Best Buy’s Reward Zone is the place to be for Linh Ly, MBA ’05.
Linh Ly, ’05 MBA, knows all about rewards. In her role as consumer marketing associate at the Richfield, Minn.-based retail giant Best Buy, she works to manage the company’s consumer loyalty program and personalized marketing efforts.
Reward Zone is a consumer loyalty program that awards points to members for each purchase. Once the quantity of points reaches a certain threshold, members can redeem the points for reward certificates.
Ly works to maintain loyalty engagement with customers by developing benefits and offers to increase their engagement with Best Buy. So far, her work has involved a promotional campaign with ESPN to support the 2005 NFL football season and managing Reward Zone’s support of the McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes. She also handles day-to-day customer engagement, such as developing and executing the Reward Zone marketing communications strategy.
She uses collaborative and analytical skills honed during her time in the Carlson Brand Enterprise. Ly was a member of the team hired by Carlson Companies to evaluate the branding of its then-recent acquisition of the Park Plaza chain of hotels. The goal was to reestablish the brand, which is well-known in Europe, in the United States. The hotels in the chain had little in common, which presented an interesting challenge for the Brand Enterprise team. How could they brand a chain that varied so widely from hotel to hotel?
In the course of their research, the team uncovered interesting facts about where people place value in hotel selection. “People will pay more for a free breakfast,” laughs Ly. In the end, the team members recommended focusing on a positive check-in and check-out experience for hotel guests—a high level of customer service that would set the chain apart.
Ly’s next project with the Brand Enterprise uncovered the challenges of entering the retail market faced by a company that had a great product, but didn’t have experience in retail. The team planned to strategize an effective product launch strategy—but they soon realized that the company had already started to market the product.
There were other challenges along the way: another consultant hired by the company strongly disagreed with many recommendations, and they met other resistance from the client. For example, the product name seemed inappropriate, and so Ly and the rest of the team conducted test groups to help find a market-friendly name for consumers. The results seemed persuasive, but didn’t appear so to the client.
The team was determined to provide value for the client. Ly cites the cohesiveness of the team as key. “We all agreed on the way that the project was going and saw the same roadblocks,” she says. As the project lead, Ly managed the dynamics of her team as well as client expectations. “In the end, we helped them with a positioning strategy, not a product launch.”
Her final project involved brand repositioning of a medical device for client American Medical Systems. The product, sold directly to doctors, is a machine with the capability of treating a urological disorder. The brand had been built on benefits, such as being covered by Medicare, but focus groups revealed that patients were more concerned with whether the product really worked. Ly was amazed to uncover the passion that patients felt about the possibility of effective treatment. Focus groups included some sufferers who had been coping with the disorder for 30 years and who had despaired of finding a cure.
Ly’s experience in the Brand Enterprise prepared her well for the collaborative team approach that she uses in her work at Best Buy, much of which has involved participation on cross-functional teams. “I represent my department, consumer marketing, at meetings with representatives from other areas, and I’m trusted to make decisions for the team,” she says. “I help us meet our objectives.”
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Linh Ly, MBA ’05