What you need to know:

• David Jones has relaunched its loyalty program as part of its Vision 2025+ transformation, aiming to drive deeper customer engagement and unlock richer data insights.

• A national campaign to support the relaunch breaks this week across TV, cinema, radio, digital and in-store, all AI-generated and built in-house by creative director Ross Sabatini and team, in the retailer's first major foray into generative tech.

• The revamped program includes a first-of-its-kind partnership with Qantas, allowing customers to earn either three David Jones Rewards Points or one Qantas Point per dollar spent.

• Loyalty members can now “stack” programs from affiliated brand programs like Country Road and Sportscraft, boosting rewards from a single transaction.

• More than 3.6 million members are expected to use the app-based program, which includes tier tracking, membership linking, exclusive offers, and full visibility of rewards.

• An exclusive fashion runway event inside Qantas’s Hangar 96 marks the partnership, showcasing David Jones’ Spring/Summer ’25 collection.

• Chief Marketing Officer James Holloman says the overhaul replaces a limited, access-based model with a "rich, earn-and-burn engine."

• The loyalty program is a key lever in David Jones’ e-commerce overhaul, data strategy, and broader modernisation push ahead of the critical retail peak period.

Earn baby burn

David Jones may be a 186-year-old department store retailer, but its huge loyalty overhaul arrives today with a distinctly contemporary flourish – a national marketing campaign spanning TV, cinema, radio, digital and its flagship Sydney Flower Show that is 100 per cent AI designed and built in-house by creative director Ross Sabatini and his team, according to chief marketing officer James Holloman.

"This was our first venture into AI ... we were just really excited to use this new technology and allow it to breathe in all the different formats."

"We are going live with a huge marketing push. We start tomorrow with the official press launch, which also coincides with our 68th annual flower show in the Sydney store. From there, we’ll be going right through digital, TV, radio, cinema – the full gamut, " he told Mi3. "We've also re-recorded the David Jones jingle and layered it over the AI creative."

“Our key tagline is ‘Shopping just got more rewarding,’” Holloman said. 

The full redesigned and relaunched loyalty program is a linchpin in the ongoing $250m Vision 2025+ transformation strategy, said Holloman. It's also a part of a huge value unlock around data identified by owners Anchorage Capital, which was a central part of the rationale for its investment. As Mi3 reported last month, the PE firm saw what previous owners missed: the business wasn’t just short on shoppers; it was short on signal.

"So we're really working towards that single view of the customer, and working across the data lake to make sure we achieve it. That allows us to give better insights to our buying team and to understand how we can best service our customer," Holloman said. "It helps us understand the communication and personalisation our customers need, as well as enabling us to create audiences in our retail media space. So that’s really the whole flywheel; rewarding customers, having the data, understanding their preferences, and then using that insight in a more meaningful way."

As Mi3 flagged in July, at the heart of the program is a new tie-up with Qantas, which David Jones claims iss a 'world-first' model, along with what Holloman describes as a "full earn and burn engine" designed to lock in customer affinity.

“It’s been a huge week for the loyalty space… David Jones is really moving into the next era of loyalty, which includes a full earn and burn proposition and a completely comprehensive partnership with Qantas,”per Holloman. “It’s the most comprehensive partnership between an airline and a department store in Australia.”

The program allows customers to earn either three David Jones Rewards Points or one Qantas Point for every dollar spent in-store or online. “The whole program is housed within our David Jones app,” Holloman said. “Customers can toggle between currencies … choice is really one of the key things.”

Qantas Loyalty CEO Andrew Glance said the tie-up will benefit both brands. “One in two Qantas Frequent Flyers already shop regularly at David Jones, and this partnership will unlock billions more points,” he said. “Members can use them for their next flight, upgrade, hotel stay or other rewards across the program.”

To mark the beginning of this partnership, David Jones and Qantas Frequent Flyer will unveil an exclusive runway spectacle inside Qantas's Hangar 96, which has been used to celebrate other key milestones for at the airline, such as the arrival ceremony for the first Qantas Dreamliner (Boeing 787) in Sydney in 2017.  On this occasion, it will be transformed into a fashion theatre, with the DJ's Spring Summer ‘25 collections taking centre stage.

Loyalty stacking

In addition to tiered membership levels, members can “stack” rewards by combining points from other brand programs such as Country Road and Sportscraft when shopping inside David Jones stores. “If the customer is a member of the Country Road program, they can get their Country Road points and benefits at the same time … and get David Jones points on top,” Holloman said.

Holloman said the new program replaces what he described was “more of an access-based program” that mainly offered things like early sale invites. “It was an elevated email program. This is a complete relaunch with a really rich program … It’s night and day from the program that existed yesterday,” he said. “We’ve really worked with and scoured different department stores and multi-programs around the world, and selected the best elements, rewards, mechanics, and even the back end, for this loyalty program.”

The old program did not particularly resonate with its users. According to Adam Posner's influential For Love or Money 2025 report, David Jones Rewards only achieved a Loyalty Program Experience Index SPV of 67.1, below the average result across 76 programs of 70.9. That at least put it slightly ahead of Myers, but it trailed programs from brands such as Cotton: On and Country Road.

On the upside, few retail brands excelled in Posner's study, which is nonetheless dominated the grocers; Woolworths and Coles. As such, David Jones overhaul of the program, and focus on customer value could see it climb away from others in its category or adjacent categories.

Posner told Mi3, "The new program has an always-on value offering with choice, which will give it more visibility on the Value dimension of the SPVx index...so let's see what happens in 2026."

Getting busy

It's a frenetic period for the firm in the run up the business shopping period of the year, says Holloman.

"Chatswood, Bondi, Southland, they're all launching before peak. We have the e-commerce evolution ... we are moving to a fully headless site enabling better navigation, faster speed. And now we launch loyalty. So those are the three big things happening in our transformation journey ahead of the peak period."

More than 3.6 million members are expected to benefit from the new system, which can be accessed through the David Jones app, which the company describes as the central hub of the experience, where members can "view and manage points, link their memberships, track tier progress, and access exclusive offers and benefits."

Which, if the overhaul delivers what Holloman thinks it will, means more data, more signal, more inventory and potentially more advertisers for DJ's burgeoning retail media business.