How to gamify your marketing strategy
Marketer Daily explores the marketer’s mindset. Browse a collection of personal, thought-provoking marketing stories from Reggie Tan (@ramoneLIVE). Written for marketing new grads, experienced marketers, and business owners. I appreciate the support 🙏
If you’re not familiar with the term, “gamification”, it originates from the concept of video games.
Video games are great way to chill, unwind, and consume your time off. It has potential to spike the dopamine levels in your brain, which can lead to mild to severe levels of addiction.
I definitely played my fair share of video games. When I was a child, my dad built an arcade-style gaming centre to house my Nintendo Entertainment System and 13” television set. He tricked it out with black painted wood panels, a liftable darkening filter for the TV, and coated it with video game stickers like “Terminator vs. Robocop” (which should have been a movie, by the way). It was sweet as hell.
The addiction that trigger from video games can be found in many other fun things we spend our lives on.
Take for example watching professional football. Watching football isn’t addicting. However, once you start playing fantasy football money leagues, it gets way more penetrating. You slowly become further engaged with the sport: following player stats, scoring free agents, predicting outcomes, and trash talking your friends. I have a friend who rolls with double TVs to catch two games at once. Casino betting or horse racing evokes the same types of actions and emotions.
As a marketer, there’s something we can learn from this.
Video games and the like typically include a set of principles that drive gamification.
Players can earn things, such as points
Players can win things, such as completion achievements
Players can escape from their reality, by adopting different personalities or worlds
Players can socialize with other people, whether as themselves or a separate persona
Players are invested in it, whether by time or money
By adopting these principles in your marketing strategy, you’ve effectively created what’s called a gamification strategy.
From a neuromarketing stand point, gamifying allows you to tap into the part of your customer’s brain that gets addicted to things. And it’s all in the name of fun.
One of the coolest gamification campaigns I was a part of was at Gotstyle. In collaboration with Dorsey Studios, we developed a super fun digital campaign called Naked Man featuring a naked man stuck on a balcony. He shopped for clothes online at Gotstyle via video chat (before video chat became all the rage).
To date, the video scored 7.2M views.
Outside of the typical billboard spots and placements online, we utilized various gamification tactics to drive even more awareness, including actually building a video game.
During the pre-show of first two weeks of 007’s Skyfall, we launched a SMS-based campaign offering a free secret agent starter kit, which included a bow tie and stuff.
Then we got more creative.
Working along side a game development studio, we continued the Naked Man’s adventure by designing a 8-bit Facebook video game. In a reverse Donkey Kong style format, players are tasked with exiting the hotel while bypassing angry people, barking dogs, and other nuisances. Every week, prizes were distributed to game winners, with a larger prize awarded monthly.
In coordination with one of our fashion shows, we set up the game on an iPad connected to a big screen TV, complete with a meet-and-greet with the Naked Man himself (in a trench coat, of course).
The Naked Man campaign won Silver at the Shopper Innovation Awards, second to the golden arches themselves.
I guess it does pay to have your kids play video games, huh?
Gamification is 75 percent psychology and 25 percent technology.
―Gabe Zichermann, co-author of Gamification by Design
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Your WFH Playlist 🎧
The Foreign Exchange. You’ve probably never heard of ‘em. Phonte from Little Brother? You also probably never heard of him. Phonte, for the record, is one of my top 3 rappers of all time. A lyrical wizard with exceptional flow. Phonte collaborated with fantastically talented Dutch producer Nicolay to create the duo The Foreign Exchange, where jazz meets hip hop. Even though it was released in 2004, Connected still remains one of my favourite “happy albums”.
Today’s an easy day. Your music should reflect that.
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If it hasn’t already by the time of writing this, Ethereum (ETH) is about to surpass $2,000, breaking an all-time high that many have speculated whether it could or not. Well, the market still smells bullish, so if you’re thinking of joining the world of cryptocurrency, now’s the time. Just don’t invest in what you’re willing to lose, because as you know, anything cryptocurrency is massively volatile and carries significant risk.
In the stock market, everyone’s favourite ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) took a beating this past week, but consider how it’s been trending upwards for the past year, your best time to enter may be now.
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Take a break today and play a video game. You deserve it.
Reggie