Rethinking gamification in marketing

Gamification was once a buzzword in marketing, popping up in campaign activations and strategies whether it fit or not. So does gamification still have a place or was it just a fad?

It doesn’t seem that long ago that conferences were jammed with sessions on how techniques and ideas from the world of electronic gaming were revolutionising marketing.

Games are highly engaging, and brands are always seeking greater engagement, so the idea of the ‘gamification’ of campaigns seemed like a logical development. Hence leader boards, points systems and completion bars started appearing in all manner of digital campaigns, as marketers sought to entice audiences to stay engaged with them for as long as possible.

Fast forward to today however, and pretty much no one is talking about gamification. So was it just an overhyped fad?

“I think that, thankfully, the early days of 'gamification' are officially behind us,” says director of strategy at Melbourne-based agency Hardhat Digital, Dan Monheit. “The era I'm referring to was the one in which every client wanted every campaign, website, app, newsletter and internal office poster 'gamified', whether it made sense to do so or not – because it usually didn't.”

The learning for the industry was that taking a boring, inherently unmotivating task and adding a leader board and some badges still left the audience with a boring, inherently unmotivating task.

“It's kind of like a terrible person paying others to hang out with them,” Monheit says. “It seems kind of palatable at first, but it doesn't take long for people to either decide that it's just not worth it, or work out how to game the system and extract the most amount of cash for the least amount of interaction possible. Either way, it's not going to be the result that the terrible person was looking for.

“The inherently motivating factors need to be baked in from the very start - after all, games have no purpose other than to create enjoyment by being played, and that's what companies with their raft of other objectives are likely competing with.”

Lessons learnt

Monheit says the realisation for many of the early adopters was that it was incredibly difficult to make a product or service that was as addictive as a game. This is reflected through many successful games effectively only being ‘one off’s’ from a developer that got exceedingly lucky, with few small developers able to repeat their success consistently.

“This all seems pretty obvious, but it seems that as an industry we had to learn the hard way,” Monheit says. “The same could be said for brands realising what it takes to produce truly entertaining content.”

Partner at Deloitte Digital, Jason Hutchinson, believes gamification has very much been a victim of the hype cycle. But while it failed to meet the expectations many placed on it, this may have been the result of poor implementations, rather than an inherent fault in the idea.

“People were rewarding the wrong things,” Hutchinson says. “We were rewarding people for a specific task, but not necessarily for the quality of that task. We would reward someone for creating a piece of content, but what we should be rewarding people for is the value of that content.

“Where gamification works really well is when we put higher rewards based on the value of that content and whether people like it, share it or reuse it – or remove points based on how people use it. So it should be powered by the data around it, not simply creating a piece of content.”

While gamification might be many years past being flavour of the month, Hutchinson says clients still seek to have gamified elements included in projects. Deloitte itself long ago incorporated elements of gamification into internal systems and processes, including a corporate version of Foursquare that encourages consultants to ‘check in’ after they have met with clients and include information on what they have discussed, and earn rewards for doing so.

Up next: Examples of successful gamification today, plus learning the impact and effectiveness

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.
Show Comments

Latest Videos

More Videos

More Brand Posts

What are Chris Riddell's qualifications to talk about technology? What are the awards that Chris Riddell has won? I cannot seem to find ...

Tareq

Digital disruption isn’t disruption anymore: Why it’s time to refocus your business

Read more

Enterprisetalk

Mark

CMO's top 10 martech stories for the week - 9 June

Read more

Great e-commerce article!

Vadim Frost

CMO’s State of CX Leadership 2022 report finds the CX striving to align to business outcomes

Read more

Are you searching something related to Lottery and Lottery App then Agnito Technologies can be a help for you Agnito comes out as a true ...

jackson13

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Thorough testing and quality assurance are required for a bug-free Lottery Platform. I'm looking forward to dependability.

Ella Hall

The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration

Read more

Blog Posts

Marketing prowess versus the enigma of the metaverse

Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.

Liz Miller

VP, Constellation Research

Why Excellent Leadership Begins with Vertical Growth

Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?

Michael Bunting

Author, leadership expert

More than money talks in sports sponsorship

As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.

Simone Waugh

Managing Director, Publicis Queensland

Sign in