Plantism

What might a loyalty system look like if it were run by local plants rather than built around a traditional business logic? Our group stepped away from the usual retail framing and, through a posthuman perspective, designed a religion-like loyalty system called Plantism. Would you like to become a follower of Plantism?

A Loyalty System Run by Plants

We aimed to design an experimental loyalty system grounded in posthuman thinking. Using a systems-design lens, including leverage points, we explored the possibility of fundamental change rather than incremental optimisation. By adopting ‘religion’ as the strongest form of loyalty, we proposed a paradigm-shifting loyalty model.

Where Loyalty Really Comes From

We examined existing retail loyalty schemes through interviews and observation, mapping how they operate from both a business perspective and a user-journey perspective. Drawing on leverage points, we clarified why higher-level interventions, such as changing a system’s goal and paradigm, can be more transformative. We also compared different forms of loyalty, including family, romantic relationships, brands, fandom, and religion, and investigated how religious frameworks shape behaviour through norms, rituals, and shared belief. Worldviews and norms can organise behaviour more powerfully than ‘benefits’. Reframing loyalty through a religious lens aligns with leverage points by intervening at the level of paradigm. Key Concept
A loyalty system reconfigured as a plant-centred religious worldview.

Religion as the Strongest Loyalty Engine

We reset the system paradigm by shifting consumer into follower, and benefit into spirituality. Through worldbuilding, we developed plant-respecting commandments, a mythic backstory, and hymns. To communicate the context and worldview in an accessible way, we used video-led storytelling as the primary medium.

How to Spread a New Paradigm

We used the religious frame carefully, aware that it could easily become overly heavy. One response that surprised me was the potential to expand the concept into educational programmes for children or teenagers.

Designing from a systems perspective helped me understand how intervening at a single leverage point can influence wider patterns of thinking and behaviour. Working at the paradigm level – rather than optimising within the existing system – showed how a single shift in framing can reorganise everything downstream.