Incentives at their best: Talon.One announces 2026 INCENTIVIZE Awards winners

Every nominee brought something worth recognizing, and narrowing the list down was not easy. To everyone who was nominated: thank you for the work you do and for sharing it with the community. Here are the winners.

Footasylum took home the Impact Award after turning its loyalty program into something customers genuinely want to be part of. With FA Rewards, built together with Apadmi and Talon.One, web, app and store now come together in one view of each customer. Tiers give shoppers real status to work toward, with perks that suit the streetwear culture they live in. 

The payoff is easy to see: loyalty members spend more per order than non-members, and the top tier has become home to some of the brand’s most valuable customers.

At the ceremony, Brad Morton, Head of Change & PMO at Footasylum said the award belongs to everyone involved. “It’s really nice to see the team recognized for all the hard work from everyone internally and from all of the partnerships we’ve got with Apadmi and Talon.One,” he said. “Everyone has fed into the project, which was such a big cross-collaborative project delivered in such a short space of time. Peak was looming and the guys got it over the line in time for peak. It was a really big effort and it’s really nice for the guys to be recognized for their hard work.”

Apadmi, the agency partner on the build, was just as proud. “Very, very proud of the award,” they said. “Two years of hard work with Footasylum as a client partner, but also with our partners Talon.One and Braze.”

Few programs start as early in the customer journey as TUI Smiles, and that is a big reason TUI won the Innovation Award. Rewards appear right in the search results and are given at the moment of booking, so the feeling of achievement arrives long before the suitcase is packed. Two weeks before departure, a game called Pack Your Bag unlocks to keep the excitement going.

At the ceremony, Alex Swift, Head of Loyalty at TUI said the win made the effort worthwhile. “Honestly it’s great to see that 6 months of really hard work is paying off,” she said. “We tried really hard to gamify our program to improve our customer experience, and to be recognized for that is fantastic.”

Her colleague Luke Green, Technology Product Manager at TUI, pointed to the team behind it. “I just think it’s great to celebrate our achievements,” he said. “Over the past 12 months it’s really been a challenge but everyone has come together and come up with something really, really creative.”

EPAM, whose team helped bring the project to life, shared the pride. “We’re very proud to have been part of the journey,” they said. “The speed and scale are definitely impressive.”

The Loyalty Leader Award went to Scooter’s Coffee for a program that makes members feel welcome from their very first interaction. By rewarding recognition and progression, the brand now relies less on discounts, which made its franchisees very happy. 

A smart setup with Braze and Talon.One also stopped tens of thousands of fraudulent accounts before high-value rewards went out, protecting the program and the members who play by the rules.

Tyler Marpes, VP, Technology Operations at Scooter’s Coffee said the win is only the start. “Scooters Coffee is thrilled to be nominated and to have won the Talon.One INCENTIVIZE 2026 Loyalty Leader Award,” he said. “We are just getting started, folks.”

Customers move between app, website and store without a second thought, and HUGO BOSS has built its incentives around that habit. For delivering a consistent, personalized experience across all touchpoints for both BOSS and HUGO, the brand received the Omnichannel Award. The right experience reaches the right person at the right moment, wherever they happen to be.

Accepting the award at the ceremony, Henrik Bauer, Head of IT Customer Engagement Solutions and Meike Schemionek, Head of Digital Products & Projects Customer Engagement at HUGO BOSS, said it was a recognition of the people behind the program. “This is obviously a great token of appreciation for all the hard work of the teams behind loyalty at HUGO BOSS,” Bauer said. “It’s amazing to see that we are recognized as an omnichannel leader in loyalty.”

Behind every great program is someone who cared enough to make it work, and 2026 INCENTIVIZE Rising Star Award goes to Veronica Aulicino, Loyalty Business Strategist at lastminute.com. Veronica led the company’s first loyalty program in travel, reaching more than 200,000 customers, and now leads the gamification layer that keeps members coming back. Stronger engagement, higher booking values and lower acquisition costs followed.

The award came as a surprise to Veronica. “I had no clue, really, and it was completely unbelievable,” she said. “Working with Talon.One is a completely new, super fun, and rewarding experience for me.”

To our winners and every nominee: congratulations, and thank you for showing what incentives can do when they are designed around a business’s unique goals and its customers. You raise the bar for all of us, and we cannot wait to see what you build next.