Segment Summary

The City of Manchester has a population of 458,000 (mid-2007 estimates), with a somewhat younger age profile than the country as a whole. Ethnically the city is approximately 76.7% White; 10.6% Asian/Asian British; and 5.3% Black/Black British (mid-2006 experimental estimates). The 2007 Index of Multiple Deprivation puts the city fourth most deprived in England, and life expectancy figures reflect this.  In addition a significant number of people travel into Manchester each day to work.

The ONS synthetic estimates of lifestyle behaviours (2003-05) put the adult obesity rate in the city at 25.8% (95% CI: 23.9, 27.9), suggesting that there may be in the region of 97,000 obese adults (aged 16+) in the city. The national child measurement programme 2006/07 estimates the childhood obesity rate at 17% (11.5% in Reception, rising to 22.8% in Year 6). If this figure is a reasonable average for the 0-15 age group as a whole, it suggests that there are in excess of 14,000 obese children in the city.  

The aim of points4life is to create a new type of loyalty programme that will drive behavioural change through rewarding individuals for making positive choices around their health behaviour.  This programme will be based on working with and applying the learning and experience of the private sector, but look to deliver public sector priorities.  Participants in the scheme will be awarded “points4life” for making positive choices; these points will be redeemable against healthy goods and services from a range of public and private sector sources.   points4life will be sustainable over the long term due to private sector contribution into the system.  

Some of the activity that points4life will incorporate includes:

• Health Trainers, using points4life as a motivational tool;
• points4life awarded for unstructured physical exercise measured through remote readers;
• community based physical activity activators will use points4life as a motivational tool;
• points4life will help integrate and reward increased physical activity outdoors, particularly encouraging children to be active through informal play;
• small local retailers as well as national brands in the city of Manchester will be encouraged to stock a range of healthy food, which will attract points or discounts on purchase; and
• council and privately operated gyms and leisure centres will be encouraged to award points4life for all exercise conducted on their premises.

Overall Aim of points4life

“To improve health and tackle health inequalities in Manchester by encouraging people through a loyalty programme to change their behaviour in a way that will benefit their health and wellbeing.”

points4life Objectives

The objectives are:

• to establish a practical and sustainable model (private sector funded) for rewarding healthy behaviours using a points based loyalty platform;
• to recruit 20-25% of the Manchester population, although we expect based on research conducted to achieve 40% participation in the scheme over three years plus 20% participation from those commuting into the city; and
• to reach substantial numbers of Department of Health defined clusters called: Treaters, Inexperienced and Pressured groups.

Initially the points4life push will be on purchases of fruit and vegetables and similar items where there is no concern over the ‘healthy’ nature of the products.

Consumers will register in various ways (to be determined during the CD process) and then members will be sent a welcome pack encompassing a card.  

At the time of registration it is envisaged that cardholders will be encouraged to complete a benchmark health and well being survey and offered bonus points4life points.

Cardholders will be able to start collecting points at a range of Council, NHSM and private sector retail and leisure partners.

There will be two key types of private sector partners, those where all sales are healthy and those where part of the sales are healthy:

• Fruit and vegetable market stall -  eg once a purchase is made the stall holder swipes the card through the terminal and puts in how much the total purchase was for; and
• Mixed retailer -  as above except here the retailer would only put in the value of the fruit and vegetable or other ‘healthy’ purchases e.g. entry ticket to the gym.

Many loyalty programmes face the challenge that private sector retail partners will come on board once they see consumers engaged and consumers become engaged once they see enough earning opportunities and redemption options.

points4life will seek to break this dichotomy in that consumers will be able to earn points through many NHSM and Council activities along with the Unstructured Physical Activity programme from launch.  This means that there is an instantly available way for consumers to earn points no matter what the private sector take up is.

In addition, given the scale of the public sector involvement, it is envisaged that this scheme will be much more attractive to the private sector than any normal start up loyalty programme would be. Between them, the Council and NHSM have budgets in excess of £2.4 billion per year and employ approximately 55,000 people.
    
The private sector have a unique opportunity in that this programme will be supported through both the national Change4Life programme (£75M social marketing campaign started in January 2009) and locally by NHSM and the Council in all their many touch points with cardholders.  They have a unique opportunity to position themselves as supporting health and well-being and also driving customers to their business.  Given the level of support both locally and nationally they will understand quickly that this programme will receive significant penetration amongst people living and commuting into Manchester, as supported by the research conducted in September 2008.

The Authority is seeking a single comprehensive solution that meets all of the following requirements:

• Catalogue of Goods
• Contact Centre
• Distribution and Fulfilment Centre
• Loyalty Platform
• Management Services
• Marketing Services
• Mobile Communications / SMS Engine
• Mystery Shopping
• Partner Recruitment & Management
• Public Relations
• Unstructured Physical Activity
• Website

It will therefore consider submissions from prime contractors and consortia (in each case whether or not the prime contractor or consortia include elements of subcontracting) provided that they can as a prime contractor or consortium provide a single comprehensive solution.

For further details relating to each of the work segments please refer to the MOI document within the Procurement tab (Appendix I) or review the individual segment tabs within this website.