Interview with PUML advisor Phil Gunter
Phil Gunter is an advisor to PUML, who will help design the all-inclusive ecosystem to take advantage of gamification and token flow, delivering strong profits and stakeholder happiness.
Hi Phil, can you introduce yourself and give us a bit of your professional background?
I am Phil Gunter, the Founder & Principal of New World Loyalty (NWL), a specialist loyalty and customer strategy consultancy. With NWL I have consulted the market leader in 9 different categories in Australia and multiple other clients around the world. Prior to launching NWL, I had a successful career in Airlines and Retail Banking.
Key successes include:
1/ Building Virgin’s Velocity Program into a $1bn business
2/ The program has been recognized as the world’s best & most innovative airline loyalty manager
3/ Transforming CBA’s Youth strategy into a key strategic pillar of the bank
4/ Attracting 240k customers and $1bn in balances in the first CBA campaign
5/ Transforming Westpac’s deposit’s strategy, delivering $144m above plan and leading a ‘fee free’ transformation across the industry.
Do you have a fitness regime and if so can you run us through it?
As a father of 3 boys my fitness is centred around trying to keep up with them!
Something which I am finding increasingly hard to do!
Have you ever struggled with motivation to exercise and if so how did you overcome it?
Like many others, I tend to have short periods of focus where I set and
achieve short-term goals, then a slow decline as I allow other priorities to get
in the way of fitness.
Where does your passion lie and makes you get up in the morning?
In business, I love to make a difference — delivering transformational offerings that are great for customers and highly profitable for the business. I especially love tackling tired industries that need a shakeup and driving positive change that impacts the wider community.
At home, I love to give my boys skills and experiences that I could not even
dream about as a child. Having conquered snow sports (them not me!), I have
just bought a ski boat to teach them water sports.
What elements of the PUML project led you to become involved?
I have long considered the fitness industry the perfect environment for a really engaging rewards program — a well-designed and operated program could deliver physical and emotional benefits for members, functional and financial benefits for gyms and help a number of health-related partners that could leverage the program to make relevant offers to target customers. It would also be perfectly positioned to leverage social media to drive awareness and engagement and could create real communities of like-minded members — linking members to ‘others like me’. PUML has the potential to be really
successful as a business whilst also helping people become healthier and
supporting multiple partner businesses.
What skills will you use to bring to the project?
I have proven ability to design and operate reward programs that really work delivering impactful and popular programs for members and strategic,
functional and financial benefits to the business and partners.
Why do you think PUML will succeed?
As mentioned above, the fitness industry is perfect for a rewards program and
the industry is crying out for a well-designed program to really make a
difference. The PUML team have some good learnings from Zippy and have
the support of experts to really make this happen.
Where do you see PUML in 5 years?
So successful it has been sold — with a huge valuation!
Finally when you use the PUML app on launch, what rewards you like to see?
Initially health-related ones!
