationship it wants to invite.

If the story doesn’t feel lived-in, people won’t stay.
Casey Rosett, CleverEdge/ex-Vans

5. Novelty Attracts Attention. Reliability Earns Belief.

Innovation is important but only when supported by operational reality. Many loyalty initiatives fail not because they’re uncreative, but because they’re inconsistently delivered across markets, teams, or channels.

Customers don’t separate brand and operations. They experience them as one.
Paola Bianchi, NAPA Auto Parts

From the customer’s perspective, brand and operations are inseparable. A beautifully designed experience loses credibility the moment execution falters, whether that’s fulfilment, service, or follow-through.

The takeaway is pragmatic: before launching something new, ensure it can be delivered well, everywhere it appears. Consistency doesn’t mean stagnation; it means earning the right to evolve.

Trust is built through consistency, not novelty.
Maria Carlton, Forth & Forward Advisory/ex-Under Armour

6. Automation Changes the Rules, Not the Need for Empathy

As AI becomes embedded across service, content, and commerce, technology won't diminish human relevance. Instead it heightens the importance of deciding where humans add the most value and protecting those moments.

The future isn’t less human — it’s more intentional about where humans matter.
Sarah Angelmar, Clarins

The opportunity lies in using machines to handle speed, scale, and repetition, while designing experiences that preserve empathy, nuance, and judgement. Brands that fail to make this distinction risk becoming efficient but emotionally hollow.

The future isn’t about choosing between humans and machines; it’s about intentional orchestration.

Technology should make space for humanity, not erase it.
Eric Cruz, Sphere, ex-Amazon/AKQA/Wieden+Kennedy

Loyalty isn’t something you launch. It’s something you practice - in decisions made when no one’s watching, and in how consistently a brand behaves as context shifts.

The tools will keep evolving. Channels will keep fragmenting. AI will accelerate what’s possible. But none of that replaces clarity, care, and follow-through.

As 2026 begins, the opportunity isn’t to optimise harder, but to decide what kind of relationships you’re actually building, and what you’re willing to protect to earn them.