Gamification assessment

Using games as Brand Utilities

Nathan, Rory, Carolina, Jon, Alex L, Dan W

What is Gamification?

There are numerous definitions of this marketing ‘buzzword’ circulated around the net – a common feature of all is the perception of using gaming mechanics in your site, service or campaign in order to drive brand participation. It works by making technology more engaging and by encouraging desired behaviors from the curator.

Why?

In overcrowded marketplaces there is a need for companies to reach their audiences in new and alternative ways which is less intruding and more engaging than advertising alone

How it works

Game based marketing allows brands to form new relationship’s with the audience, content delivered through mechanism’s such as leaderboards, point systems and badges (to name a few) allow people to generate individual connections with the brand through virtual interaction.

The gamification movement seeks to take the kind of common elements seen in video games and apply them to the real world, in the hope of building brand loyalty through introducing some fun into otherwise mundane activities such as exercising, shopping or parking.

What it’s about

Listening to your current audience

Creating experiences to meet their needs

Satisfied consumers then become evangelists and brand ambassador's

Through word of mouth etc this will generate a new, extensive audience base

Badges

A recent trend in Gamification currently being explored is that of check in ‘Badges’. With roots in the popular social media platform ‘foursquare’, many start ups have attempted to recreate a similar mechanism using the badge scheme. Location based services such as ‘Campus food’ who award you badges for ordering with their restaurants. Entertainment network ‘GetGlue’ have adopted a similar concept but they offer badges in return for consumer reviews on the site after a check in.

Further examples include;

Google – Gave users badges for being energy efficient with search dataVirgin Healthmile – Offered customers badges for staying fit and using their facilities

4 Game utility principles

1. Clear Benchmarks — e.g Score the most points, beat previous time etc.

2. Clear Scorekeeping — Must be no doubt about how to keep score. Everyone understands the benchmarks and what constitutes as a win or loss.

3. Frequent Feedback — Scores are public, visible, always known, or displayed in real-time. Allow for improvement during the game and opportunity to restart/improve on your previous attempt.

4. Choice — Players have the opportunity to return to the game when they like and whilst in in can discover pathways for themselves than than being dictated as to a specific course of action. Rules include effective short and long term goals which support personal satisfaction for players.

Example 1

The idea is pretty simple, a pair of Jimmy Choo’s new shoe range will check into some of the most exclusive and fashionable places in London, if you can track them down and catch them while still checked in at a venue, then they are yours.

Nike GRID used the iconic London telephone box to track a runner's progress at designated Nike branded locations. After registering online, players run between two phoneboxes and entered in their unique user id number at each, logging their run and earning them points online.

The more runs, the more points earned for that postcode. The person with the most points in each area claims the crown of that postcode, badges were also awarded for speed, stamina and knowledge of the streets.

Example 2

Current thinking

Two great informative examples of how Gameification is expanding are the TED talks by Seth Priebatsch and Tom Chatfield where they present a small list of game dynamics which can make a users be more engaged when using the applications.The elements are insightful and, whenever possible, should be taken into account by when developing applications which aim to be engaging for users.

Some of the best dynamics mentioned during the above talks I have listed in the following slide…

TED talk dynamics

Communal discovery: A dynamic where an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a challenge. Everyone (in a given community) has to work together to achieve something. Leverages the network which is society to solve hard problems (crowd-sourcing)

Multiple long and short-term aims: this makes it interesting and less monotone and considers the fact that sometimes people are more focused and concentrated; therefore simple tasks can be achieved when concentration is low, and more difficult tasks when concentration is higher.

Rapid, frequent, clear feedback: it is very very hard for people to learn, if they cannot link actions to consequences.

An element of uncertainty: known rewards excite people, but unknown rewards are even more interesting, because if there is a certain level of uncertainty that I might get something even better, then this attracts people interest and keeps them doing things over and over again.

Conclusion

More and more brands are seeing the benefits of building game based utilities to engage with their audiences, encouraging two way conversations through providing useful interaction which is relevant to them. If done well, Gamification can be a great way to build customer loyalty, deepen brand interaction and generate great buzz through PR.

If done wrong however, it can be boring, lacking customer involvement and become potentially damaging to the brand’s reputation. It is important to only produce a utility for a purpose rather than doing so primarily to jump on the trend wagon which is when they could become detrimental to the brand’s audience retention.