JetPrivilege reveals new brand identity InterMiles, expands from airline-centric to a travel and lifestyle rewards programme

JetPrivilege, the independent loyalty and rewards management company, has unveiled its new brand identity ‘InterMiles’, driving its intent to fulfil the evolving travel and lifestyle aspirations of discerning consumers. It will encompass both its award-winning loyalty and rewards programme, including the ubiquitous rewards, and recognition currency InterMiles.

The programme will offer its growing base of nearly 10 million members the opportunity to earn and redeem the currency of engagement, across 10 plus categories and 150+ programme partners.

Zameer Kochar

Present during the unveiling of the new brand identity, Zameer Kochar, Vice-President, Marketing and Member Engagement of InterMiles, told BestMediaInfo.com that they are planning to launch a digital-led campaign from December to March. Talking about the company’s growth and journey, he explained what keeps it ahead of competition and how it keeps the huge data of its users intact. 

As consumers are shifting beyond transactional rewards and cashback, the company has been on transformational journey over the last five years to expand from an airline-centric programme to emerging as an everyday travel and lifestyle rewards programme.

Manish Dureja, Managing Director, InterMiles, said, “What started as a frequent flyer programme has, today, become the platform of choice that empowers our members to fulfil their travel and lifestyle aspirations. As we reinforce our commitment to the promise of making our members’ journey more fulfilling, our growth plan is focused on aggregating more benefits and simplifying access to a growing bouquet of experiences and rewards.”

Suggesting the interchangeable nature of the rewards currency where it can be earned and redeemed across platforms, the new identity has created a distinctive marque that would both be recognisable and memorable. The marque, comprising a dot (the first step of the journey) and dash (the path one takes on the journey), signifies the brand’s promise to customers to make their every journey more rewarding. The brand colour is a bespoke shade, ‘twilight red’ that combines warmth, enthusiasm, playfulness and energy that will appeal to the core target group of experience seekers.

Commenting on it, Kochar said, “We know that seeking unique, fulfilling and memorable experiences are key drivers for India’s growing segment of discerning consumers. InterMiles is driven by our vision to make a positive difference in our consumers’ lives. We have designed a distinctive brand identity that represents this growing community of experience seekers. The brand identity stood out among our consumers for the simplicity of the name that created easy understanding and high appeal.”

He said the company also plans to roll out a digital-led campaign. “We have already done a few of the teaser campaigns for our members via our website, email, and SMS. We will now translate this in the next few days to a mass media campaign, which will be a digital-led first approach, followed by other aspects with the 360 mix we're putting together. It will broadly emphasise the fact which we are introducing in the reward and recognition currency of the programme. And appropriate mediums to amplify our reach, awareness and engagement purposes will be picked up in the media mix. So the next few months, December to March, will see an on-going exercise.”

Over the last six months, the programme has managed over 33 billion InterMiles. Members can redeem this currency for free flights, free hotel stays, free fuel across 2500+ merchandise options.

Asked why the company chose this time for the re-branding, he said, “As part of our growth strategy and reinforcement, we strongly felt that from a timing perspective, it made sense to refresh it because the consumers are also becoming extremely discerning. In the digital age, keeping in mind their needs and requirements, it required a fresh look by preserving modernity, sophistication and exclusivity. It was a 16-month process that required a lot of consumer-inciting exercises from the architecture of the brand with the nomenclature to the visual identity to the typographic. It is a part of a transition and just the starting point. Later, we'll get into aspects of docking of features.”

Kochar said the company increased its member base four times in the last five years and its programme partners have gone up by three times. The company started with just 50 partners and now has 150 plus partners and over 13 categories. Kochar attributes the growth to being extremely customer-obsessed while driving customer centricity.

Talking about competition and what gives the company an edge over others, he said, “As most of them are about instant rewards and instant gratification and cash backs, we were focusing more on creating an alternative currency which rewards and recognises the journey of an individual for all the travel and lifestyle needs, and how we can play a larger role in terms of delivering value to them. We focus on experiences.”

The company says it is extremely focused in terms of the audience it wants to cater to. Defining its target audience, he said, “These are broadly people who are experience seekers and want seek value; people who aspire to travel. They are people who spend maybe around Rs 15,000 on plastic every month. There are people who do an online shopping maybe once a month, or maybe more than that. There are people who go out for dining out maybe once a week, basically maximising every opportunity.”

Since it has extremely active and a highly engaged member base, having 1,500 data attributes, depending upon the information that they have shared with the company, Kochar said such data in a nutshell translates its positioning to ensure the journey to be rewarding, enriching and enjoyable for customers.

Asked about the safety of users’ data, he said, “We come under the GDPR norms. Data privacy and data usage is something that we give utmost importance to. We have Chief Data Officers in the system to safeguard and protect. Members gives their consent for all the information, and basis the insights of the data we create targeted, segmented  offers, promotions and experiences that best suit the members travel and lifestyle needs.”

He said the company has invested in the Adobe suite of products to use their data management platforms. Apart from that, for engagement, it uses a gamification process for members for an instant gratification or aspirational rewards. “Engagement becomes important because this programme has so many facets to it and we made it extremely easy for people to earn miles through various categories. We've seen that the minute someone does a redemption, there is 30% increase in our activities across categories,” he added.

Kochar said the re-branding has nothing to do with the Jet Airlines issue. Being a separate independent entity, it had in the past launched a campaign to tell people about its existence and how their membership was safe and secured. “We have not seen a drop in engagement because of the airlines issue. People can now clearly distinguish that this programme is an independent business.”

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