What is it? Tushar Kanwar explains...The What-ification in Social Media? If that’s your reaction to the word gamification, you’ve come to the right place. At its simplest, gamification refers to the application of typical elements of game play—point scoring, competing with others, rewards and following rules of play—to other areas of activity. By adding game-design elements such as competition and problem solving to your website or social communities, the idea is to make them more fun and engaging, prompting users to come back again for more. Still confused? Remember the bottle crown caps you may have collected as a kid to get that gift from the cola company? Or how parents turn a baby’s food spoon into a airplane so that the baby has fun trying to catch it (while being fed)? Everybody wins—the cola company and the consumers, the parents and the baby—and the audience has a good time to boot! That, ladies and gentlemen, is gamification.
Despite the trend of gamification set to rise—according a report last year by Gartner, “more than 50 per cent of organisations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes by 2015”— gamification, even in the social sphere, is not a new concept. Think of Foursquare, the popular location-based check-in service? Ever wonder why millions of folks started checking into places and sharing their whereabouts with the social web? It started off with getting all those cool new achievement-based badges, for checking in to the most locations, or checking in most often. Then it was about checking into specific ‘favorite’ places, say a coffee shop, often enough to become the mayor of that location…at times, competing with others who want that mayor title as well! You’re certainly enjoying yourself with this harmless sparring, but who wins in the process? Of course, Foursquare, which is building up a rich database of places with commentary about each location, but there’s another unlikely winner. Yes, it’s the coffee shop, where you’ve been for 26 consecutive days buying a cup of coffee and telling all your friends where your favorite coffee is served!
Beyond the fun and games, social gamification has been seen to deliver measurable benefits when embedded into a broader marketing strategy. Without a doubt, brands see increased engagement levels with their target audience, and the engagement levels only increase if reaching these goals/challenges results in a reward. What’s more, gamification features have a way of making community participation stickier, as is the case with discussion forums. What may start as a short-term competition to see one’s name on the community leaderboard often forms into a daily habit, ensuring that your consumers stick around for the long term and become truly engaged and vested in the discussions. Besides, unlike traditional marketing tactics, customers going through a compelling gamified experience don’t feel like they’re being marketed to, which allows them to be more receptive to the subtle product messaging you could be embedding into the game.
Of course, the proof of the pudding is that there are a number of pioneering brands out there experimenting with gamification, and research coming out of it shows that the concept is indeed worth all of the attention it’s been getting. Sample some of these:
Nike: The brand’s Nike+ campaign gives users free apps for mobile devices that allow you to keep track of your running times, distances, accomplishments and more. Not only does this make it easy for Nike’s followers to track their own progress, but they can also share these workout statistics with their friends on social media. If you’re a daily runner, you get a fun and valuable app to track your progress, and Nike enjoys the free brand advertising that comes from you promoting your running accomplishments online. The brand even made an entire product based on gaming principles (Nike Fuel Band)!
Intel: Intel teamed up with Angry Birds, the biggest property in mobile/ social gaming, to create the “Angry Birds in Ultrabook” adventure within Intel’s Facebook page. The game included 10 new Intel-themed levels including a new Intel “blue” slingshot, Intel core chips, Intel mini circuit boards and animated visuals of the ‘Ultrabook’ in each game level. The game also gave users the opportunity to learn more about the product with an Ultra book video embedded into the experience and links through to intel.com. Users were invited to share their high scores with other Intel fans, and in a rather innovative twist to the Facebook sponsored post mechanism, users could play a level within the ads that popped up occasionally on their Facebook timeline. The campaign blurred the lines between advertising, education and entertainment, and had over 5.5 million unique visitors complete 17 million levels with over 56 million timeline impressions through published actions across Facebook.
Zomato: The popular eating joint directory lets users rise through the ranks from a mere foodie, to a big foodie, a super foodie and a connoisseur, where progress to each level is earned by the reviews you post, and the followers you have on the Zomato network. The site gets richer content in the bargain, and connoisseurs get to see their work featured on the Zomato leaderboard, are widely respected in the community and often get invited to invitation-only events for restaurants in their city.