to people more. You can talk about what you’re doing in the community. You can just have a contest.” By contrast, she sees the app as the direct channel for loyalty customers. Social posts can happen daily, she explained, but app messages must be carefully timed to avoid overwhelming users. The Convenience Group, LLC’s Director of Business Develop- ment Donnie Rhoads reinforced this view from both an oper- ator and consumer perspective. Personally, he does not want to see sponsored ads in his social feeds, though he appreci- ates organic content by a company he chooses to follow that is entertaining or providing a good story. Rhoads acknowl- edged his company has not yet fully leveraged social but plans to approach it with care to avoid alienating customers. Agreeing with the separation, Peters indicated his company’s social strategy as “an identity thing” to communicate to customers who they are. As for their mobile and loyalty app platforms, those are “about providing value to the customer.” His company does not view them as interchangeable. Eva Strasburger , president of StrasGlobal, CEO of Compliance Safe and VGN co-founder, extended the social conversation by pointing to international examples where AI-generated influ- encers are used in Japan and Korea. She noted the cost efficiency of such approaches and the ability to tailor messaging without contracts, though others in the group remained cautious about whether U.S. customers would embrace such tactics.
“ I’ll put on my consumer hat and my young person hat, but when I get on social media, my goal is not to be sold to. Quite the opposite, in fact, I’m going to very deliberately try to avert my eyes once I see an ad and scroll past it right away. Now, that’s different from if I willingly follow a brand on social media or their content pops into my feed and it’s not necessarily promoted. Donnie Rhoads , Director of Business Development, The Convenience Group, LLC
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