Gamification is one of the hottest marketing trends of 2011 – and it’s not just all about Farmville and Angry Birds. Read on to discover why now is the time for B2B marketers to get serious about play time in the office. Claire Weekes reports
Gamification is one of the hottest trends in marketing right now. If you don’t believe the hype, you don’t have to – the proof is in the figures. In July, technology analyst Gartner released research suggesting that by the end of 2011, consumers will have spent a collective £46 billion on games – that includes online ones such as Farmville, mobile apps such as Angry Birds and hardware gaming devices such as the Sony Playstation.
Okay, so these figures relate to social gaming (which is really just one strand of gamification as a concept) and are the kind of figures a consumer marketer is likely to get excited by. But gamification is creeping into the B2B space too – there are now B2B brands (IBM being a brilliant case in point which we’ll come onto later) realising the benefits that gamification techniques can have on ROI.
Gamification isn’t actually a new concept at all – in business it has always been around. But technology and the evolution of the digital age mean that for the first time brands are actually able to monitor and fully harness its benefits – as Kasia Zaniewska, strategy director at TBWA explains.
“Games and gaming have been with humanity since the first caveman realised knucklebones have different sides,” she says. “The difference now is that we have a host of tools and technologies that help us connect, compete and socialise this. So instead of inventing little games that challenge us individually, or those in our immediate surroundings, we are able to develop games that include tens, hundreds, millions of people from around the world. Technologies enable us to record our achievements, and compete against others.”
So that gives us a holistic overview as to what gamification is. A lot of people wrongly assume that gamification is only about social gaming – we all know how successful Zynga, owner of Cityville among others, has become. But this simply isn’t the case.
“Social games, such as the popular Farmville, arise out of a user needs to interact, and are often casual and based on social platforms. Gamification is much subtler than that,” says Andrew Hewitt, director of propositions at Global Dawn.
“At a basic level, gamification is the use of gaming techniques to encourage people to engage with a specific brand or business. This is done via the distribution of rewards, such as virtual badges, trophies, points and levels, that [in turn] allow brands to engage with users deeply within a platform – building trust and participation.
“This feeling of engagement is echoed when brands give a user positive feedback, an entertaining experience and gratitude for their effort. This, importantly, leaves the user feeling a connection with the brand and even an alliance, which can only manifest itself plausibly when it comes to purchase or recommendation decisions.”
Get in the game
So what are the ways in which B2B brands can put gamification to good use? The benefits are two-fold. Gaming can be used to acquire leads and prospects, but it can also be used very effectively by business brands as a way of driving significant cost savings and efficiencies by using games to train and to motivate staff.
IBM is a great example of a B2B brand using gaming techniques to attract prospects and leads.
It has created CityOne, a game application designed to educate professionals and IBM prospects about the importance of technology and data in making decisions to run your ‘city’ in a more sustainable and environmentally conscious way.
According to IBM’s website, “serious games are video games that do more than entertain – they prepare professionals to work smarter by enabling them to visualise the consequences of their actions and explore different permutations of events in a visceral way.”
And according to Phaedra Boinodiris, serious games programme manager at IBM, CityOne has became IBM’s top lead generator. At the eighth annual Serious Games Summit in March, he told an audience of delegates looking to understand the profit to be gained from gaming that CEOs, presidents, COOs and other top executives across the globe had so far embraced CityOne.
Within five months of launch the game produced 100 times the amount of investment put into it. It’s free to play, but players must register in order to play – obviously an essential component in tracking the results the game produces. The game is linked to IBM’s ‘Smarter planet’ initiative that aims to get the world running on smarter and greener technologies (provided by IBM of course). Zaniewska describes CityOne as a kind of “corporate version of Sim City.”
It’s IBM’s concept of ‘serious gaming’ that seems to be revolutionising the way B2B brands can cash in on the gamification model. According to research by the Entertainment Software Association, in the US 67 per cent of households play games, and the average age of a game player is 35 (and on a PC, even older at 47). This proves that the popularity of computer gaming is no longer restricted to the enthusiasm of teenage boys. The success of IBM’s game is proof that professional adults like complex issues presented in game format.
“For obvious reasons, it is harder to imagine that professionals will take an extra second or two to ‘play some games’ on corporate websites but there are opportunities,” says Zaniewska. “The popularity of electronic gaming has been driven by adults who are now in the workforce, and gaming at work is not an extreme leap for them,” she adds.
Turn work into play
Recruitment agency Gild has turned the act of finding work into a game – it encourages job seekers to ‘sell’ themselves to employers by completing challenges designed to set them apart from the competition.
Gild gives job seekers tests in areas relevant to their career – such as maths tests or programming tests. When users complete these tests, Gild sends instant, real-time results on to the employer. Challenges are company-sponsored and in many cases offer rewards to successful candidates such as an iPad. Users can see how they have ranked against others, and outside of the direct employer-employee sphere can take individual tests to highlight their specialist skills.
The model employed by Gild is (minus the free iPads) much like the one offered by professional social networking site LinkedIn, which encourages user participation by ‘rewarding’ activity with a better profile status. LinkedIn users are encouraged to interact more heavily with the brand by performing certain actions (such as importing a CV) and, in turn, gaining a more complete profile. As Zaniewska points out, “LinkedIn was actually one of the first online services to introduce this idea of a progression dynamic.”
Capitalise on competitiveness
B2B brands can concentrate their gamification efforts on internal staff development to good effect. Think about how competitive the sales team in any given organisation is – every person in a sales team is driven by targets – but also the kudos of being the top performer.
“People like challenges, they like playing games – so why not bring this into the business world?” argues Steve Mugridge, CEO of Onalytica. “Certainly initial feedback from our own service, whereby we use online monitoring and analytics combined with gamification to help brands assess the performance of individual employees in near real-time – is that it is a non-intrusive and simple way to tackle the often daunting issue of performance measurement.”
Onalytica is currently working with several big brands to assess how gamification can be used to effectively measure how PR professionals engage with key influencers in a specific market sector. Mugridge says, “Using our online monitoring and analytics tool, we can help brands see the impact of certain communications activities, meaning they can make changes now if need be, rather than several months down the line. It doesn’t replace traditional performance measurement techniques, but it adds a more immediate, fun way to track whether something is working or not.”
B2B brands who are embracing gamification are showing the rest of us that a successful marriage can be made between the business and fun, as long as it’s a thought-out process. Either way the market for gamification – according to that earlier research by Gartner, will grow to $1.6 billion by 2015 – by which point it also predicts that more than 50 per cent of organisations that manage innovation will gamify those processes.
Case study: Marriott plays games to boost recruitment
Marriott International, owner of the Marriott Hotel chain, aims to have employed an extra 50,000 staff this year. The group has developed a gamification strategy aimed at both promoting the brand and picking out top talent. In ‘My Marriott Hotel’ on Facebook, gamers have the opportunity to manage a ‘virtual’ hotel restaurant kitchen, before moving on to other areas of hotel operations. Gamers can create their own restaurant, where they’ll buy equipment and ingredients on a budget, hire and train employees, and serve guests. They’ll earn points for happy customers and lose points for poor service. Ultimately, they’ll be rewarded when their operation turns a profit.
“As Marriott expands in growth markets outside the US, and as we seek to attract those between the ages 18 and 27 to our workforce, we must find new ways to interest them in hospitality careers,” says David Rodriguez, executive vice president of global human resources at Marriott International. “This game allows us to showcase the world of opportunities and the growth potential attainable in hospitality careers.”
Marriott’s jobs and careers page on Facebook already has more than 12,000 global active users.
