2012 Motivation Show

McCormick Place, Chicago, IL

Incentives Work:

Successful companies know that employees who are engaged, motivated, and working towards a common goal generate increased profits. Research shows that a motivated workforce inspires people to work for your company, to do business with your company, and to buy your products and services. INCENTIVES WORK!

Overview

The Motivation Show is held annually in Chicago, bringing together merchants and their gift card buyers. Stoner Bunting has been participating in the show for over 6 years, and the audience and attendance of the show has shifted. Because the options for gift cards continually grow and change, today’s buyers are looking to offer the gift card brands that best match their clients demographics and needs. Many of the re-seller’s clients are fortune 500 companies that reward employees for sales, attendance or safety. We had a very productive event, meeting with the top re-sellers in the business, and reviewed brands and strategies for growing sales within their programs.

Meetings with Re-sellers

Our goal in meeting with your re-sellers was to better understand their clients and strategize on how we can increase overall gift card sales within their programs. We are proactively seeking marketing, promotional and advertising opportunities that meet your objectives.

The team had meetings scheduled in half hour increments during the 2 day event (many times hosting multiple meetings in various locations), plus we met with partners and potential partners without appointments who dropped in for discussions. Key partner meetings included Affinion, Globoforce, Royal Performance Group, Great Lakes Scrip Center, SkyMall, InteliSpend, GiftCertificates.com, Augeo Incent, National Gift Card, SVM, Discover, MyPoints, Destination Rewards, Giftango, Loyalty Edge, TSYS, OC Tanner and others. Your account team will share with you any new initiatives and specific next steps from these meetings. While the overall show floor was smaller than last year, and the general traffic lighter, we still greatly value the ability to meet with key buyers in one location, and with greatly focused discussions.

IGCC Meeting

The annual meeting of the Incentive Gift Card Council ( IGCC) occurred during this event, and provided the merchants and service providers an opportunity to get updates on legislation, promotional ideas and new trends in the bulk gift card space. The IGCC invested in research into the B2B gift card space and provided us with a detailed overview about the dollars that are available in this space.

Key findings of this research include:

• 52% of US businesses use gift cards for incentive or recognition purposes
• 87% of businesses running non-cash programs include gift cards as a reward
• US businesses spend $22.7 billion per year on gift cards
• Smaller firms account for half of the market based on the sheer number of these companies
• The propensity to go direct to retail for gift cards is high among smaller businesses and decreases as businesses get larger. Likewise, the propensity for using a prepaid card vendor grows as the size of the business increases.
• Open-loop cards are the most popular type of cards, with 68% of firms using gift cards opting for this type. Closed-loop cards follow at 54%.

The next Motivation Show will be held in Las Vegas, in January 2014. This will be a dual show, combining efforts with the PPAI Show. There are also plans to have a second Motivation Show in Chicago in May of 2014. More information to come on both of these initiatives!