What a moment of insanity taught me about loyalty and loss aversion (and my inherent irrationality).

Irrational. Illogical. Incomprehensible.

Three words that perfectly sum up something I did last year (pre-COVID), something that still confounds me whenever I think about it. Not just for how nuts it was, but also because as someone who specialises in human behaviour and marketing, I really should have known better.

What is it they say? Shoemakers wear the worst shoes? Well that analogy certainly applies to me in this instance. (And probably others but let’s not dwell on that right now).

For years my work has resulted in me spending a huge amount of time up in the air. If you added up the hours it would probably equate to a good few months a year spent at 35,000ft. Airports were my second home and duty-free acquired sacks of peanut M&M’s a mainstay of my diet.

Over the years, like most frequent flyers, I joined an airline loyalty program (in my case British Airways Executive Club). With each trip to meet clients or undertake research, I’d happily collect my miles and at the end of each quarter, delight in seeing my ‘status’ change as I leaped through the layers of tiers, rising in their status hierarchy.

The day I hit ‘Gold’ I let out a little squeal of delight. I’d made it.

When the two plastic gold cards arrived to attach to my luggage, I felt a disproportionate sense of achievement. I say disproportionate because let’s face it, it wasn’t as if I’d broken some land speed record or scaled Everest, all I’d actually done was sit my arse on a plane, repeatedly.

And yet the next time I walked through Heathrow (with my gold tags proudly displayed on my luggage) I swear I felt I was two inches taller.

I hate to admit it, but I even felt a little smugness when I skipped the long check in queues and fast-tracked my way through security.

Being Silver had been good, but Gold, Gold was great.

[FYI I know I’m not presenting myself in a great light here but bear with me…]

A few months after my newfound Gold status, I changed jobs. And with the change in jobs came a huge reduction in travel.

For the first time in years I found myself mostly grounded. The long speed walks on travelators through foreign airports replaced by a daily train commute through the countryside and the smell of jet fuel quickly becoming a distant memory.

At around the same time, British Airways reconfigured how flyers earned tier points; the result being you needed to either spend more on a ticket or take almost double the number of flights to get the same amount of points to keep one’s status.

Now you’d think for someone who has pretty much stopped travelling (with the exception of annual vacations) this wouldn’t matter. Its relevance would be so minimal that it would occupy no more than a few seconds thought.

Well in my case you’d be wrong.

I became altogether quite obsessed by it.

[Note: you will recall I used the words irrational, illogical and incomprehensible at the start…]

For as the membership year neared its end, I became consumed with the reality of missing out on enough tier points to retain my Gold status. It would play on my mind, pop up unexpectedly and finally led me to do something which still makes me wince when I think of it.

With one qualifying week to go, I discovered in order to keep my status, I needed a walloping amount of miles and tier points. The kind of miles and tier points that come with not just a long-haul flight, but one in Business or First class. The how-much-are-you-kidding-me kind of flights.

And despite knowing it was insanity personified, I found myself on the booking app, tracking down a qualifying flight I could take in the forthcoming days. My luck (such that we can call it) was in; a flight to JFK that coming Friday did the trick.

But here’s the thing. The only way I could make it work within the timeline was to fly out from London to JFK and then turn around and come right back again. Without ever leaving the airport. Without even so much as a brisk stroll around Central Park or grabbing a to-go sandwich from Carnegie Deli.

From the moment the wheels touched down on JFK’s tarmac, I had two hours to exit and re-enter airside, board the new flight and be wheels-up again.

Now, most people at this point would probably stop, realise they had gone cuckoo crazy and close the booking app. Most people with half a brain or at least a healthy sense of fiscal responsibility would have stepped away from the computer.

Well, not me. I did the exact opposite.

Three days later I headed off over the Atlantic with no more than an iPad and a coffee, ready for my sprint around the airport before heading back home. Gold status renewed, anxiety vanquished.

But (as with most things starting from a point of insanity) things were about to go awry.

For what I hadn’t anticipated was the 2 hour holding pattern we were kept in over JFK before landing, or the ensuing 90 minutes we were kept onboard as we waited for a gate to become free and then the sheer impossibility of clearing passport control and customs, sprinting through the airport and making it back to the departure gate in only 30 minutes.

As the minutes ticked by, trapped in the TSA queue, my grand plan disintegrated, and took with it any hope of making my (finely-tuned-time-wise) return flight.

So there I was, trapped airside in JFK for 12 hours (because I’d picked the one day when all flights were fully booked), several thousand pounds worse off (I can’t bring myself to tell you how many), watching my tier points float off into the ether and feeling like a right bloody idiot. It’s fair to say I stomped up and down the concourse like a temperamental toddler for a good few hours.

Now this in and of itself is no doubt cause enough for you to think I need an intervention of some sort, but I hate to admit it, it’s even worse in the context of how I actually used my Gold privileges.

You see, I’m not your usual type of frequent flyer. I never really liked sitting in the lounges. I didn’t much care for the pre-flight free champagne or canapes, or reheated beef wellington. I’m inherently restless and curious so much preferred to walk around and browse the shops. My trips were so short, I rarely took additional luggage and my flights were often so last minute, even the advanced seat reservation rarely applied.

In short, with the exception of speedy check-in and fast-track security, none of the benefits really mattered to me. And speedy check-in and fast-track security didn’t matter to me to the tune of thousands of pounds of wasted money and 24 hours of wasted time.

And yet. I did it. I made a series of decisions that flew in the face of sense.

I told you. Irrational. Illogical. Incomprehensible.

Anyone telling this (shameful) story should be a little red-faced, however as a student of behavioural science and economics I’ve gone from red to full blown scarlet (and rightly so).

Because one of the first things I learned about human psychology and behaviour was the power of cognitive biases and the role of ‘status’ [ego] in decision making. To make things worse, I’ve spent over two decades helping brands design loyalty programmes and build engagement cycles based on an understanding of those biases and principles.

And yet, despite all the intellectual knowledge, all the practical experience, I had fallen victim to Loss Aversion, Status Quo Bias and the need to maintain and protect my perceived ‘status’.

I had gone to inordinate lengths to protect something whose extrinsic value was close to zero and whose intrinsic value was fast diminishing with every day I would remain grounded.

I was a walking example of irrational decision making.

If Dan Ariely needed a poster child for his series of books, count me in. In technicolour.

And yet. Despite the insanity, something good followed.

With a stroke of luck I was seated opposite the most lovely Professor from Berkeley on my eventual return flight back to London. I say with a stroke of luck, I think it’s best described as my luck and perhaps his misfortune.

After a couple of drinks and hearing me tell the flight attendant my tale of woe, he leaned forwards, put the screen down and asked me a question it has taken me the best part of a year to answer.

“If more loyalty programmes are built on principles of loss aversion and status quo rather than reciprocity and commitment, what does it mean for brands when the people they profess to serve have their ‘moment of realisation’. And if there is limited extrinsic value, and an event that causes rapidly diminishing intrinsic value, what does it mean for the future of their relationship?

If you’re interested in knowing the answer, or even (please) sharing a time when you did something even remotely similar, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at elizabeth@thesoundhq.com